Divas to go
The golden age of R&B is over, that much is clear. Just don't go blaming the regal figure the much maligned Mariah Carey. As music lovers struggle to come to terms with the end of R&B's turn of the century belle époque, the search for scapegoats intensifies. From Missy Elliott's terrible Gap ad, to Pharrell Williams's embarrassing relationship with Jade Jagger, a lot of people who once seemed infallible have let us down badly over the past couple of years. But the one person no one should point the finger at is Mariah Carey.
Carey's excellent current album turns the clock back to the halcyon days of laser-guided digital slink. And critics who harped on about Mariah's newfound resemblance to Beyoncé were putting the cart before the horse. When it comes to big hair and a big voice, it's Carey who wrote the hymnbook that everyone else is singing from.
As befits a woman who got her name from Lerner and Loewe's Broadway standard "They call the wind Mariah", Carey is a scientifically authenticated force of nature. Not only has her spectacular upper register been the single dominant influence on the Pop Idol school of unfettered vocal histrionics, but the 1995 Ol'Dirty Bastard mix of "Fantasy" was also the rosetta stone of the hip hop/diva crossover.
In calling her comeback album The Emancipation Of Mimi - "a nickname only used by those closest to her", apparently - Mariah has tapped into another vital lineage. The honourroll of female superstar alter-egos stretches from Janet Jackson's 2004 album Damita Jo (Janet's middle name), through the fun-loving, J-Lo, to Madonna's inner S&M trollop Dita, with her 1992 mantra "Only the one that hurts you/Can make you feel better". And until we hear from Beyoncé's own backup persona (a tempestuous "inner diva" called Sasha), well, as one amateur reviewer of Mariah's album on Amazon.com put it recently , the idea that the most successful female recording artist in history needs to imitate the Destiny's Child frontwoman is "just laughable ... People, please." (The Observer)
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