She went from budding new star to out of touch and over the top star
‘All I Want For Christmas is you’ has become the soundtrack to any trip outside your house come-December. Whether you like it or not, skipping down the aisles of your local Morrisons—doing the ‘Christmas shop’ as your mum calls it—it’s there. Turn on the car radio to go to the tip, it’s there. And like anything that’s been played half a billion times on Spotify, it’s become a twisted monster, rampaging as early as October. Bah humbug to that. The person singing whilst you’re skipping around holding onto the trolly is actually pretty weird.
Mariah Carey has always had an odd public persona. She once admitted that she sleeps 15 hours a day, in a room with 20 humidifiers in to keep her vocal cords in good nick. She also played her live performance of ‘fantasy’ at Madison Square Gardens whilst she was giving birth, “so that they came out to a round of applause.” My personal favourite story, however, is when she forced her part inThe House to be changed so that instead of her character dying, as scripted, she could miraculously deflect bullets. Incredible. Oh, and of course, she’s the face of Walkers crisps.
This ‘oddness’ is even odder when you realise she hasn’t always been odd—that make sense? Before 2001, Mariah Carey seemed fairly normal: she was a passionate, talented singer from New York State, making it big. Then Mariah released Glitter, her acting and soundtrack debut.
After receiving severe critical backlash for the release, she exiled herself. Nobody knows exactly what she got up to during her hiatus but I like to imagine it was as mad as you’d expect it to be—she probably just watched her own live performances on repeat to be fair… Whatever happened one thing is certain. When she did return the fearless artist of yesteryear spiralled into the OTT monster described above.
Along with her skew-whiff logic, Mariah released a string of bizarre album titles. Listen to these:
The Emancipation Of Mimi
E=MC²
Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel
Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse
Who is this person? The Emancipation Of Mimi sounds like a period drama for the old folks on the BBC. E=MC² is ironically too complex for the simplistic music on the record. And, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, well that’s just big-headed. You’re still calling yourself an angel, even if its an imperfect one… The worst by far, however, is Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse. My god, what were you thinking Mariah? What the fuck is a ‘chanteuse’? And why is the whole title punctuated to fuck? It reads like a script of her answering the register in primary school. Christ.
The mysterious disappearance of Mariah Carey in 2002—don’t let Mariah read that, it could be another album name—marks the beginning of a truly bizarre story for Mariah Carey. She came, she saw, she conquered, fucked off, and then came back with a weird bunch of album titles and some strange strange moments.
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