| Tuesday 16 September 2003 |
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Carey spectacle is all about Carey
Pop singers with behemoth voices are as common as crabgrass on the pop landscape these days, but Mariah Carey was a trailblazer when it came to making history out of histrionics. The 33-year old Long Island native was about as big a music star as existed in the 1990s, serving up 15 chart-topping singles en route to becoming the best-selling female artist of all time.
She was until recently too big an act to bother with any Connecticut venues, but in the wake of a heavily publicized career derailment that included her disastrous 2001 disc/film "Glitter", she made two stops in the state in the last week. The second one came Friday night at the careerbuilder.com Oakdale in Wallingford, where a nearly full house of devoted fans were thrilled simply to have her in the room, even if the 100-minute show she gave them was overwhelmingly bland.
Carey's current tour was clearly conceived as a spectacle of color and action given the big set pieces and crowd of as many as 20 musicians and dancers who joined her onstage at any given time, but the assembly did not distract from the reality that Carey is little but a voice. As impressive as her high-tone wailing was in the opener "Heartbreaker", it typified her approach as she merely focused on the shaping of lyrics around her voice rather than using her voice to draw meaning from the words it sang.
Carey's multitudinous costumes went to great lengths to bare large quantities of flesh, an exhibitionism strangely out of keeping with her impersonal performing style. Her voice was mammoth, but little more than rangy exercise as she powered the chirpy "Fantasy" while clad in an eye-popping tank top and short shorts, disappointingly more of a feast for the eyes than the ears.
Her set was surfeited with songs about self-empowerment and hanging on in anticipation of better days, such as the blustery, synth-driven "Through the Rain" and the earnest but self-involved "My Saving Grace". When she did change gears, it was to make obtuse negative statements about Eminem in "Clown" or descend from the rafters in a silken swing for the jazz-inflected, lightly torchy "Subtle Invitation".
None of it heated up much, and even her brief appearance in Daisy Dukes and a small percentage of a t-shirt to sing along with a video of Busta Rhymes on "I Know What You Want" was a remarkably bland bit of sex-pottery.
Despite strolling through the audience twice during the show, Carey never seemed connected to it, mishandling a contrived rock moment in the booming Def Leppard cover "Bringin' On the Heartbreak" and coming off as merely calculated when she paced the stage to play to different parts of the room in the upbeat dance closer "Make It Happen".
Curiously, the warmest she seemed for the whole show was when she paused to sing her band's introductions. Apparently unaware it had been had, the audience called her back for an encore that was, like what had preceded it, much less about music or showmanship than Carey's pipes. She pumped out the dramatic "Vision of Love", then reached toward impassioned delivery with her big ballad "Hero". By then it was no surprise what she could do with her voice, but she never did seem to tire of driving that particular message home.
Mariah Carey's show Friday night included the following songs: "Heartbreaker", "Dreamlover", "Through the Rain", "My All", "Clown", "Can't Take That Away", "Honey", "I Know What You Want", "Subtle Invitation", "My Saving Grace", "I'll Be There", "Friend of Mine", "Bringin' On the Heartbreak", "Fantasy", "Always Be My Baby", "Make it Happen", (Encore) "Vision of Love" and "Hero". (CT Now) Many thanks to Mariah-Carey.org.
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