Mariah Carey gets Through The Rain
Mariah Carey may have been looking for good luck when she titled her most recent album "Charmbracelet". The album, released late last year, was her first musical offering after her public fall from grace. Carey went from one of - if not the - hottest properties in pop music to the subject of speculation that her career as over.
Carey began 2001 by signing a Virgin Records contract worth a reported $80 million. By the end of the year, her erratic public behavior resulted in her hospitalization for "exhaustion", according to published reports. Her film "Glitter" and its soundtrack album both bombed, with the movie becoming the most talked about bad picture since "Showgirls".
Virgin Records washed its hands of her, buying out her contract for $28 million. But Carey wasn't out of the running by any means. Island Def Jam signed her for $20 million in 2002 and she presented them with "Charmbracelet" by year's end. Perhaps even more heartening, after the "Glitter" debacle, were the good notices Carey got for a co-starring role in the independent film "Wisegirls".
"I was happy to be part of it," Carey says of "Wisegirls", on the telephone from Tokyo just after a concert there. She says it was great to do "something for the art and freedom of it instead of what you think are the right reasons." That would seem to be a reference to "Glitter", as overblown a star vehicle as anyone could imagine.
Carey seems to be happy scaling back a bit these days. Her current tour, for example, originally was planned for arenas. Instead, the arenas were swapped for theaters and a tour billed as "An Intimate Evening". "It's like someone doing a show in your living room," Carey says. "It's kind of like cabaret meets an Unplugged vibe. It's a fairly big production but very intimate."
Also, after years of increasing hip-hop influence in her music, "Charmbracelet" focuses on the ballads with which Carey established herself as a hit-maker in the early 1990s. "It takes you back to the first album," Carey says of similarities between "Charmbracelet" and her eponymous 1990 debut. "My Saving Grace [from Charmbracelet] has a vibe like Vision of Love," her first hit single, Carey says.
"There are still songs with a strong hip-hop influence," she insists, citing rapper Jay-Z's appearance on "You Got Me". "There are different things, but the focus is the ballads." Of course, the ballads ring a little more true to her now. "I've been through a lot since then," she understates.
Carey blames 2001's meltdown on "overload", making a movie and album at the same time, as well as micromanaging her career. Nowadays, Carey says, "I have to take care of myself, be selfish even. I'm a caretaker and I can neglect myself. I'm a caretaker for my career and I think I have to work five times as hard as everybody else. That's when you get yourself in trouble and make bad decisions."
"But I learned from it," Carey concludes, "and I'm grateful for what I've gone through and the lessons I've learned." (TBO)
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