She is a media dream, and no mistake. Big hair, infinite legs, come-to-bed mouth. A mighty five-octave vocal range Three or four decades of soul in her 20-year-old's voice.
She has only been here five minutes and already sex, or the suggestion of it, is hanging in the air. Not that there is a vast amount of skin on show. But coated in an epidermis of a body suit, no underwear, and brothel creepers, she is what your grandad might nave called a “sight for sore eyes.” She is not exactly a shrinking violet, Mariah Carey, but she's not flaunting her belly button either. Brown eyes flickering, a half-smile lingering, she is well aware of her effect.
“What sex life?” she giggles. Your disbelief registers, and she falls about. “I've never had a proper boyfriend. My heart has never been broken, and I've never broken anyone else's. There's been no one special in my life, not yet, I have always been so focused on my music, my singing and songwriting, that there hasn't been time to really think about all that. Honestly!”
This from a woman who pens melodic, nay, epic ballads and torch songs of unrequited love. It's all there, the agony and ecstasy, the right men, the wrong men, other gals' men if truth be told. Each song comes complete with an arrow to the heart, and she means it all most sincerely, folks.
“It's fantasy, though,” admits Mariah, twisting a tawny ringlet in her fingers. “What I write is all from my imagination. Fact is, I haven't had time to experience all that, but that doesn't mean to say that I don't write from the heart, because I do. I put myself in other women's shoes, I can feel their joy and pain when I think about it. It's all the same, we're all women.”
In spite, if not because, of her sensational looks. Mariah is definitely a woman's woman. Raised single-handedly by her mother Patricia Carey (a former star of the New York City Opera and latterly a vocal coach) who divorced Mariah's father when the child was three (she named her youngest after a song from Paint Your Wagon). Mariah's only male influence in early life was her brother. Ten years her senior, he was a hefty helping of maleness who grew up to be a bouncer, took up body building and taught Mariah how to work out, then cleared off to Los Angeles.
“There was no one you could call a father figure,” she says, “but it didn't bother me. I was exceptionally close to my mother, still am. We were a very close family, and whatever my brother and older sister did influenced me a lot — especially the records they played. My mother listened to Billie Holiday recordings, which I liked, but they preferred Stevie Wonder. Aretha, Al Green, and Gladys Knight. The most important thing they did for me was let me play their albums.”
She says she decided at the age of four to be a professional singer. “My mother says I was singing when I was born, but I was probably doing it in the womb too! She's not a bit surprised at my success — she says she always knew I'd be a star,” Mariah shrugs. “But she never pushed me to train or to study, she never forced me into it like a lot of parents do. She was well aware that a pushy parent can put a kid off whatever he or she is good at for life, so she just left me to do my own thing. I do consider myself a serious musician — I mean I do play piano, and my voice is my instrument — so I don't have a problem with that description. I have certainly put the hours in but I am completely untrained.”
It was her sister's poetry-writing that first inspired her to write music. “I just started making up melodies to go with her little poems, and it all kinda snowballed from there.”
It was late in 1988, at a record business bash to launch a new label affiliated to CBS Records, that Mariah landed the starring role in her own far-fetched music-biz dream. Give it 12 months, and she would be the pop Cinderella of the 90s.
“A friend introduced me to the label's boss, Jerry Greenberg. She just said, ‘This is my friend Mariah. She's 18 and she writes her own songs.’
“The President of CBS Records, Tommy Mottola, was also there. He snatched the tape from Jerry and made off with it. I was really nervous when I found out who he was, so I just tried to forget all about it. But he went out to his car, put the tape on and listened to the first two songs, then came back to find me, but I had left. I hadn't even put my phone number on the tape.”
It was not the hardest thing in the world for Mottola to track her down through her friend's management company. The next day she was invited up to CBS with her mother. They talked, they offered her a recording deal. Her debut single “Vision of Love”, self-penned of course, went straight to number one in five of America's categories, including the black chart, the pop chart, and adult contemporary. Simple as that.
It's all been done before, of course. Young singer becomes overnight sensation, goes straight to number one, gets rich quick. Now and again they have nice voices to go with their overwhelmingly contrived images. What makes Mariah Carey exceptional is that her voice is not merely nice — it is a power-and-glory voice which takes every musical style in its stride but is at its very best on the heart-rending stuff, soaring above the top notes and diving into the depths, supremely confident.
She sounds a lot like Whitney Houston, only better. And not only because Mariah originates all her material herself, while Whitney only interprets other writers. “There is,” says Mariah meaningfully, “not much merit in winning awards on the back of other people's songs.
“I don't mind being compared to Whitney, there are people miles worse to be compared to. But if you really listen there's a difference.”
It's at the photographic session that the fun and games often start, and today is no exception. Mariah arrives, accompanied by a make-up artist, and an agent: Myrna Suarez, a valued employee of Mariah's management company, is clearly in charge.
Dressed in sensible, long-sleeved navy blue on a steamy day, legs wrapped in black nylon disappearing into sensible shoes. Myrna casts a disdainful eye around the merrily disorganised studio and sniffs. She pulls up a chair in front of a dazzling array of garments laid out on a groundsheet for Mariah to try, crosses her stumpy legs and arms defiantly and bares her teeth.
“No, no, no!” she growls. It is quickly apparent that “no” is her favourite word.
Mariah eyes the colourful clothes a little wistfully, you fancy, but she is firm in her resolve.
“What I am trying to do here is emphasise my voice and my singing — not look like a pop star or a disco dancer,” she explains pleasantly, the smile a little tight.
“Oh no! Gold sequins!” growls Myrna.
Mariah settles on her red Norma Kamali jacket, a black mini and sheer nylons. Myrna nods her approval, and Mariah is duly draped over a chair.
“Mariah, pull your skirt down a little. Can you see the skirt? Can you see it? She can't look like she has nothing on, it's not her image.”
“My hair looks like a Christmas tree,” Mariah complains. She reaches for the tongs and winds another few curls into her explosion of ringlets.
“Fix that jacket, will you? It's open — you can see everything.” You wonder if the photographer has a microwave, and whether Myrna's head would fit in it.
Then Myrna disappears for a few minutes to take a call, and suddenly her petulant protégée is pouting, posing and coming on for the camera for all she's worth. Hair cascading seductively over one bare shoulder. Hair piled on high with fingers, hair shaken out as she throws back her head and comes to life. Re-enter Myra, and it's back to Sunday School.
As I pack up to leave, Mariah is wrapping her vocal cords around one of her songs, practising the unique phrasing. Her delivery is unique, the sound anthemic.
If she looked like the back of a bus she would make it anyway, with that voice. Watch her fly.
She will do it without the aid of platinum hotpants, Spandex, Lurex, Latex, or any other word ending in -ex which springs to mind. You have Myrna's word on that. Right, Myrna?
