(Opinion) “This is what I deal with when I come into my ‘job’ every day,” said Mariah Carey on last night’s installment of American Idol, with the most positively sardonic eye roll a diva could muster.
Fellow judge Nicki Minaj had angered Carey, turning down Chicago
contestant Stephanie Schimel for copying the rapper’s cartoonish purple
eye shadow. However, it wasn’t Minaj who seemed most ridiculous in this
instance. The way Carey referred to her $18 million per season “job”
was packed with loathing, a hatred of the mundane, and general
resentment.
Serving as a judge on American Idol is a coveted platform
for many musicians, due to the increased visibility it gives their own
work and image. However, for Carey, it is strangely like flipping
burgers—an unsavory vocation rather than a profession.
The way Carey phrased the retort, compounded with her later comment that Idol was her first “real” job (she is 42), begs the question of how she landed on the talent competition in the first place.
All jokes aside, Mariah Carey is the best selling female artist of
all time, having sold over 200 million records in her twenty-year
career. Carey’s 1990s fusion of rap and R&B, exemplified best in
1995’s “Fantasy” featuring ODB was not merely innovative, but downright
revolutionary.
Before Carey, R&B princesses didn’t collaborate with bad boy
rappers. Now the “diva/thug” duet, as it has been affectionately
monikered, is the new norm. Mere weeks ago, even the most mainstream of
pop artists–Britney Spears—enlisted Wil.i.am for a boost on “Scream and
Shout.”
Carey’s dizzying string of success included the Puffy collaboration
“Honey,” Jay-Z duet “Heartbreaker,” and most recently, the R&B
jammer “We Belong Together.” At her peak, Carey blended R&B vocals,
rap beats, and pop trends like no other, until a few years ago.
Starting with 2009’s pop ditty “Obsessed,” Carey strayed a bit too far
from her R&B roots, putting out singles that attempted to please
radio, rather than direct it.
So, like Jennifer Lopez before her, she accepted American Idol’s
offer, albeit with a bit more reluctance. What Carey hopes to do with
the platform is unclear, as she has yet to announce new music for 2013.
As long as tear soaked Idol wannabes keep prostrating
themselves before her, she will never feel the pressure to get back in
touch with what put her on such a pedestal: talent, coupled with immense
creativity and innovation.
If Idol premiere week has demonstrated one thing, it is that
Season 12 will be about Mariah Carey, and contestants will have to
battle her ego to merely get a note in edgewise.
When a contestant sang Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”,
she delightedly replied “It sure was! It still is darling” to an eye
roll from Minaj. As if we needed reminding, Carey’s diva delusion
rivals no one. “You’re having a lavender moment I really like” she said
to a contestant wearing a purple turban, before requesting something
from producers for her “parched” mouth.
Ironically, it is her ego that is forcing her to sit on the judges
panel, as her notorious diva behavior, head-tilting marriage to Nick
Cannon, and birth of twins Moroccan (named for the decor of a room in
Carey’s Tribeca penthouse) and Monroe have made any of her recent
musical efforts seem unfocused at best.
So, for now, bickering with Nicki Minaj is Carey’s new game, where
she can ruffle her bedazzled diva feathers, but also distract America
from pondering how Mariah Carey ended up with this “job” in the first
place.
Friday 18 January 2013
Mariah Carey: Slumming on American Idol?
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