Five-star fuss for Mariah
Carey, 31, who has just signed a $20-million-an-album deal with Virgin Records, will tour briefly to plug her new album and film, both titled All That Glitters. But music industry observers also expect her to up the ante in showbiz demands, even outstripping the five-star tastes of recent tourist Jennifer Lopez.
Carey only drinks $400-a-bottle Cristal champagne and, because she is germ-phobic, sips the costly plonk through a straw. A former Sony Music executive, who worked on her 1998 Butterfly tour, told a local correspondent to US Billboard magazine the singer also requested a specific crystal glass to be delivered to her hotel suite - at 2am. Yesterday, the same executive said Carey's demands were the usual superstar requests.
In her five-star hotel room, she expects a treadmill, a humidifier in each room, and an Italian-based menu. An insomniac, Carey is most likely to conduct her interviews in bed, as she has done when promoting her past three albums. She once spoke to Ian "Molly" Meldrum while in a spa pool. "My life is reversed from most people," Carey told the Herald Sun in 1998. "I wake up when the sun goes down, and go to bed when the sun comes up."
Famously, Carey once had a bed built into a limousine in case she nodded off. In Britain last year, she asked for a BBC rest room to be given a fresh coat of paint, and for new mirrors and a candle arrangement to be installed. After Carey had used the room, staffers ripped the toilet seat off its hinges and auctioned it for charity.
While Lopez's minders are at pains to portray the self-proclaimed J-Lo as maintenance-lo, her high-handed demands compare unfavourably with Carey's. In Australia, Lopez ditched her 60-strong entourage, ravioli specialist chef, and portable "wind machine" to give her hair "that tousled look", but requested specially scented candles, which sell for $190 each. According to US reports, Lopez must also be addressed by employees or security staff as "number one", such as: "Number one is approaching the hotel foyer."
In line with most superstars on tour, Carey is likely to travel with a personal hair stylist and makeup artist. Late yesterday, Virgin Records press officer, Simon Blackmore, said he was working on a "possible" August visit for her. Asked whether the star had any advance demands, Blackmore said: "I can't comment."
In 1998, Carey hinted that her demanding tendencies came from being formerly married to Sony Music boss Tommy Mottola. "It wasn't because I was like that: it was the people around me. They wanted me to be like that," she said. "There are some who want to keep the mystique and be unapproachable. That's the theory, anyway. But, I'm still me. I'm the little girl who grew up wanting a big dream." (Herald Sun)
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