Monday 4 August 2003

Mariah Carey proves that she's still got it

Mariah Carey is on tour, promoting Charmbracelet. She's playing smaller venues and letting fans decide her sets. Many things, good and bad have been said about R&B/pop diva Mariah Carey, but no one can say she's not driven.

After a rough patch that included very public breakups, breakdowns, a $29 million severance check and a movie so bad that it's not even good kitsch, the 33-year-old singer is working hard to claw her way back to the top and hit the road for the first time in several years.

Sunday night she brought her Charmbracelet tour to Scene Pavilion, where her rabid fan base welcomed her back with open arms and wallets. (Floor seats were $75 and there was a lengthy line to snap up $38 T-shirts and even $15 black thongs.)

The tour, promoting her eighth full-length album, Charmbracelet, hasn't been without problems. When ticket sales proved initially sluggish Carey revamped the tour, moving it from arenas to smaller "intimate" venues, and appealing directly to fans by offering them the chance to pick the set list.

The Jersey Girl and best-selling female singer of the '90s made a grand entrance by coming through the audience, bringin' fans to their feet, where they stayed for most of the night. Carey made sure fans had plenty to look at throughout an elaborately staged show that included as many as 11 dancers, numerous set changes and Carey's own constantly revolving wardrobe. Even her four backup singers got ample opportunity to show their talents. The crowd ate it up.

She quieted any doubts about her voice early on during the opener Heartbreaker by hitting a string of those glass-breaking high notes for which she is famous. The set list leaned heavily on her trademark ballads, and the crowd cheered every scale-climbing vocal ad-lib in songs including Through the Rain, Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme) and a misguided take of Def Leppard's classic power ballad Bringin' On The Heartbreak.

Though many of Carey's songs are bland, her voice is able to lift the material, and her fans probably wouldn't care if she sang nursery rhymes for two hours. On her hip-hop flavored tunes, including current hit I Know What You Want featuring video of rappers Busta Rhymes and Rah Digga, Carey seemed more like an afterthought. She strolled through to sing the hook and strolled off again to change outfits.

Carey's career may have peaked in the last decade, but like Madonna - another driven pop icon - she won't be going away anytime soon, and her fans wouldn't have it any other way.

(The Beacon Journal)

Many thanks to Mariah Hero.



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