Guess
Oct 13th, 2006, 04:41 PM
In 2001 it seemed like Mariah Carey was finished. Glitter, her semiautobiographical film debut, and its soundtrack were both humiliating flops. But more, her very public breakdown made her the punching bag of late night comics and trashy tabloids the world over.
Five years later, and Carey is back with the best-selling album of 2005, having staged one of the most remarkable comebacks in recent pop history. The Emancipation of Mimi has sold 6 million copies and spawned four hit singles. Just when it seemed like J. Lo and Beyonce were stealing her fire, she's returned with a vengeance.
Fans in Japan will get a chance to see the re-energized star this week when she returns as part of her most elaborate tour yet.
In the late '90s it would've been hard to believe that the mighty diva could fall so hard. Over the course of the decade she went from the shy songbird next-door to the naughty-but-nice queen of the rap-pop scene. The reverberations of her mid-'90s singles featuring previously underground guest emcees and hip-hop producers can still be heard on the radio today.
After her 1998 divorce from Sony Records executive Tommy Motolla, who was 20 years her senior, she was free to pursue her own artistic ambitions. As the new millennium began Mariah Carey was on top of the world. In 2000 she was awarded Billboard's "Artist of the Decade" Award as well as the World Music Award for "Best-Selling Female Artist of the Millennium." The stats showed that the accolades were deserved. Carey had a No. 1 song in every year of the '90s and her cumulative weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart had surpassed the Beatles.
In 2001 she signed an unprecedented deal with Virgin Records for over 80 million dollars, was filming her first movie and it seemed as if the hits would just keep a-coming. But in July of that year some cracks appeared in her facade.
Carey began posting bizarre messages on her Web site, lamenting the breakup with her latest boyfriend, complaining about being manipulated and referring to her fans as "lambs." A handful of rambling public interviews followed, leading many to worry about her wellbeing. At the end of the month she made an infamous, surprise appearance on MTV's TRL program. Clad in high-heels and a T-shirt, she handed out popsicles to the audience, performed a mock striptease and babbled incoherently for eight minutes. A week later she checked into a hospital in Connecticut suffering from exhaustion.
That autumn Glitter and its soundtrack were released. The album was her lowest charting yet and the film was a disaster. Her acting was painful and the tunes unimaginative. While some might argue that the release date on Sept. 11 hampered the success of both film and album, others view the lack of media attention as a small mercy. Either way, the result was the same: Virgin paid Carey 28 million dollars just to part ways.
Who at this point would have predicted the huge success of Emancipation of Mimi? Not only is it her biggest disc in a decade, but it seems to have erased all memories of her recent missteps. She has cast aside producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and what was an increasingly MOR adult-orientated feel in favor of a harder more contemporary edge as embodied by Jermaine Dupri, the Neptunes, Kanye West and James Poyser, all of whom participated as producers on Emancipation. While there's nothing as groundbreaking as "Fantasy" (her 1995 collaboration with Puff Daddy and Ol' Dirty Bastard) there are enough ghetto-fabulous cuts on the release to give her street-cred at 36.
The talk of an emancipation of "Mimi"--a reference to a childhood nickname--seems ironic, though, considering that the album is a return to the hip-hop flavored approach she first used on Daydream. Then there's the airbrushed album cover that looks eerily like Beyonce...
Nonetheless, Carey still possesses one of the most distinctive voices in the annals of popular music. Her dog whistle trills and over-the-top vocal gymnastics have launched hordes of imitators and perhaps it's simply the fear of losing this characteristic voice that inspired fans to go out and buy Emancipation. The ballads on the album find her in top form again. The gospel-tinged "Fly Like A Bird" is especially moving.
And whether Emancipation represents a new beginning or a final blaze of glory, Carey, the top diva of the '90s, seems to have finally come to terms with herself, as she claims on a recent posting on her Web site.
"I am letting my guard down and am celebrating the fact that I've grown into a person and artist who no longer feels imprisoned by insecurities. I can honestly say, 'This is me, the real me, take it or leave it.'"
Mariah Carey will perform Oct. 16, 7 p.m. at Nipponbudokan in Kudana, Tokyo, (03) 3475-9999; Oct. 18, 7 p.m. at Rainbow Hall in Nagoya, (052) 241-8118; Oct. 20-21 at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, (03) 3475-9999; Oct. 24-25, 7 p.m. at Osaka-jo Hall in Osaka, (06) 6362-7301.
Source: The Daily Yomiuri (http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/arts/20061014TDY16001.htm)
Five years later, and Carey is back with the best-selling album of 2005, having staged one of the most remarkable comebacks in recent pop history. The Emancipation of Mimi has sold 6 million copies and spawned four hit singles. Just when it seemed like J. Lo and Beyonce were stealing her fire, she's returned with a vengeance.
Fans in Japan will get a chance to see the re-energized star this week when she returns as part of her most elaborate tour yet.
In the late '90s it would've been hard to believe that the mighty diva could fall so hard. Over the course of the decade she went from the shy songbird next-door to the naughty-but-nice queen of the rap-pop scene. The reverberations of her mid-'90s singles featuring previously underground guest emcees and hip-hop producers can still be heard on the radio today.
After her 1998 divorce from Sony Records executive Tommy Motolla, who was 20 years her senior, she was free to pursue her own artistic ambitions. As the new millennium began Mariah Carey was on top of the world. In 2000 she was awarded Billboard's "Artist of the Decade" Award as well as the World Music Award for "Best-Selling Female Artist of the Millennium." The stats showed that the accolades were deserved. Carey had a No. 1 song in every year of the '90s and her cumulative weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart had surpassed the Beatles.
In 2001 she signed an unprecedented deal with Virgin Records for over 80 million dollars, was filming her first movie and it seemed as if the hits would just keep a-coming. But in July of that year some cracks appeared in her facade.
Carey began posting bizarre messages on her Web site, lamenting the breakup with her latest boyfriend, complaining about being manipulated and referring to her fans as "lambs." A handful of rambling public interviews followed, leading many to worry about her wellbeing. At the end of the month she made an infamous, surprise appearance on MTV's TRL program. Clad in high-heels and a T-shirt, she handed out popsicles to the audience, performed a mock striptease and babbled incoherently for eight minutes. A week later she checked into a hospital in Connecticut suffering from exhaustion.
That autumn Glitter and its soundtrack were released. The album was her lowest charting yet and the film was a disaster. Her acting was painful and the tunes unimaginative. While some might argue that the release date on Sept. 11 hampered the success of both film and album, others view the lack of media attention as a small mercy. Either way, the result was the same: Virgin paid Carey 28 million dollars just to part ways.
Who at this point would have predicted the huge success of Emancipation of Mimi? Not only is it her biggest disc in a decade, but it seems to have erased all memories of her recent missteps. She has cast aside producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and what was an increasingly MOR adult-orientated feel in favor of a harder more contemporary edge as embodied by Jermaine Dupri, the Neptunes, Kanye West and James Poyser, all of whom participated as producers on Emancipation. While there's nothing as groundbreaking as "Fantasy" (her 1995 collaboration with Puff Daddy and Ol' Dirty Bastard) there are enough ghetto-fabulous cuts on the release to give her street-cred at 36.
The talk of an emancipation of "Mimi"--a reference to a childhood nickname--seems ironic, though, considering that the album is a return to the hip-hop flavored approach she first used on Daydream. Then there's the airbrushed album cover that looks eerily like Beyonce...
Nonetheless, Carey still possesses one of the most distinctive voices in the annals of popular music. Her dog whistle trills and over-the-top vocal gymnastics have launched hordes of imitators and perhaps it's simply the fear of losing this characteristic voice that inspired fans to go out and buy Emancipation. The ballads on the album find her in top form again. The gospel-tinged "Fly Like A Bird" is especially moving.
And whether Emancipation represents a new beginning or a final blaze of glory, Carey, the top diva of the '90s, seems to have finally come to terms with herself, as she claims on a recent posting on her Web site.
"I am letting my guard down and am celebrating the fact that I've grown into a person and artist who no longer feels imprisoned by insecurities. I can honestly say, 'This is me, the real me, take it or leave it.'"
Mariah Carey will perform Oct. 16, 7 p.m. at Nipponbudokan in Kudana, Tokyo, (03) 3475-9999; Oct. 18, 7 p.m. at Rainbow Hall in Nagoya, (052) 241-8118; Oct. 20-21 at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, (03) 3475-9999; Oct. 24-25, 7 p.m. at Osaka-jo Hall in Osaka, (06) 6362-7301.
Source: The Daily Yomiuri (http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/arts/20061014TDY16001.htm)