After some tough times, Carey gets it "Together"
Mariah Carey has the No. 1 single in the country. Ten years ago, this wouldn't have been big news, now it's nothing short of a miracle. "We Belong Together" has been Billboard's top single for a staggering 12 weeks, making it not only one of Carey's biggest hits, but the biggest song - so far - of the year. And it's all the more remarkable since Carey's career was supposed to be over. After spending the 1990s becoming one of the best-selling female artists in pop music history, Carey, it seemed, couldn't do anything right by the start of the 21st century. Her once-unstoppable career became a punchline as she suffered professional and personal misfires.
Hence, few expected Carey to return to chart-topping form when her latest CD, "The Emancipation of Mimi", was released in April. Yet, not only did Carey's album, her first studio effort in three years, drop-kick 50 Cent's "The Massacre" out of the top spot, it garnered the best first week sales - 404,000 - of Carey's career.
Not many performers achieve landmarks so deep into their careers. Carey, what with all her issues and antics, certainly seemed an unlikely candidate. Still, she did what few entertainers do when their careers are flailing - she returned to what made her a star.
Certainly, it's helped that she's had the guiding hand of her label chief, Island Def Jam's Antonio "LA" Reid. An established hitmaker, Reid has worked with artists from Usher to Pink, and understands how to polish his singers to their commercial best. "We Belong Together" is a classic Carey ballad: slickly produced, a little overwrought, but sung to pieces. Whatever problems Carey has endured, her voice has remained pure, a stunning instrument which has often been better than her chosen material.
Her new album also steps away from the adult contemporary pretensions of 2002's inert "Charmbracelet". She's back to hip-hop influenced R&B, and the collaborations here with Snoop Dogg and the Neptunes don't sound forced since Carey has been doing this sort of thing for a decade.
True, she hasn't dropped her tendency to vamp it up too much in her videos, as if she still feels the need to compete with the Beyonces and Ameries of the world. But Carey can easily out-sing them all. She doesn't need to wear thigh-high skirts (although she does) or strike seductive poses in a rose-petal adorned bathtub (although she does that, too), when that voice is really all she needs.
It's a big turnaround from a slide that began with "Glitter" in 2001. A loosely autobiographical debacle that marked - like a dog marks its territory - Carey's big-screen debut. Suffice it to say that as an actress, she's a wonderful singer. Then again, this film was so lousy in every possible way, even the most seasoned thespian couldn't have made the whole mess watchable. Even Carey's most rabid fans stayed far, far away.
Consequently, the accompanying soundtrack didn't do much better, but by then more people were paying attention to Carey's public unraveling. She made a wacky appearance on MTV's "Total Request Live", and not long after there came reports that she'd been hospitalized for the oft-cited "exhaustion".
A year later, Carey's label, Virgin Records, which had giddily signed the singer to an $80 million contract, became so desperate to dump her and her flagging sales, they gave her a $28 million buyout. For all intents and purposes, Carey was regarded as damaged goods, her career adrift. Oh, she would still sell records, but many believed she was well past her peak.
Even as the singer was trying to sort it out, contemporary R&B was being overrun by younger women who certainly didn't have Carey's voice, but were equipped with the kind of video-primed looks that can just as reliably launch a career.
But there's nothing like a hit record to chase those blues - and poseurs - away. Perhaps finally understanding that she has nothing left to prove, she was free to make the right album at the right time. Even if you aren't a Carey fan, there's something reassuring about a 35-year-old singer experiencing a career resurrection at a time when women too young to drink are dominating modern R&B.
Adding to what's already been a spectacular year, Carey will vie for best female video for "We Belong Together" at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards, and expect her album and single to get major attention when the Grammy nominations are announced later this year. Her latest single, "Shake It Off" is already in the top 10, while "Mimi" remains near the top of the Billboard 200 album chart.
This from a singer who was all but declared professionally dead. Instead, Carey is having the last laugh, with a hot album and a hot single as a diva risen from the ashes. Somewhere out there, Whitney Houston had better be taking notes. (The Boston Globe)
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