Mariah out of her depth on tour
Could that woman in the spotlight really be the best-selling female artist of the last decade? Dropping in Wednesday night on Mariah Carey's first concert tour since 1993, the feeling is that you've somehow stumbled into the wrong building - a high-school talent show, perhaps.
Carey's awkward evening of girlish musings and clichéd play-acting is so vastly below what any fan would expect from a music phenom who has sold more than 125 million albums that one has to wonder who at Sony greenlit this traveling train wreck.
During a decade of stardom, Carey has indeed perfected most of the showbiz basics: The chart-topping pay-off note, the red-carpet pose, the faux flirting with Leno and Letterman. But she has never learned to perform in concert - something she skipped right over when she burst onto the airwaves in 1990 as a fully formed, just-add-water superstar.
And now it's too late. She's too famous to go back and learn her trade in clubs; too important to stay off the road completely. So she skates by on as few live dates as possible, playing the odd celeb event and even debuting this tour overseas. The U.S. leg visits just nine cities before calling it a wrap, inexplicable in an age when the 60-city multi-million-dollar jaunt is standard.
Now, it's not as if Carey can't sing, or that she doesn't have the catalog to fill out an evening. Indeed, she has great pipes and plenty of pleasant hits. What she lacks is a sense of what a big star should be doing on stage, particularly in an arena setting.
Granted, many arena shows don't offer great music. But performing in these sports boxes is the way it is - pop's necessary evil - and everyone from Madonna to Ricky Martin has figured out how to stage these concerts brilliantly. It's a science - nothing a little time, money, and imagination can't buy. And with her status, Carey certainly has access to the best choreographers, conceptualists, scenic designers, and everything else in the business.
Apparently, though, Carey hasn't hired any such people, or if she has, she certainly hasn't listened to them, choosing instead to compensate with absurd displays. In fact, according to Daily Variety, Jeffrey Hornaday, the one big-name producer she did employ, has now disassociated himself from the entire spectacle.
From a bizarre scene in which she invited a rag-tag band of fans onstage to drink champagne and receive stuffed animals from her, to a mock boxing match and an incoherent "Miss Diva Contest," Carey is just plain lost. There was also that strange bedtime interlude during which she pranced around in pajamas, wrapping herself in a child's blanket. Perhaps, though, this wasn't too surprising, coming scant months after she showed up on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee in a bathrobe and high heels and attended by a small dog.
The tour also features more of the "Mariah vs. evil twin Bianca" saga, recently showcased in the video for "Heartbreaker." This time it's a long-form video piece used to open the show, filled out with odd celeb testimonials from the likes of Pamela Anderson Lee, Ozzy Osbourne, and Donny and Marie Osmond, and looking like it was shot by an intern at a low-watt television station.
Decked in ripped-at-the-hip jeans and a backless halter top, Carey finally appeared in the flesh when the video concluded, spouting the same kind of phony stage patter and hubris that eventually finished off Diana Ross - i.e., "I love you all so much!"
She began with a cursory run-through of her 1991 hit "Emotions," followed by a condescending soliloquy on how she fought off a bad cold so that she could "be there for my fans." And though she frequently left the stage for costume changes, she was also, at one point, inexplicably attended to onstage by a make-up man and stylist who freshened her look while she talked about the heat.
It should be noted, too, that Carey was apparently too pressed for time to conduct the time-honored ritual of introducing her own band, a chore she relegated to a back-up singer as she flitted down a side staircase for yet another break.
Amid these distractions, though, Carey did manage to squeeze in hits such as "Always Be My Baby," "My All," "Against All Odds," a reworking of the Phil Collins hit, and a new song, "Close My Eyes." But there was no pacing, no charisma, no idea of how to put even the big notes across. And she still hasn't mastered even the simplest dance steps.
Later, she found time to showcase her sometime singing partner Trey Lorenz, as well as opening act Da Brat, who returned midway through the show while Carey was offstage again, changing clothes.
The kicker? It's not as if these costumes were spectacular getups worth the anticipation. Rather, it was her usual mall rat-meets-The Sopranos look. One pair of too-tight jeans after another, followed by the inevitable Spandex gowns. First pink, then blue.
In fact, there's almost no money up on the stage at all, despite the $75-$100 ticket price. Every aspect of the production feels cut-rate, from the unexceptional five-piece band to the bad lighting to the formulaic dancers. The stock set is festooned with one paltry metallic curtain and a trio of budget-priced, image-distorting video screens that seem to have come from the conference room of a Holiday Inn. To top it off, all of this was further hampered by Miami's gloomy new arena, a dungeon of exposed cement that rendered just about every word unintelligible.
In 1993, when Carey's then-Svengali, Tommy Mottola, prematurely plopped her on arena stages, her lack of experience and odd transgressions could be forgiven. Today there's no excuse, only the mystery as to why this talented singer is so out of touch. (Wall Of Sound)
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