Saturday 28 July 2001

Don't count Mariah out yet

I'm going to surprise you this morning, because readers of this column know I am usually on Mariah Carey's case for something or other. Plagiarism, bad songs, whatever. But this column also reprinted messages from Mariah yesterday that she left for her fans, who she always calls lambs, by the way. The messages were more serious than I first thought. By the middle of the day, Mariah's publicist, my good pal Cindi Berger, had to announce that Carey had been hospitalized for exhaustion.

Something is up, to be sure, and it doesn't sound good. But this much I will say: Do not count Mariah Carey out. She will be back, and she will be bigger than ever. It sounds like she's having an identity crisis, and every young person is allowed that. The problem is, Mariah was never young. She married Tommy Mottola when she was 21 without first having time to find herself. By the time she divorced him, Mariah's career meant so much to Mottola financially - as he was the head of the company that released her records - she was painted into a corner. And she was under contract to Sony Music.

In the last few months, Mariah has finally been apart from Mottola, making her record at Virgin Music. But for the first time she is without a mentor. She is also without her writing partner, Walter Afanasieff. Her professional life is in flux. It didn't help that Billboard savaged her god-awful single, "Loverboy". She'd never had such blatant public criticism before about her music. Then no radio stations played "Loverboy". The single hit number 2 yesterday, but even Mariah's not stupid. Virgin deep-discounted the record, practically giving it away. Hey kids, a Mariah single for 50 cents! Bottles of water cost more.

Then there's Mariah's personal life. She alludes in the two postings (which you can read in yesterday's column) to not having one. As much as she advertises her relationship with Luis Miguel, he's never on the scene. But Mariah lives for her fans. She travels with her fan mail, and thrives on the scrapbooks the fans make of her career. It's all kind of sweet and a little weird. Last week, she actually did an in-store signing at a record store in the Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island. This is her hometown mall, and she was signing a single, not even an album! This is the part of Mariah you can't help but feel for-she's reaching out to strangers.

Vondie Curtis-Hall, the director of her movie, Glitter, is no idiot. He told me, as did his wife Kasi Lemmons, another fine director, that Mariah does not embarrass herself in Glitter. On the contrary, they think she did OK. Carey has studied with a good acting teacher, and while I'm sure she's no Cate Blanchett, there's a better than even chance that she acquits herself in this role.

In the end, though, it's Mariah's voice that is her strongest asset. Not too long ago Billy Joel was saying at a dinner that his daughter Alexa Ray was singing, but he had to remind her to "hold the note" and not warble it the way Mariah does. There was a time when Carey held the note - remember her first couple of singles like "Vision of Love"? She had breathtaking range, but somewhere along the line she forgot that. She got caught up in digressions that didn't serve her well. I hope with some rest and time we'll hear that original eight-octave instrument again. Until then, I for one agree: Let's give her some space.

(Fox News)



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