Why is this woman smiling?
One year ago Mariah Carey was suffering the most humiliating public meltdown in showbiz history: babbling TV appearances, a laughingstock movie, an ugly tryst with Eminem and - the topper - "an emotional and physical breakdown". But look at her now: A new album, a bottle of Pinot Grigio and a tell-all session with Blender seems to have worked wonders. "I just want to have fun!" she giggles. To be truthful, Blender is both disappointed and delighted by Carey's apparent normality. Disappointed because we had half-hoped she would arrive with a selection of fluffy animals and an attitude (great copy!); delighted because Carey is perfectly capable of stringing a coherent sentence together. Anyone who had witnessed her spaced-out performance on MTV Cribs last year - showing off her walk-in closets like a louche, lonely, Valium-conked housewife - would have wondered if there was anything at all behind those sparkling eyes.
Two thousand one was the year Mariah Carey fell - splat! - from her pedestal. Throughout the previous decade, she had appeared unassailable - a superstar from the moment she burst onto the charts in 1990, just 20 years old, with the self-penned "Vision of Love". Her debut album, Mariah Carey, sold 9 million copies, producing four number 1 hits. In the next 10 years, she sold a staggering 150 million records overall, posting more chart-toppers than anyone except the Beatles and Elvis Presley. These days, her five-octave voice is as familiar as your mother's, and her flouncy vocal style is much-copied, not least by just about every female contestant on American Idol.
Initially, cynics attributed Carey's world-beating success to her then-husband, hugely powerful Sony Music boss Tommy Mottola, whom she married in 1993. Mottola, 20 years her senior, certainly had an excessively guiding - some would say controlling - hand in his young wife's life, down to making her swap her tiny tops for less revealing outfits. But when they parted, in 1997, Carey rode the split apparently without effort: releasing Butterfly, following that with 1999's Rainbow and squaring up her contract with the best-of collection #1's. She dated both New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter and Latin American pop hunk Luis Miguel.
In 2001, she left Sony, with great fanfare, for Virgin, which signed her to a four-album deal worth $80 million, the most lucrative in history. Her first LP was set to be Glitter, the soundtrack to the '80s-style movie of the same name, which would showcase her acting in a story based on her life. But during that summer, before either the movie or the CD was released, Carey began to unravel. She split from her "too serious" relationship with Miguel. She acted strangely on TV, most memorably MTV's Total Request Live, on which she prevented host Carson Daly from going to a commercial break and delivered a weird monologue about ice cream. At other times she announced that she was invisible and that Marilyn Monroe was speaking to her through her piano. She left strange, sad messages on her Web site: "What I'd like to do is take a little break or just get one night of sleep without someone popping up about a video or something."
Headlines blazed: She had trashed her room in New York's Tribeca Grand Hotel; she had been taken into North Western Hospital in Westchester County, New York, with bandaged arms; she had gone out for a burger dressed as Wonder Woman; she had checked into rehab twice, in Connecticut and Los Angeles. Suddenly, it was hard to find a report on Carey in which the word troubled didn't precede her name. Events raced to a nightmare close. Glitter, the film, was a flop, costing $22 million and making just $5 million. Glitter, the LP, hit stores on the worst day ever to release anything: September 11, 2001. Though it finally went platinum, it was widely regarded as a failure, and in January 2002, Virgin bought out her contract for $28 million - in addition to the $21 million she had already been paid. Financially, she was riding high, but creatively and emotionally, Carey appeared to have drained her account.
In May 2002, she signed, quietly, with Island Def Jam, which gave her a $20 million, four-album deal and her own label. Charmbracelet is the result, recorded over six months in Capri, the Bahamas and the U.S. "It's called Charmbracelet because charms are like pieces of yourself that you pass on to other people, like a song," she explains. The album is a return to Carey's earliest, friendliest incarnation. There's nothing here to scare her long-term fans: a couple of ballads, including the single "Through the Rain"; two cute, almost-urban tracks featuring Jay-Z and Cam'ron; a Latin-ish track; a gospelly one. Carey has returned to favored producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Randy Jackson and Jermaine Dupri. The subject matter is love, mostly: love failed, love wanted, love of God.
One track, "Clown", stands out, as it appears to be about Eminem - whom Carey was rumored to have dated last year - with lyrics like "I should have left it at/ I like your music too" and "You should have never said that we were lovers/ You know we never even touched each other." It also refers to "Superman", one of the tracks on The Eminem Show that mentions Carey (the other is "When the Music Stops"). Neither is a love song, to say the least. ("Superman" disses every woman who has ever come into Mr. Mathers's life and includes the line "Am I too nice? Buy you ice Bitch if you died/ Wouldn't buy you life/ What you tryin' to be, my new wife? What you Mariah?")
But when Blender presumes that "Clown" is about Detroit's mouthiest, Carey laughs. "No, we can't presume that," she says. "With all the clowns I've come across in my life, how the hell could we narrow it down to one?" He was rude about you, though. "For him, I don't think he was that rude. For him, that was mild." Carey shrugs and tosses her hair. Subject closed - but only for the moment, as we'll see. We move on to the events of 2001. Though at one point she sighs - "This is so last year" - Carey has clearly made the decision to tell her side, to try to clear things up. She launches into an explanation that lasts the better part of an hour. Settle back for the story of a butterfly life. (Bender) Many thanks to Mariah Mania.
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