“How do I disappear?”īut just because she can be serious doesn’t mean that the frothier diva aspect of her image isn’t important to her. “Where do I go from here?” she asks on the song. The album is a cool, confident, sexy affair, steady in its pleasures, with standout collaborations with Ty Dolla $ign on the sumptuous “ The Distance” and with Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes on the lithe “Giving Me Life.” And then there is “ Portrait,” the moment of introspection that Mariah makes sure to have on every record, and which here points to the ups and downs of a life lived in the glare of the public eye. But she’s also great with a kiss-off, as she shows on Caution and its lead track, “ GTFO,” which is about as clear a breakup song as you could hope to have when the next fool crushes your heart. On a Mariah classic like 1996’s “ Always Be My Baby,” there is a sweetness baked right in, and many of her lyrics over the years conjure a fantasia of honey and heroes and butterflies and dreamlovers. She has an uncanny understanding of what suits her sunshine-and-champagne singing voice, which is said to sometimes span up to seven octaves, allowing her to hit that heavenly whistle register. Her sound is solid as ever on her 15th album, Caution, her preference for mid-tempo sparkle a constant in a world that moves from trend to trend with increasing speed.
Mariah Carey songs always sound like Mariah Carey songs because they always are Mariah Carey songs. But she also wrote most of those songs, which has not only been a smart business decision but a key to her consistency.
Yes, she has been remarkably famous for almost 30 years, and yes, she has had 18 No. It’s something she has not always gotten a chance to discuss, as her level of fame has often inspired more questions from reporters about her dating life than her songwriting process. When you think Mariah, you likely have an image of the ultimate diva dripping in diamonds, and though she does appear to be wearing some expensive jewels (two butterfly rings on her fingers-one gold, one silver-twinkle in the light), she is welcoming and relaxed here in the studio, eager and engaged when talking about the care she takes in her art. She wants a piece of pepperoni but there are none left, so she happily eats a plain slice, balancing it on her pink-painted fingernails. The mother of two reclines, puts her feet up on the coffee table, requests red wine for us, and, in the middle of our interview, asks her manager for pizza from an order her team had made. When things settle down, Mariah and I peel off to a quiet room in the recording studio for a discussion about life and music. Though this is the kind of infrastructure necessary for celebrity in the 21st century, it’s just the window dressing. Everyone is in good spirits, like a winning sports team in the locker room at halftime. Mariah is tall in high-heeled black boots and perfectly done up, with hair as straight as I've ever seen hair be, two hoop earrings that shimmer from her ears, and a megawatt smile. There is a makeup person and a hair person, a manager and publicists, a lawyer and what might be a bodyguard, and an entire other group of people who are hard to place. It takes a village to promote an album, and on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Mariah Carey has at least 10 people with her when she arrives at Electric Lady Studios in New York.
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