Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Those weaned on Mariah Carey should feel emancipated by her return to form -- and her escape from Whitney's sad fate.
May 12, 2005 | Before I moved to New York City in 1997 and gave up my car, I was one of those people who cherished commercial radio. My high school years were spent chauffeuring friends around in my Chevy Blazer, compulsively changing the dial between Baltimore's pop station B104 and Washington's unmatched alternative channel, 99.1 WHFS. In college, even as DJs were formatted out of existence, I tuned in to the Albany rock channels in that same trusty truck whenever our campus station got too earnest or obscure (which was often). I was always a sucker for the hits -- my last year with the radio left me indelibly marked by the Wallflowers' "One Headlight" and Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" -- even as I mail-ordered records from Teenbeat, Simple Machines and other tiny labels. To my friends I was a walking contradiction, a devotee to manufactured pop and indie rock in equal measure. And, to quote Whitney Houston, they didn't even know about my greatest love of all: Mariah Carey.
I haven't stayed in great touch with Mariah -- like I said, I pretty much stopped listening to commercial radio eight years ago -- but the memory of her from the early '90s has haunted the entire decade that has made up my 20s. As a teenager I spent countless afternoons after school, alone in my parents' living room, belting out "Vision of Love" as the video played on VH1. (As a little, little girl riding in the "way-back" of my parents' station wagon, I dreamt of being discovered by a radio executive because I knew every word to every song in the top 10 of Casey Kasem's weekly top 40. As a 16-year-old with a decent voice, I subconsciously believed that hollering along to "Vision of Love" was going to get me somewhere -- if not a record contract, then a boyfriend enchanted by my somewhat agile voice.) "Someday," Mariah's incredibly upbeat revenge hit that played on B104 at least once every hour of my junior year of high school, summed up my teenage angst and anger better than any Cure song could. And "Love Takes Time" -- has any breakup ballad ever put it better?
Around then, my true loves were probably Jane's Addiction, New Order and the Beastie Boys' "Check Your Head." But Mariah, she got to me. "But the catsuit!" exclaims a friend, recalling her outfit in the "Vision of Love" video. OK, sure. But compared with other manufactured divas of that era, Mariah was the real deal. She wrote her own songs! She could really, really sing!
For most of the late '90s, I watched from afar as Mariah coasted along, putting out more and more ballads and, eventually, a collection of greatest hits. Her outfits got worse and worse but, I must admit, I loved seeing her defiantly busting out of her clothes all the time on billboards around downtown. (Mariah is no Kate Moss.) However, when she suffered a very public breakdown in 2001, following her disastrous screen debut in "Glitter" and the tanking of the film's '80s-throwback soundtrack, I quickly snapped to, and rushed back to her side.
The press (and most of the public, it seemed) didn't have much sympathy for Mariah. I understood why. The year before, she had signed a record-setting $80 million, five-year contract with Virgin records. (The deal was later dissolved.) She had been the bestselling female performer of the 1990s, with 13 No.1 singles and more weeks spent at the top of the Hot 100 singles chart than any other artist in history. She was famous and beautiful; she was, obviously, rich; she dated Yankees shortstop cutie Derek Jeter. It was easy to think that 2001 had brought Mariah's day of reckoning: a 10-year run was enough; it was her turn to crash and burn and fade. Months later, when she finally spoke about the breakdown, she attributed her bizarre behavior -- performing an impromptu striptease on MTV, writing rambling, suicidal messages on her Web site -- to exhaustion. But it was fair to wonder, as many people did: Can someone as wealthy and successful as Mariah Carey really be more exhausted than your average fan?
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