Mariah Carey hits the road for rare tour
We all know superstar songbird Mariah Carey for her piercing falsetto, a staggering list of chart-topping hits so lengthy that she released a CD titled "#1's", and the recent smash "I Know What You Want" with Busta Rhymes. We also know her for a sexpot fashion sense, a punch line known as "Glitter", a suspected nervous breakdown and a record-label buyout of her contract.
What most of us don't know about the pop diva is what she's like in concert. Though Carey has excelled when it comes to making and breaking records, she's no road warrior. Carey's embarked on major tours once or twice, but she's largely stuck to major markets, and her itinerary has never included St. Louis. All that's about to change with a scheduled appearance Friday at the Fox.
Explaining her reasons for not touring heavily, Carey says, "It's all about having the time in between shows to rest your voice. It's a rough thing if you don't take care of it. It's rigorous being on stage. So touring isn't the most practical thing for me to do. But with an album that's as personal to me as this one (her latest, Charmbracelet), like it was with Butterfly, it's time to do a tour. I do enjoy touring."
The most successful singer of the '90s in terms of hits, Carey is also happy do some talking. Just don't ask her about slipping record sales for "Charmbracelet", radio's loss of love for her sound or Virgin Records' cutting her loose after signing her to a history-making deal. While you're at it, don't ask about any possible feuds with Eminem or J. Lo.
Carey's publicist makes certain that the singer's five-minute interviews with news outlets - conducted while she was on tour in Japan recently - were strictly limited to her first-ever theater tour - dubbed such after it was scaled down from arenas.
Last year's "Charmbracelet" includes "Through the Rain", a classic-sounding Carey pop ballad, and "Boy (I Need You)", a hip-hop-flavored cut with rapper Cam'ron. It is the album that got Carey back out on the road because, she says, "I went through a lot of things while making the album."
To say the least. "Charmbracelet", which has sold more than a million copies, is the first CD from Carey after her career nadir, which included the failure of the "Glitter" CD and movie, and her abrupt exit from Virgin Records, which severed its contract in a severe example of damage control.
"There were so many personal situations I was involved in," she says. "So this is an album I'm very proud of. I wanted to go out and express some of those emotions I'm feeling to my fans." She says she'll perform about four songs from "Charmbracelet", though the show will include as many of her greatest hits as she can squeeze in. Carey obviously has an unlimited supply of material.
Carey created an immediate splash with her debut, 1990's "Mariah Carey", which was so successful that it could serve as a greatest-hits CD with smashes such as "Vision of Love", "I Don't Wanna Cry", "Someday" and "Love Takes Time". Carey followed her breakthrough with a string of records that some say stressed quantity over quality, but that didn't stop CDs like 1991's "Emotions" and 1993's "Music Box" from reaching the top.
Carey proved to be the only singer at the time who could give Whitney Houston a run for her money, and her restraint-free vocals served as a blueprint for Christina Aguilera and a number of "American Idol" wannabes. By the mid-'90s, her music took a different direction, and she relied heavily on dance-music remixers and rappers. She has recorded with P. Diddy, Ludacris, Mystikal, Jermaine Dupri, Da Brat and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, to mixed result. By the time she got to "Glitter" in 2001, however, she'd completely overdosed on the hip-hop format.
In concert, Carey says she makes sure to include material from each album, with songs such as "Hero", "Fantasy", "Heartbreaker" and "I Know What You Want" among the can't-do-without choices. Obviously, some songs won't make the cut, though it'd be a shame if "Make It Happen", "Breakdown" or "I Still Believe" were among them. On the other hand, save for "Loverboy", Carey might be advised to avoid the "Glitter" CD.
Carey is allowing fans to help her decide which songs to perform through her official fan club, Honey B. Fly, accessible at her Web site, www.mariahcareyfanclub.com. "I wanted the fans to pick what they wanted to hear, and I was surprised by some of the songs," she says.
For example, Carey didn't expect fans to request such "Charmbracelet" album cuts as "Subtle Invitation" and "Clown". "I think the diehard fans really got into this," she says. "They enjoy being a part of it."
Early buzz on the tour wasn't good after her shows suddenly went from arenas to theaters, and Ashanti dropped off the bill. But Carey says downsizing the tour was a good decision. "Otherwise, I have a tendency to micromanage everything," she says, "and that can be a problem, especially when you're trying to enjoy yourself as well. I didn't want to have to think about the pyro stuff or the sound system. And it was the right thing to have an intimate setting. Fans would be very disappointed if they didn't get a chance to feel what's on stage. It's all about communicating with an audience." (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
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