Mariah Carey's not what ordinarily leaps to mind when you talk soul. She's not black, she's white, and she didn't learn her craft by singing in some storefront church. She's also young (20), with looks that seem to belong more to a fashion model than to a soul singer.
But make no mistake, Mariah Carey is the real deal, as she amply demonstrates on her self-titled debut CD, and number one hit single, “Vision of Love.” And though she landed her record deal just three years after leaving home to seek her fortune, she bristles at the suggestion that her commercial breakthrough has come overnight or without struggle.
“To you,” she says, “it would seem like only three years. But it's really been my whole life. I started writing songs and working with different musicians from the time that I was 15 or 14 years old. This has been my one goal.” She adds with emphasis, “I've never, ever swayed from wanting to do this.”
Carey's self-assurance is undeniable. She sings like a black Whitney Houston: the same technical proficiency, stately phrasing and sweeping, dramatic highs. But she also has the one thing Houston has never had — the ability to let go, to sing with fire and abandon, to moan, wail and whisper and thereby convey a universe of meaning without singing a word. She appropriates gospel and blues idioms as if they had her name on them and cops stratospheric Minnie Riperton runs with the gutsy daring of a bandit. So when Carey says, “I've always known I wanted to do this,” it comes off like, I've always known I would do this. Like it was destiny. And maybe it was.
She grew up in New York State. Her mother was a jazz and classical singer who divorced Carey's father when Mariah was three. Her home was often full of mom's musician friends, casually jamming, and Mariah thought nothing of singing right along with them. “I don't think I was aware of the fact that what I was doing was any different than what every other kid was doing,” she says. “I assumed everybody went home and had musicians jamming in their house.”
Mariah's older brother and sister introduced her to the R&B likes of Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder. She graduated quickly to gospel, making happy discoveries in the music of Shirley Caesar and Edwin Hawkins. She loved “the authenticity in the music… and the spirituality of it. I just think it's the most real music that you can listen to.” It's also what taught and nourished her, until, at 17, this white kid had a voice that sounded neither white nor kid-like. More like church choirs and jubilee praise, red beans and rice, hot sex, sweet sin and the glory of salvation.
No wonder she couldn't wait to try her luck in New York City. She found an apartment, got a job waiting tables and proceeded to hate every minute of it. After hours, when the customers were starting to filter out, Carey would sit in the restaurant bar, nursing her tired feet and wounded ego. The bartender would switch the big screen TV to the video channel and Carey would watch, feeling as if she were doing time in some kind of purgatory.
“I'd be sitting there watching some video — Debbie Gibson or something — and I'd be fuming furiously. Like, ‘Why do I have to sit here and waitress while these people are doing videos?’ I was sooo pissed.”
But you know the rest: Carey's demos came to the attention of the local music community; she started doing session work. Went out on the road with Brenda K. Starr, who became a fan. Brenda K. took her to a party where she met Tommy Motolla, who heads CBS Records. She gave him a tape and the rest is about to be history.
Meaning that Mariah Carey is soon to be a major star. Bet the farm on it. CBS is buying lots of big trade ads to make sure all the Right People are familiar with her. Critics are beginning to run out of superlatives. And perhaps the ultimate endorsement: Black radio has jumped on her music with both feet.
Mariah accepts all of this with surprising equanimity. On the one hand, she admits to feeling like a Cinderella whose prince has finally come. On the other, well… “I believe if you really believe you can do something and you really work at your talent and your craft, you can do it.”
She's not frosty about it. Not for her the studied arrogance of other newcomers. What she has goes beyond arrogance. She's just — very — assured.
If there is anything that remotely rattles Carey's self-confidence, even for a moment, it's the thought of following in the footsteps of the gospel stars who gave her so much inspiration. Recently, she told a reporter for the L.A. Times that she doesn't think she's good enough to sing gospel — yet.
Asked to elaborate, Carey says, “It was just me showing my respect for those singers. I wasn't saying, ‘Oh, I can't sing gospel,’ I was saying I think I should get a little bit more established before I get so bold as to say, ‘Yeah, I want to sing with the Winans.’ I feel like I need to pay a few more dues to get up to their level.”
A word to the Winans: Don't let her modesty fool you. The dues check is in the mail. Mariah Carey is on her way.
