Mariah Carey turns on the charm
Mariah Carey's spreading her wings. The singer, who's been grounded by personal and professional problems for the past few years, is launching her first world tour in more than three years in support of her recent release Charmbracelet. The two-time Grammy winner kicks off the Charmbracelet World Tour June 24, in Osaka, Japan, before returning to North American for the 47-date Stateside segment of her tour, launching July 18, in Anchorage Alaska and wrapping up in Manchester, New Hampshire, September 23. Carey then cashes in her air miles to continue touring in Europe and the U.K.
For the low-low price of $35, the cost of admission to Carey's fanclub Honey B. Fly (the singer's nickname), members can get a five-day jump on ticket sales, starting Monday. Everyone else will have to cool their heels until tickets officially go on sale May 3.
The roadshow is meant to promote Carey's latest musical effort Charmbracelet, which has sold 1 million copies since it's December release, and, no doubt, prove once and for all that the Dreamlover is fully recovered from her emotional breakdown suffered in 2001.
Carey's very public problems, which began with a bizarre striptease on MTV's TRL, were compounded by the dramatic flop of her first feature Glitter, prompting EMI/Virgin to scrap its $80 million, four-record deal with her and pay her to leave. Carey eventually signed a reported $20 million, three-record deal with Island Records that allowed her set up her own imprint label, MonarC, which offers additional back-end profits.
Charmbracelet has resembled a comeback of sorts for Carey. The album opened at number three, selling 241,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan numbers, which gave the once-flickering star the second-best first-week sales of her career. Carey scored her best first week in 1999, when Rainbow sold 322,000 copies at number two; her last chart-topping bow came courtesy of 1997's Butterfly, which moved 235,000 in week one.
Despite her success, it seems not everyone's clamoring to work with the diva. Carey's collaboration with Busta Rhymes, "I Know What You Want", is perched at number seven on the Billboard singles chart, but her duet with Justin Timberlake has yet to be played. Timberlake's label, Jive, refuses to give her permission to release the single "Yours" (originally intended for Charmbracelet). As such, the song remains firmly "theirs", until Carey can convince Jive to make it "ours". (E! Online)
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