The scales are tipped
Setting aside their musical differences, why is it that Madonna gets away with being such a fraud and Mariah Carey doesn't? Madonna's brand of affectation is certainly more cliched - the borrowed upper-crusty diction, the great show of interest in those finer arts (independent cinema, Frida Kahlo, the Broadway stage and so forth), the self-conscious direction of her "growth" as artist and person, the stilted attempts at playfulness a la Austin Powers. Long after we've applauded the rust-belt kid for pulling an Evita and becoming the queen of pop, Madonna still sounds like the coat-checker putting on airs when she enunciates "Rupert" (her British actor pal Everett) or "William" (her British producer pal Orbit) in front of a camera. It's all so very Eliza Doolittle, without the offhand charm, but we buy it.
Meanwhile, poor, fumbling, obvious Mariah can't buy a break. Not even with 120 million singles and albums sold. The most retailed female pop star of the '90s finds culture-niks less than fascinated by her every move. No Vanity Fair covers, no easy entree to highbrow auteurs, no entourage at Cannes.
What gives? Carey, who is booked on Wednesday at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, hasn't made any bad budget-noir movies like Snake Eyes or Body of Evidence - yet. She got passed over for a role in the updated Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and a vaguely autobiographical Carey star vehicle, All That Glitters, keeps stalling in pre-production.
She hasn't published a soft-core photo shoot with Vanilla Ice, although the baby-doll pinups for Rainbow are unfortunate in their own way. Carey seems to be saying, "Take that, Britney Spears!"
She plays live so infrequently she can hardly be accused of overexposure on all fronts; we don't get her in multimedia triptych. Carey's current "tour" of nine cities is her first U.S. concert jaunt in seven years. All she does, to borrow a phrase, is score touchdowns, sing and make hit records - 14 No. 1's, including Heartbreaker, a frothy, sampled guitar jag from the new album Rainbow. Only Elvis and the Beatles have posted more top-sellers.
But time and again this billion-dollar baby, now 30, hears how she's not really a "diva," the astounding vocal range and VH1 special notwithstanding, how she's got no clue, no style, no sense of her art. And don't think she's not listening.
"(People) look at me and think, 'Oh, she sings, and all the octaves, and does all that stuff,' and they don't acknowledge that the stuff that I do is really my own style and my own thing," she complained to MTV News last fall, a month ahead of Rainbow's release.
Carey, riding in a limousine with a camera operator and an MTV correspondent, her own music blasting from the speakers, went on to point out her dexterity with remixes - sonic makeovers of singles, which artists normally farm out to freelance producers (like Orbit): "I re-sing all my remixes, and I rewrite all my remixes. All new vocals, all new stuff, because I rewrite it. Not everybody cares that much or likes to do that, so I think that is part of what makes me different and unique. Because I really do never lose touch with the street and with the music that I love."
And herein lies Carey's problem. There are so many things wrong with just this one encounter, it's hard to know where to begin. Manhattan by limo with a television crew on board is not the best way to signify "(in) touch with the street." Likewise, few of us ever lose touch with music that we love, or consider it an accomplishment to like what we like and keep on liking it.
Tack on gratuitous use of the word "stuff," a drab nasal voice that bears no resemblance to her animated singing, and Carey comes off as a dull person with an interesting life. This is no way to command respect.
If Madonna teaches us anything - without meaning to, of course - it is that people will take a grand, facile phony over an awkward achiever with no apparent sense of self.
Which is kind of a shame, because Carey is not witless. She sat with PBS talk show host Charlie Rose - quizzer of pols, artists and intellectuals - for the full hour in November and acquitted herself reasonably. She was no Cokie Roberts, or Julia Roberts, even, mind you. But she gave the impression of a motivated performer who draws confidence from her love of music, and her conviction that she can sing, somebody who doesn't apologize for a record of success and truly appreciates the support of her fans. Compare that to Madonna, who by now takes adulation as her special right.
It's just that television needs an hour with Carey to bring out the better qualities. Madonna doesn't ask for that kind of indulgence. So maybe a tour is just what Carey needs, a setting that gives the person-as-performer some time to build rapport and reveal depth. Carey's opening night performance in Los Angeles, to judge by the published reviews, was not a triumph in this regard. But first-night jitters are to be expected after seven years away.
Carey has the pipes, the songs and the resources to mount a winning live production. Whether she will is another question. Having divorced Tommy Mottola, the Sony Music record mogul who discovered and then married her, she appears more reliant than ever on her own spotty judgment.
There is something to be said for the clammy showbiz calculus of a Madonna. It may not sell 120 million albums; it doesn't need to. Properly deployed, it buys a more valuable pop cachet that doesn't always translate into units sold.
Carey and Madonna do share a heritage. Both grew up lower-middle class in turbulent households. Carey was raised by her divorced mother, whereas Madonna these days talks of becoming "the mother I never had." Tri-stater Carey had a shorter trip to New York City than Michigan girl Madonna. But each arrived there determined to make her way. Both clawed, starved and scraped by on guts and self-belief until the breaks started falling their way.
But Carey hasn't shed that mix, bumbling humility and misplaced stabs at cool. She still looks a bit lost. Madonna, by the time of her video-documented Blonde Ambition tour, had sanded away every rough edge except the ones that made her look tough. She went on to grapple, or at least dabble, with big topics like poverty and religion in her music and videos. Carey, to date, is still daydreaming about rainbows and butterflies. It's time for her to put away childish things. (The Sun Sentinel)
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