| Wednesday 18 December 2002 |
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Mariah Carey's jingles melodic but abbreviated
Mariah Carey sang a pair of tunes on Sunday night at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, tossed Christmas teddy bears to a near-sellout crowd and walked off beaming. For a pop star whose life was in free fall not long ago, the best-selling female entertainer of the 1990s looked and sounded believably intact. A 10-minute appearance at a radio festival, the second annual Jingle Ball presented by Top 40 station Y-100, clearly is not the measure of a public figure's recovery. But Carey, the biggest-selling female artist of the last decade, sang with her usual soaring enthusiasm. She also radiated good humor in a brief plug for the new album Charmbracelet, her rebound from a failed movie and soundtrack project, and from a meltdown that included a hospital stay for nervous exhaustion.
The "special spotlight appearance", as it was billed, drew cheers from an audience that had peaked at about 15,000 people, and whose patience had been tested since the 5:30 p.m. start time. Escorted across the arena floor, she dropped in about midnight, nearly two hours behind schedule thanks in part to rapper P. Diddy's shambling performance and slow set changes between a few other acts culled from the Y-100 play list.
Carey, 32, had no live band, just three backup singers, several dancers and a tape of the tracks for Through the Rain, a new and very topical ballad about survival, and the spirited All I Want for Christmas, from her 1994 holiday album. But she had her voice, and enough confidence to perform in a backless, floor-length black gown. She said she felt "festive" as she pulled on a white faux-fur stole - no animal-killing for this queen of nice - and she certainly did not overstay her welcome. With Charmbracelet charting respectably, and Carey again among the living, 2003 looks to be a year of fewer torments for a woman who has struggled at times with the imperial demands of diva-hood. (Sun Sentinel)
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