Mariah Carey, March 18 2016, Manchester Arena
\n(Photograph by David La Chapelle)<\/p>\n
Mariah is late. There is no support act \u2013 who is worthy of supporting Mariah? \u2013 and so we wait. So far, everything about the night reminds me of a hen do. Or, more accurately, a parody of a hen do on a stadium scale. Everywhere, WKD Blue and Smirnoff Ice, bottles of ros\u00e9 wine with straws in them. Heels are high enough, dresses small and skin-tight enough that Mariah, the woman who took the bandana wardrobe gave her and wore it as a top, would approve. Uniformed men and women walk the aisles holding up cups of chocolate-covered strawberries \u2013 so Mariah \u2013 and bags of candyfloss. This is the Sweet Sweet Fantasy tour after all: appropriate that our teeth should ache. <\/p>\n
I am cynical and sober, and possibly un-fun \u2013 at least, that\u2019s how I felt the last time I was on a hen do \u2013 but even I have gotten on board: my dress is covered in gold butterflies, my cheeks and temples in glitter. I might as well admit it now: it\u2019s Mariah\u2019s first European tour in 13 years and my heart feels like it\u2019s about to throw up. <\/p>\n
At the end of every inexplicably reggae-flavoured song piped into the arena, the crowd begins to clap: Mariah as Tinkerbell. She is half an hour late; the crowd is half an hour drunker, thirty minutes more excited. Behind me, two women discuss which era of Mariah is their favourite. No one ever uses her second name. There\u2019s no need to. Further along my row, a group of friends practises the Mariah hand gesture that often accompanies her trills. Forty minutes and the crowd is cheering non-stop, whistling and whooping. The stage is dark now as the band takes its place, her initials \u2013 silver, interconnected \u2013 projected onto the red curtains behind them. The reggae stops mid-track and in the few moments\u2019 silence before a disco version of \u2018Fantasy\u2019 kicks in, everyone is on their feet and someone behind me shouts \u201cYasss queen!\u201d over and over. This is seeing Mariah Carey live in 2016: 20-year-old tracks greeted with adoration and memes. It\u2019s perfect. <\/p>\n
Mariah is carried on stage on the shoulders of her dancers. Also perfect. In internet terms, everyone loses their shit. She is wearing a sparkly silver leotard, which isn\u2019t important at all apart from to suggest there will be wardrobe changes. We all sing along: I\u2019m in heaven \/ with my boyfriend \/ my laughing boyfriend. I\u2019d forgotten I knew these lyrics.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Fantasy\u2019 ends in an explosion, but not before the refrain It\u2019s just a sweet \/ It\u2019s just a sweet<\/em>. She greets the crowd. The woman behind me shouts \u201cMariah, you\u2019re on fire\u201d so that it rhymes. A butterfly made of turquoise and purple light appears above the stage as Mariah does what she is famous for: vocal runs that seem impossible, and which, if you listened to the critics of her Las Vegas show, had become impossible. <\/p>\n Not so. Her voice is remarkable, something she demonstrates on \u2018Emotion\u2019, the lows of deeper than I\u2019ve ever dreamed<\/em> of are rich and layered, the incredible high of but I like the way I feel inside<\/em> just that, incredible. Afterwards, she asks if she can sing us a dramatic ballad. Everyone cheers. That ballad is \u2018My All\u2019. I can\u2019t help but laugh \u2013 delusionally, I had auditioned with it for high-school choir \u2013 before I sing along fiercely. It\u2019s then that I realise how many Mariah moments, for a lack of a better term, I have, that everyone in this arena, probably everyone reading, will have, whether or not they\u2019d like to admit it. (It\u2019s now that I realise that writing about Mariah apparently makes me do the thing writers are told never to do: use adverbs.)<\/p>\n A dance break \u2013 the dancers almost continually shirtless throughout the show \u2013 later, and Mariah has changed into something else sparkly ready for Always Be My Baby<\/em>. \u201cDo you know this one?\u201d she asks disingenuously just before the do-do-do-daw<\/em> refrain kicks in. Footage of her and her children plays in the background, which sits a little oddly alongside lyrics like boy don\u2019t you know you can\u2019t escape me<\/em>, but then she asks us to sing along and nothing needs to make sense any more. <\/p>\n In the break between songs, she notes that some of the crystal beads have fallen off her \u201cfirst ensemble\u201d. \u201cCan I get a broom? I\u2019ll sweep this up,\u201d she says, crouching down to retrieve them. It\u2019s dangerous to leave them there and they can be sewed back on. \u201cSee, I\u2019m not a diva,\u201d she says, laughing. She thanks us for our good energy, mentions the MTV Unplugged session she did in the nineties and invites Trey Lorenz down to sing \u2018I\u2019ll Be There\u2019 with her. \u201cTake it away, Michael,\u201d she shouts towards the end of the song, gesturing towards the screens behind her, and a young Michael Jackson sings the last verse before she joins in with him. MC dueting with MJ: hearts-for-eyes territory. <\/p>\n Trey Lorenz covers \u2018Rock With You\u2019 \u2013 \u201colder Michael\u201d \u2013 while Mariah changes, and despite the silver-jacketed dancers (who, again, are not wearing shirts under those jackets), compared to Mariah Carey, it\u2019s only mildly diverting. Unfair, perhaps, to compare anything to Mariah Carey; better to say that it highlights, for me, just how magnetic she is as a performer, despite the physicality of videos like \u2018Heartbreaker\u2019 being seemingly very much a thing of the past. In any case, while our attention is less than fully focussed on the stage, a man behind me pouts and twerk-flirts with a group of men sitting on the main floor. Apparently that, too, is only mildly diverting, and the men go back to instagramming selfies. <\/p>\n When Mariah rejoins us, she invites someone up onto the stage (all done through the medium of ballad, of course). Geoffrey is blindfolded and sat on a chair, while dancers in bike leathers move around him and Mariah sings \u2018Touch My Body\u2019. Geoffrey is game and you can hear the smile in her voice as she watches her dancers grind on him and him grind right back. <\/p>\n A medley of some of probably-not-widely-deemed-her-best-but-whatever-they\u2019re-my-favourite songs follows, starting with the Busta Rhymes duet, \u2018I Know What You Want\u2019. I remember driving across Pretoria singing along to this with my mom and sister. It\u2019s over too soon, becomes \u2018Obsessed\u2019, the dancers moving behind frames. \u2018It\u2019s Like That\u2019 and \u2018Shake It Off\u2019 have everyone screaming and dancing, bouncing with her. Security has to stop barefoot women carrying banners from running to the front. <\/p>\n \u2018Loverboy\u2019 transitions into the \u2018Heartbreaker\u2019 remix, which features one of the best Missy Elliott guest verses (I mean, not objectively best but my favourite), and suddenly I\u2019m back at university, when I still used to blush at how rude the lyrics were. The music stops so we can watch the original song\u2019s video: brunette, evil Mariah fighting blonde, good Mariah in a cinema bathroom. The unimpressed instagrammers jump up and down when Mariah does the trills at the end of the song. Everyone jumps up and down. <\/p>\n The third quarter of the show is (a little too) heavy on duets. First up is \u2018Against All Odds\u2019, which, since it featured Westlife, feels a little like pandering to the UK crowd. It\u2019s the one instance of the audience singing more loudly than she does, maybe because it\u2019s easier (and more boring). \u2018One Sweet Day\u2019, originally a duet with Boyz II Men, follows, with Trey Lorenz and the keyboardist, Daniel Moore, singing their part. The crowd sways as clouds that resemble an office-poster idea of heaven move on the screens. My one moment of cynicism of the night. I blame Westlife. <\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to do a song that\u2019s very special to me,\u201d Mariah says, when the clouds have faded out. \u201cI feel really blessed to have been able to do this duet. She was one of the greatest singers ever.\u201d Whitney Houston\u2019s face appears on the screens and it\u2019s a strangely powerful experience, hearing her voice on the first verse of \u2018When You Believe\u2019, hearing the two women\u2019s voices together. <\/p>\n \u2018Hero\u2019 is inevitable (and makes me wish something from the latest album had made it onto the set list, though admittedly, I probably wouldn\u2019t have recognised it if it had). Mariah dedicates it to the audience, for making her night. Behind me: \u201cShe can\u2019t have any friends. She\u2019s too amazing.\u201d The much less worn-out \u2018We Belong Together\u2019 is next, followed by \u2018Without You\u2019. A nearby couple, owners of two bottles of ros\u00e9, one each, shout-sing the lyrics \u2013 I can\u2019t live \/ if living is without you<\/em> \u2013 into each other\u2019s mouths before making out. It\u2019s perfect. Mariah Carey, March 18 2016, Manchester Arena (Photograph by David La Chapelle) Mariah is late. There is no support act \u2013 who is worthy of supporting Mariah? \u2013 and so we wait. So far, everything about the night reminds me of a hen do. Or, more accurately, a parody of a hen do on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[15,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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\nMarli Roode <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"