Spin Cycle

What does it say about Mariah Carey’s career arc when my pre-release expectations for the recently released Me. I Am Mariah…The Elusive Chanteuse were so low they were scraping the metaphorical floor? After all, it’d been four years since her last studio album release, Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel, and that album wasn’t exactly exploding at the seams with great material. Issues with Chanteuse being pushed back (and a couple of mediocre teaser singles) also made me hesitant about putting down my cash for Mimi’s music, which I’ve been doing without reservation since I bought a $4 bootleg tape of her debut from some African dude in Brooklyn back in 1991¹.

MariahA month after buying the album, I’m still not 100% sure if I like Chanteuse (referred to as such going forward, because I’m not typing out that silly-ass title again) because it’s actually a good album or if I’m just satisfied that it exceeded my minimal expectations. I can definitively say that it’s not as good as Mariah’s signature works: her debut, 1995’s Daydream or 1997’s Butterfly. It’s not even as good as her widely-lauded but actually just better than mediocre comeback album, 2005’s The Emancipation Of Mimi. However, it’s a lot more listenable than I would’ve been willing to bet on before its release.

Here are the good things: Mariah doesn’t try incredibly hard to be trendy-she’s working the same R&B with splashes of hip-hop vibe that she’s worked almost exclusively for the past fifteen years. There’s no EDM Mariah, no real attempts to be Rihanna or Beyonce or Adele or Kelly Clarkson. This is good², because Mariah is 43 and plus, all of the previously mentioned artists are at least partially her disciples. Also worth noting: Mariah can still sing her ass off. Remember when there were conversations about her “losing her voice?” You can dead that definitively. She still has it-dog whistle and all.

Occasionally-she’s also still capable of writing a good song. “You’re Mine (Eternal)” flies maybe a little too closely to her smash “We Belong Together” structurally, but it’s pretty good as far as self-plagiarism goes, and I retract my somewhat negative review of it upon its release last year. The Miguel duet “#Beautiful” (which was a hit last year) turns over a bit of a new leaf sonically, with its rock edge, and “Meteorite” is one of several songs that successfully works a retro-disco vibe. Her version of George Michael’s “One More Try” isn’t as good as the original (a near-impossible feat) but it’s one of Mariah’s better ’80s covers. Not as good as “Open Arms” or “Bringin’ On The Heartbreak,” slightly better than “The Beautiful Ones,” way better than “Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now,” “Sweetheart” and “I Want To Know What Love Is.”

Here’s a bad (or at least frustrating) thing: Chanteuse also has a string of solid tracks that suffer from unnecessary stunt-casting (something Mariah’s had an issue with for some time.) “You Don’t Know What To Do” is another disco-reminiscent track that’s playful and perfectly sung. Rapper Wale’s presence on (and throughout) the song is annoying, though. Fabolous (who should’ve stopped making records half a decade ago) almost ruins “Money ($*/…” and the glorious hip-hop throwback “Dedicated” boasts a fantastic verse from Nas (one of the MCs that MC has true simpatico with) but features a ton of extraneous chatting from Mariah, Steve Stoute and Jermaine “I Ruined Janet’s Career Now I’m Gonna Ruin Mariah’s” Dupri. You come to a Mariah party, you wanna hear Mariah, not her less talented friends. Or her children. I appreciate and respect maternal pride, but hearing Roc and Roe coo all over “Supernatural” is profoundly annoying.

It’s got to be a hard task to maintain relevance in a rapidly changing musical landscape, and even harder when you’ve set some kind of standard with your success over the past 20 years. Particularly for pop and R&B artists, it seems as though your past successes are always lurking behind you. To Mariah’s credit, I’m not sure how important it is to be the Supreme Diva. At least if that’s what she wants to do, she’s doing it on her terms. Chanteuse is not much different from what Mariah’s been feeding her fanbase for the past decade and a half. Will it spin off huge radio hits and sell millions? No. Will it completely satisfy the folks who’d love to hear “Vision Of Love”-type songs again? No. But there’s enough decent material contained within-certainly some of her strongest songs in a while- that it shouldn’t be ignored or rejected.

Grade: B Minus-ish?

¹-I was 14 and getting maybe $5 a week allowance. Cut me some slack.

²-Mostly. I would love to hear Mariah sing some Adele-like material.