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I'm gonna confess it right now, and
thus lose all of my credibility with both of the people who
regularly read my reviews (and probably get into a little
trouble, since one of those people is my wife): I'm a mark for
Mariah Car-, er, Mariah, I guess we're supposed to call her
now.Yeah, I know. She's apparently a royal pain; she's been
instrumental in breaking up at least one marriage (and when my
wife reads this, maybe two); and I'm firmly convinced that her
recent breakdown was precipitated by her breakup with her
boyfriend (which, in turn, was no doubt precipitated by his
discovery that her internal charms are not gold-plated). I
however, judge her from a shallow male perspective. She's got a
smokin' body, and, except for when she does that high
contralto-alto thing that sounds like the sonic weapon some
countries' police departments use to leave rioters writhing on
the ground peeing their pants, some of her songs are really
catchy, as long as you're listening in the car with the windows
rolled up so nobody knows it.
And the videos? An absolute feast
for the eye, especially the ones where she wrestles. So it
wasn't that hard to be objective when I slipped GLITTER into the
player and settled back for an hour or so of r & r with me,
Mariah, and her CD booklet. But GLITTER, I soon discovered, has
some major problems. The biggest one is that this Titanic is
overloaded on the top deck with guest artists.
The function of a guest on a
track is to enhance the main player. Here, they hold Mariah's
gorgeous head underwater and let her surface only occasionally.
The effect, all too often ("I Didn't Mean To Turn You
On," "Don't Stop (Funkin' 4 Jamaica)," "Last
Night a DJ Saved My Life," "Want You") is that
Mariah becomes a guest on her own CD. This is how Dennis Wilson
must have felt when he came home one day and discovered that
this guy named Charles Manson he had met at a party was all
moved in.
A close second is that there are
enough chefs in the mix here to produce six CDs. Read the fine
print. You've got production by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and
Mariah Carey, on some tracks, and Rick James and Mariah Carey on
another, and Clark Kent on a couple and some djs on a couple of
others. You've got one guy recording the instrumental track,
someone else recording Mariah's vocals, and on some tracks
someone else doing "additional recording." I know, I
know, a lot of CDs these days are recorded in two or three
places, vocals, in one place, backing tracks in another, and
everything massaged together in a third, but...we're not talking
Pink Floyd here. I've seen 14 year olds wandering around the
Treme in New Orleans with keyboards taller than they are who
could probably get the same sound.
The result of this hodgepodge is
that Mariah gets lost in the mix. This CD could have been by
anybody, because you hear everybody. Except for Mariah. It
almost sounds as if it was recorded without her, with some stray
vocals and that "Ayaiyaiyaiy" thing she does blended
in as an afterthought.
There are a trio of exceptions.
All of them are ballads. "Never Too Far" sounds as if
it were recorded, for the most part, while the producers of the
day were out for coffee, but the result is that Mariah sounds
like Whitney Houston before the straw got lodged up Mrs. Brown's
nasal cavity. "Twister" is also a spare gem, a ballad
of sorrow about a friend who has gone ahead.
"Lead the Way" actually
has the potential to be a classic, one of those staples of the
lite rock stations that will still be requested, and played, ten
years from now. Mariah is Mariah on this track; the production
is spare, almost quiet, behind her, as she slowly shows off the
range of vocal talents. It is perhaps the CD's best track,
one of a few occasional roses in a garden of irritating, if not
painful, thorns.
It's said that there are four
points in the arc of a performer's career. The first one is:
Who's _______?" The second, "Get me
___________,"; the third, Get me someone like
____________"; and the fourth is: "Who's
_____________?" Mariah is arguably at Point No 2; whether
she is headed on a downward spiral toward Point No. 3 will hinge
on whether she is able to get her life in order, and whether she
records any more CDs like GLITTER.
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| Artist |
Mariah Carey |
| Title |
Glitter |
| Label |
Virgin
Records |
| Reviewer |
Joe Hartlaub |
| Rating |
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| win stuff |
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