Guess
Dec 12th, 2005, 10:21 AM
Mariah Carey Requests The Company of Sylvia Patterson To Celebrate The Amazing Success of The Emancipation Of Mimi And A Record Breaking 2005." So bulged last week's silver-embossed invitation, biked at sizeable expense by the PR company which "looks after" the biggest-selling female recording artist in phonographic history. Just in case you thought painting the tiles in the bathroom was a more satisfying option come the afternoon in question, a subsequent call arrived from her excitable PR.
Darling!" she serenaded, being Mariah Carey's PR, "there will be a special surprise just for you. Mariah personally wants to thank you … so you must turn up!" The tiles could probably wait. Somewhere across London, personnel from radio and television were also polishing their party shoes, the lure of the "special surprise just for you" too much to resist, because no matter the years at the showbiz coalface, no matter the cynic within who will be astounded if the preposterous yodeller even turns up, she just might present us with a cheque for £10,000 each for reinstating, in our ways – through favourable interviews, relentless radio and MTV "exclusives" – her hitherto faltering position as the world’s No. 1 R&B lungsmith.
And if the £10,000 isn't forthcoming, a free glass, surely, of the world's most expensively bubbly bubbly. As Mariah's PR fully understands, when it comes to shallow flattery, there's none more susceptible than the tarts of the fickle media. Loitering inside a small, chandeliered room in Home House, a swish Mayfair drinkerie also favoured by Madonna, there were 30 members of the media – some of whom, gratifyingly, were worse than me. The editor of Glamour magazine was sufficiently moved to leave her baby at home in the afternoon, for the first time since her birth five months previously.
"I couldn’t resist it!" she chirped, while the man from Q magazine was considerably worse than her. "I turned up half an hour early," he frothed, "because I've been told myself and Mariah are going to have a drink. Together! Just me and her!" Several free glasses of bubbliest bubbly were duly quaffed as Mariah became 90 minutes late "on her way from Claridges."
There was a man here who appeared to have a coat hanger still in his jumper. On closer inspection, he had a wooden arm, an exquisitely carved wooden hand dangling below his sleeve. He was, it turned out, a DJ called Semtex who DJs with his nose. Knowing such a man existed made the afternoon worth it already.
Suddenly, with the flourish of a fluorescent pink diamante microphone, Mariah Carey arrived – teetering into the room, all buoyant bosoms and exploding cheeks – pulled the rip-cord on the wall behind her and unveiled our "special surprise just for you." Gold discs!? But no … they were double platinum discs! The kind you only ever see in shady Big Wig offices and Barry Manilow's shed. One each, featuring a wind-blown vision of the golden transvestite herself, with our individual names on, "to recognise sales in the United Kingdom in excess of 600,000 copies" which by Mariah's standards – 160 million albums sold in 15 years – is something of a toddler’s handful. Still, one by one, we were called. "Thank you so much…" she cooed, as our discs were presented, and you marvelled at how this sort of thing just does not happen when you talk to the blokes from the Kaiser Chiefs. And then we bolted for the bar, clutching our swag like kids on Christmas morning knowing this had never happened before and will surely never happen again, knowing – like showbiz itself – it means both absolutely nothing and everything which makes life hysterically, stupidly, worth living.
She's going, of course, on to the bathroom wall, the only fitting place for the patron saint of yodelling in a tiled environment, a woman about whom, until this year, I have written some of the most disparaging remarks ever mustered in the public domain, seeing as she used to be – the most insufferably irksome warbler in the history of musical entertainment.
This year, she was deemed by many an agreeable mentalist (and had made a good album), a high-camp, loony-tune cartoon who laughed louder than you did when discussing her chauffeur-driven dog. It’s testament to what Mariah calls "the illusion of showbiz," that you can tell the world she still "sings like a whale" and she’ll present you with a goddam gift.
On our double platinum discs, there's a tiny Union Jack which means Mariah Carey, right now, is somewhere on Earth, in every country in Europe, all over Asia, Australia, Japan and the USA, personally thanking a bunch of strangers she met for a number of seconds (and even more she'd never met) until she has personally thanked someone for every one of this year's seven million albums sold. Bless. Like her life, and her voice, it’s an extravagant madness you can only applaud.
Loitering round her Bel Air homestead this summer – less a house, more The Embassy of Mariah Carey, a glass-fronted, white-stoned, presidential mansion – I’d wondered if she could actually, truly yodel. Proper, Austrian, up-among-the-goatherds yodelling. “I don’t think so,” she decided, but tried for the first time ever.
"Yodel-ay-hee!" she yodelled, beautifully, "yodel-ay-hee-hooo! Yodel-ay-hee-yodel-ay-heee! Is that it!? Yes!" Tragically, this seismic event in musical history happened with the tape-recorder switched off. "No I will not do it on tape," she guffawed, "it'll end up on the friggin' internet!" Curses, there goes the pension … Still, today, there's a glimmeringly gay, wonkily painted bathroom wall which will forever be, as Mariah herself would say, "fabulous, darling."
Source: Sunday Herald (http://www.sundayherald.com/53240)
Darling!" she serenaded, being Mariah Carey's PR, "there will be a special surprise just for you. Mariah personally wants to thank you … so you must turn up!" The tiles could probably wait. Somewhere across London, personnel from radio and television were also polishing their party shoes, the lure of the "special surprise just for you" too much to resist, because no matter the years at the showbiz coalface, no matter the cynic within who will be astounded if the preposterous yodeller even turns up, she just might present us with a cheque for £10,000 each for reinstating, in our ways – through favourable interviews, relentless radio and MTV "exclusives" – her hitherto faltering position as the world’s No. 1 R&B lungsmith.
And if the £10,000 isn't forthcoming, a free glass, surely, of the world's most expensively bubbly bubbly. As Mariah's PR fully understands, when it comes to shallow flattery, there's none more susceptible than the tarts of the fickle media. Loitering inside a small, chandeliered room in Home House, a swish Mayfair drinkerie also favoured by Madonna, there were 30 members of the media – some of whom, gratifyingly, were worse than me. The editor of Glamour magazine was sufficiently moved to leave her baby at home in the afternoon, for the first time since her birth five months previously.
"I couldn’t resist it!" she chirped, while the man from Q magazine was considerably worse than her. "I turned up half an hour early," he frothed, "because I've been told myself and Mariah are going to have a drink. Together! Just me and her!" Several free glasses of bubbliest bubbly were duly quaffed as Mariah became 90 minutes late "on her way from Claridges."
There was a man here who appeared to have a coat hanger still in his jumper. On closer inspection, he had a wooden arm, an exquisitely carved wooden hand dangling below his sleeve. He was, it turned out, a DJ called Semtex who DJs with his nose. Knowing such a man existed made the afternoon worth it already.
Suddenly, with the flourish of a fluorescent pink diamante microphone, Mariah Carey arrived – teetering into the room, all buoyant bosoms and exploding cheeks – pulled the rip-cord on the wall behind her and unveiled our "special surprise just for you." Gold discs!? But no … they were double platinum discs! The kind you only ever see in shady Big Wig offices and Barry Manilow's shed. One each, featuring a wind-blown vision of the golden transvestite herself, with our individual names on, "to recognise sales in the United Kingdom in excess of 600,000 copies" which by Mariah's standards – 160 million albums sold in 15 years – is something of a toddler’s handful. Still, one by one, we were called. "Thank you so much…" she cooed, as our discs were presented, and you marvelled at how this sort of thing just does not happen when you talk to the blokes from the Kaiser Chiefs. And then we bolted for the bar, clutching our swag like kids on Christmas morning knowing this had never happened before and will surely never happen again, knowing – like showbiz itself – it means both absolutely nothing and everything which makes life hysterically, stupidly, worth living.
She's going, of course, on to the bathroom wall, the only fitting place for the patron saint of yodelling in a tiled environment, a woman about whom, until this year, I have written some of the most disparaging remarks ever mustered in the public domain, seeing as she used to be – the most insufferably irksome warbler in the history of musical entertainment.
This year, she was deemed by many an agreeable mentalist (and had made a good album), a high-camp, loony-tune cartoon who laughed louder than you did when discussing her chauffeur-driven dog. It’s testament to what Mariah calls "the illusion of showbiz," that you can tell the world she still "sings like a whale" and she’ll present you with a goddam gift.
On our double platinum discs, there's a tiny Union Jack which means Mariah Carey, right now, is somewhere on Earth, in every country in Europe, all over Asia, Australia, Japan and the USA, personally thanking a bunch of strangers she met for a number of seconds (and even more she'd never met) until she has personally thanked someone for every one of this year's seven million albums sold. Bless. Like her life, and her voice, it’s an extravagant madness you can only applaud.
Loitering round her Bel Air homestead this summer – less a house, more The Embassy of Mariah Carey, a glass-fronted, white-stoned, presidential mansion – I’d wondered if she could actually, truly yodel. Proper, Austrian, up-among-the-goatherds yodelling. “I don’t think so,” she decided, but tried for the first time ever.
"Yodel-ay-hee!" she yodelled, beautifully, "yodel-ay-hee-hooo! Yodel-ay-hee-yodel-ay-heee! Is that it!? Yes!" Tragically, this seismic event in musical history happened with the tape-recorder switched off. "No I will not do it on tape," she guffawed, "it'll end up on the friggin' internet!" Curses, there goes the pension … Still, today, there's a glimmeringly gay, wonkily painted bathroom wall which will forever be, as Mariah herself would say, "fabulous, darling."
Source: Sunday Herald (http://www.sundayherald.com/53240)