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Review by G. Brown (Denver Post)
Mariah Carey revels in show at Red Rocks
She gives fans vocal fireworks, bump, grind on comeback tour.

Mariah Carey has experienced dreamlike success and painful reality.

At the turn of the millennium, the best-selling female singer of the '90s put her career on the line as never before with a new movie, a new record and a new contract estimated at $100 million.

Unfortunately, her personal anguish - a skittish and strange appearance on MTV's "TRL," and her subsequent hospitalization for an emotional and physical breakdown - made all the news. The frightening meltdown coincided with the disastrous releases of her film "Glitter" and the titular album. She took a nearly $30 million buyout to part with Virgin Records.

Now, Carey has returned in an earnest comeback bid. She visited Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Sunday night.

"I've never performed in Colorado before, but I spend every Christmas in Aspen," the 33-year-old Long Islander said prior to the show, at once candid and coy. "I'm a very festive person, so I love being in the snow for the holidays ... although I don't know how you put up with it all winter!"

Carey admitted that the lack of live appearances in the past might have hurt her. Critics labeled her lightweight and vaguely thought of her as the bubble-gum pop star with the diva voice, controlled by a behind-the-scenes mastermind. (She famously married Sony Music CEO Tommy Mottola in 1993 and famously divorced him in '97.)

"I never used to perform. That was management's choice, but I understood it. I wasn't raised in the 'Mickey Mouse Club.' I started out as a background singer; I wasn't the one out front with all that pizazz. I was standing there flat-footed. It took me a long time to feel confident.

"I look at this tour as 'MTV Unplugged' meets 'Cabaret.' We've got a big production in terms of dancing and the atmosphere, but its not like I'm taking myself too seriously here."

But Carey has felt the effects of a spiritless summer touring market. After booking a tour of 15,000-seat arenas across the U.S., her reps said she would instead play smaller venues to guarantee more "intimate" performances. At Red Rocks, only a reported 3,500 tickets were sold.

Yet it didn't seem to bother Carey. She was excited to be at the famed outdoor amphitheater, and she ingratiated herself to the Denver-area devotees, returning to what she does best, showcasing her stratospheric vocal pyrotechnics.

The sultry singer entered the stage from the middle rows of the Rocks, surrounded by screaming fans while singing the exuberant "Heartbreaker." She then loaded up on hits during the night. With singer Trey Lorenz, she led the audience in a singalong to "I'll Be There," and gamely attempted a little bump-and-grind dance number for "Fantasy."

Carey is asking fans - or "lambs," as she calls them - to help her decide each night's set list via her official website, and the vote at Red Rocks was for "One Sweet Day," her hit with Boyz II Men. The encores were "Vision Of Love" and "Hero."

Carey also performed songs from 2002's "Charmbracelet," her first release for Island. She writhed during the Busta Rhymes parts of "I Know What You Want" and offered an over-the-top cover of Def Leppard's power ballad "Bringin' On the Heartbreak."

It was a lot more fun than, say, a Whitney Houston concert. Too bad the theatrical element of the performance was uneven. "The Marionette Show" vignette was a takeoff on "The Eminem Show," Carey's opportunity for payback after Eminem dissed her on his track "Superman." She sang "Clown" while masked men on stilts tugged a female dancer/human puppet wearing a blond wig and Detroit Pistons jersey. The crowd's response was a collective "Huh?"

And the 1-hour, 45-minute set was interrupted by Carey's eight costume changes - ranging from sequined body suits to evening gowns to Hooters-style short, tight clothing - during which her dance ensemble and backing singers tried in vain to hold the audience's attention.

Voyeurs may have hoped Carey's post-breakdown tour would express recriminations and tantrums, but it was all rainbows and stars. She announced "Through The Rain" as being about perseverance, and as she sang the gospel-tinged ballad "My Saving Grace," a giant video screen flashed images of her as a wide-eyed school girl, a superstar and a fallen diva-in-distress before giving way to her beaming visage.

"Two years ago, I was touring and promoting and sleeping one hour a night, if that. I was going through troubles with Sony. It was more than any human could possibly endure," Carey said.

"I just had to learn to say no, to take care of myself, that I was important, not just this image that everyone had of me on TV doing 'Oprah.' I just went to therapy and did things that were healing. I think a lot of celebrities go through stuff like that and their 'people' keep it quiet. But I'm comfortable enough to say, 'Yeah, I'm human."'

Did the "Glitter" fiasco scare off some of her fans?

"The movie came out on 9/11, remember.

"I would have been soured on doing another movie if it wasn't for 'Wise Girls.' It's an independent film that won an award at Sundance," she said of her turn as a saucy Mafia restaurant waitress. "Now I'm doing another one in the fall for the same company."

Carey admitted she's had a lot of emotional baggage to sift through.

"Now I just rest during the day. I sit with my little humidifier, pampering and babying my voice."

Review by G. Brown (Denver Post)
Serial triller
Mariah Carey's musical crime: leading the growing trend toward overblown, roller-coaster vocals.

Mariah Carey's voice is her not-at-all-secret weapon. Trilling through five octaves, from the gut to that fantastic whistle that's at the high end of her jaw-dropping range, she dominated video and radio in the '90s - the best-selling female singer of that decade, the only artist to top the charts in each year. And she reaped rewards of ubiquity, celebrity and ample financial security along the way.

Unfortunately, all that exposure came at a cost. And not just a messy divorce from Sony chief Tommy Mottola, a notorious nervous breakdown, a stillborn career as a film actress and finally being unceremoniously bought out of her lucrative recording contract with Virgin Records.

No, Carey's crime is against the art of American popular singing. She is a technical virtuoso, but her NutraSweet style of soul - sugary and artificial songs, crammed with hundreds of gratuitous notes - imparts nothing but self-interest.

"You have to maintain some level of control to sing my songs," Carey insisted recently in her low and throaty speaking voice. She's touring behind her December 2000 release "Charmbracelet," and she'll perform tonight at Red Rocks Amphitheatre - her first-ever show in Colorado.

But to others, Carey's overblown vocals have the emotional resonance of asphalt.

"I'm opinionated because I'm old," Denver blues and soul singer Hazel Miller said with a laugh. "Mariah Carey does not make you feel that she believes in what she's singing. So I can't deal with it ...

"God love her, she has an incredible gift. But to sing that mindless 4/4-beat, R&B simply to make money and never use that amazing voice God blessed her with for anything worthy of it - to me, I'm sorry, that's a sin."

Yet Carey's influence is glaringly apparent on the Top 40 airwaves and TV's "American Idol" and its spate of imitators. Young singers follow a tactic of violent Carey emulation - don't hold back from trilling eight notes where one would be enough.

That particular vocal mannerism is called melisma.

"In the popular music sense, it's a series or group of notes surrounding the original pitch, usually maintained by one syllable, that's used in a decorative fashion," said Celeste Delgado, professor of vocal jazz and commercial music at the University of Denver's Lamont School of Music.

"A lot of people think that melismatic singing, as in Mariah Carey's case, originated a few years ago. In actuality, it started back in Europe in the days of classical music - there are numerous improvised cadences at the ends of compositions that were very melismatic and have been through many generations of musicians.

"But it morphed into many different styles. There was the music of slaves, where it was entirely improvised. They say some of the different melismas they used in songs would be secret signals giving directions to the underground railroads."

Such singers as Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin carried the gospel music tradition out of black churches and recast it as secular soul and R&B. But the expressive power of those singers has been undermined. Melisma has been largely reduced to an identifiable artifice.

"Mariah Carey almost single-handedly brought that sheer overuse to the forefront," Delgado said. "She became a role model for pop singers of the current generation."

Indeed, Carey is the godmother of every derivative diva with a multi-octave range. Christina Aguilera catapults across octaves with masterful control. R&B stars like Destiny's Child stack trills and melismas on beats and backing vocals. And fans love this type of ornate, vocal-sandblast approach - it now defines quality for an entire generation.

"There's definitely a talent to it that can be appreciated," Delgado said. "I have a huge respect for Beyonce Knowles of Destiny's Child - the melismatic runs that she uses are incredibly precise, almost perfect in a classical sense. But at the same time, I think they've taken away from the original melodies."

"All these little girls are trying very hard now to cram as many trills as possible in one note," Miller said. "Unfortunately, they think that's soulful, that it sounds black. And that makes me very sad. It is not pleasant to the ear. It is simply a bad imitation of something that was once ... unique, that you only heard in black gospel or down-home soul singers. But it has been subverted into something that is so commonplace and unnecessary - how many notes you can put into one word when one note sung gracefully will do."

If "American Idol" is any barometer, few of today's young vocal artists are aware of such dissimilarities. The most frightening aspect of the show is that contestants don't sing songs so much as tackle them, the difference between a musical performance and an exhibition of vocal acrobatics.

During the winning renditions by Kelly Clarkson and male divas-in-training Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, they didn't explore the nuances and emotions of a lyric - their intention was to buffet it into submission.

"It used to be that the standard was how you interpreted the lyrics," Miller said with a sigh. "But that's not the standard anymore."

Carey's take?

"I don't watch 'American Idol' - I never get a chance to watch TV - but it's a great venue for someone with talent to make a name for themselves," she said. "Unfortunately, the show drives the industry. It assures that you're going to sell a million records.

"But you know, after the show is over and you make a record, that's when the real crunch time starts. You have to make something with substance. Songwriting is what makes you an artist. Just being able to sing the notes doesn't mean anything."

And Carey co-writes and co-produces nearly all her songs. Pat Monahan of the rock band Train, whose full-throated vocals (currently heard on the hit "Calling All Angels") may be a sign that a melisma backlash is rallying, is in her corner.

"The 'American Idol' kids sound kind of same-y ... there's a lot of imitation," he said. "But Mariah Carey, in her defense, had quality songs at one point - 'Hero' is an incredibly good lyric. That's what I'm drawn to, what a person is about."

Ironically, Carey's musical director and bassist is Randy Jackson, one of the judges on "American Idol."

"Now he's famous - we have to call him 'Randy Jackson of "American Idol,"' but he's been my 'dawg' for years," Carey said. "It's so funny, because I used to introduce him as Michael Jackson's brother on tour. And now people actually think he is!

"What's important is that Randy really cares about those 'American Idol' contestants. They can learn a lot from his advice."

Jackson can look forward to another season of celebri-wannabes who rely not on melody and artful performing but trite, prefabricated trifles with zero melodic or emotional punch.

"I'm teaching at a jazz camp this summer, 75 high school students," Delgado said. "Extremely melismatic singing doesn't have a place here. And the influence of shows like 'American Idol' and those singers on these kids is surprising.

"The other day, we were trying out a small group for solos, and a girl had a totally pop, melismatic solo - and everyone went, 'Oh, wow, she's going to get it - she's great!' And I had to go, 'No, that's not really appropriate or tasteful.' But that's the mentality that kids of this generation have."

For that evolution of pop vocalizing, we can blame Carey - she paved the way for over-singing.

"I would gladly give up 10 years of my life just to hear Aretha Franklin sing a John Lennon song," Miller said. "But to hear Mariah Carey continue to churn out this same stuff over and over, it's such a waste of this amazing voice that most of us would give our eyeteeth for. To sing with it and never really reach her soul - that's a shame."