There are things you are meant to outgrow, like stabilisers on your bicycle and pull-up nappies. Girls are encouraged to discard "girlish" things. But here's the thing: rainbows still make me coo with delight, and butterflies fill my heart with joy. So perhaps it's understandable that I still love Mariah Carey. She loves those things, too, even though she's supposed to have outgrown them.
Carey, 46, occupies at least one chamber of my heart, the one marked "Power 90s Pop". I don't have to tell you her record-breaking activities: there'd be no room left to talk about anything else. I first saw and heard her on Vision Of Love when I was about nine. (Go listen to it now: it's still untouchable.) Her voice is singular - besides its octave-spanning qualities, it's filled with a sort of holy joy. When she gets that melisma (runs and riffs) going (long before X Factor contestants mangled her songs beyond recognition), I get actual chills. Seek out the "best of" Melismata videos on YouTube, and you'll see what I mean. But even her downer songs are miraculous-sounding (evidence: We Belong Together was made to belt out, hysterically laugh-crying in the shower, post-breakup). I can't pick a favourite. I love them all.
More than the voice, though, is the Mariah brand: golden, sun-kissed and always lots of pink and sparkles (despite two failed marriages, a box office bomb in Glitter, among other struggles). She loves diamonds and puppies (it's no coincidence her fans are called "lambs") and makes no apologies for it. She is true to herself (she writes many of her songs) and, in a transient world, that's reassuring: Mariah endures.
Now in a Vegas residency, she's an unlikely patron saint of glamorous fortitude. Saint Mariah. One day.
(The Guardian)
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