A diva at 40
Less than two months from now, Mariah Carey will turn 40 years old and will have spent half of that time in the public eye, weathering career highs and lows. Having moved enough units to grant her the title of best selling artist of the '90s and staging a commercial comeback in the mid-'00s after the double edged catastrophe that was 2001's "Glitter" and 2002's "Charmbracelet", Carey can follow in the footsteps of many a diva past and present and coast on her past accomplishments.
Sales of her most recent effort, last year's "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel", have been respectable given the lackluster state of affairs in the record selling biz in the last few years. Yet it's still fallen short of expectations given her past track record. The first single from the set, "Obsessed", was a success, but subsequent offerings, including her cover of Foreigner's schmaltz-pop ballad "I Want to Know What Love Is", fell off the radar seemingly as soon as it first blipped.
Given this, along with her forthcoming two decade anniversary as a pop culture entity and the scheduled release of a "Memoirs" remix set in the next two months, it's easy to see Carey following in the footsteps of fellow '90s pop powerhouse Celine Dion and Elton John, moving her operations to Las Vegas for a year-plus stand.
Surprisingly, though, Carey's greatest triumph in the last few years was on the big screen in a supporting role in 2009's critically acclaimed "Precious". While it's not enough for us here at Tunes and Tix to cease mocking what we see as her multi-octave shrill or stop testing our gag reflex by seeing how many minutes of "Glitter" we can endure before scrambling for the remote, it's a promising direction. That's something many a veteran diva would give an octave for at this particular stage.
At press time, limited tickets were available for Carey's February 13 and 14 shows at Chicago Theatre. (NWI)
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