Mariah Carey concert review
By Nick Lewis
Published in The Calgary Herald on September 26, 2006
Mariah Carey with opening act Busta Rhymes at the Saddledome Monday night.
Attendance: About 12,000
- - -
When she finally hit the stage, close to an hour after her opening act had left it, 36-year-old Mariah Carey came out in revealing black lingerie to her hip-hop single It's Like That, and you couldn't help but wonder why she was trying so hard to be young and sexy when her audience is so, well, middle-aged and female.
And while we're griping, when did the word "diva" become a good thing? When did we collectively decide to pay this much respect (and hard earned money) to an entitled princess with one talent? Why did 12,000 dedicated fans wait an hour for Mariah?
Don't get me wrong. Carey -- who composes her own material, has a five-octave voice and had a No. 1 single in every year of the '90s -- deserves to be a star.
I respect her talent and like her on CD.
But her live show is a lesson in excess, a calvacade of smoke and mirrors meant to distract from her tiny presence on a grand stage, a five-course place setting for gazpacho. Any momentum she wrung from her pipes was constantly disrupted by unnecessary costume changes, and instead of more material, we were treated to silhouetted dance routines and snippets of '80s pop from DJ Clue.
And those pipes, which sound as honeyed as her skin on record, sounded fairly average here, nothing you wouldn't hear on American Idol.
When she tried vocal gymnastics to hit those high shrieks, they sounded like wet fingerprints on clean glass, a mosquito stuck in a belljar.
Carey did have some decent versions of A Vision Of Love, Fly Like A Bird and Fantasy, and because she came out late, I couldn't see or hear, but know that she also performed Hero, Make It Happen and We Belong Together. But mostly The Adventures of Mimi: The Voice, The Hits, The Tour was as bloated as the title and is in need of a few tweaks to become a much better show.
Divas, please. How about you ladies all stay in that one costume you started the concert in and maybe sing us a couple of extra songs instead?
No one's going, "Well, for $109.50, I better see her in five different looks" (or maybe you are, in which case, stop ruining it for fans of music).
Opener Busta Rhymes was his usual killer self, treating the audience to his mile-a-minute gruff rhymes on tracks such as Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See, Break Ya Neck, Fire It Up and Pass The Courvasier.
The fact that he managed to squeeze out a standing ovation from an audience of mostly unfamiliar Mariah Carey fans is a testament to the Brooklyn rapper's talent.
