Mariah Carey is a diva in the best sense: demanding the world while maintaining a down-to-earth sense of humour and quite possibly a sense of her own ridiculousness. “I don’t know time,” she claimed recently, rejecting the indefinite progress of existence that most of us have to accept as an unavoidable reality. That goes even further than her evisceration of her arch rival Jennifer Lopez, of whom she once claimed: “I don’t know her.” She’s also capable of searing emotion and joyful melody, the latter captured for all eternity on the Yuletide classic All I Want for Christmas Is You. Neither, sadly, are on display on her first album in seven years.
What she does put on display is her own megawatt self. “I don’t care about much if it ain’t about me. Let the money talk first, conversations ain’t free,” she announces on Mi. “Yes, I like my back rubbed in a hot tub,” she continues. She’s nothing if not honest.
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Here for It All bangs home the message that Carey is a proper celebrity in the old-fashioned sense, before anyone with an Instagram account could have a crack at fame. After declaring that she’s strutted into view in Balenciaga and Fendi over the sassy funk of Type Dangerous, she commands: “I need my space when I’m signing autographs and stuff.” From there she confesses to a weakness for bad boys, even if they turn out to be massive losers: a computer nerd she catches stalking girls online; a construction worker dealing drugs on the side. If someone hasn’t already written a PhD on making sense of Carey’s world view, they should soon.
If only the music was as interesting as the person. Carey’s five-octave range is as impressive as ever, particularly on Nothing Is Impossible, an epic about dreaming a greater dream, fighting a greater fight and generally being more fabulous than the rest. The title track is an ode to undying love that finds her ending up in the throes of religious fervour, while a rendition of My Love, Paul McCartney’s sentimental ode to Linda from his Wings days, is given the full treacle treatment.
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Elsewhere it’s an excess of synthetic beats, syrupy R&B and the odd Seventies disco moment, on an album that sounds rather dated while also throwing in a few modern production techniques for good measure. Perhaps, though, the music is of secondary importance to the return of Carey as the diva to end all divas. To paraphrase Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, Carey will always be big. It’s the music industry that got small. (Gamma)
★★☆☆☆