Pipe dreams
Television advertisement for frozen foods, 1981
A new contributor to the blog, Megan’s investigation of the cultural climate for pop music in 1994 will appear in the first issue of Ply. She writes regularly for Mere Duchess as Not Susan.
Mariah Carey early on was a constitutionally perfect substrate in which to suspend the industry of pop. Of ambiguous race, donning, always, a denim bottom and a black top, the female effect was somewhere between inner city first grade teacher and Disney princess. Her role was simple: provide an aspirational vocal track against a backdrop of hi-fi karaoke. No prismatic cultural opuses like Madonna or Janet dance sequences necessary, just a set of pipes and some hand gestures orbiting around a velveted bed of princess neckline.
The ’89–’94 pleasure in hearing a singer soar was parallel to the figure skater mania of the time; it was watching a mouth form a word and do aural nonsense with it from behind. When Mariah got into the whistle tones—into registers only a dog could hear—there was a sort of 4H quality to the experience. Athletic vocals like these had an uplifting element, the kind of thing that could transport an accounts payable clerk from the earthly limits of a Wednesday. It was a broad experience manufactured for a broad audience, with no need to deal in symbology or lyrics.
Mariah’s reign as princess/vocalist ended interestingly coterminously with the Disney noblewomen’s run in theaters. “Fantasy” represented her first hybrid attempt. It was a good one, but it subterfuged the voice as the center of the experience, replacing it with the signage of pop. The transition made there proved to be an irreversible one, probably, in fact, by choice, but also, in effect, by chance. Though Celine Dion kept on as a broad belter for another few years, the blockbuster vocalist model was damaged. Singing, even very athletic singing, wouldn’t suffice without branding or directionality. Obliged after this moment in any full-scale industry effort was a piano (singer songwriter), a dance routine, an off-the-rack R&B/country/dance insinuation, or a rapper to croon alongside of.
All of this makes the moment of “Hero,” “I’ll Be There,” “Without You” and the like sort of singular. The Carey-Mottola marriage, with all its royal (cartoon) wedding trappings stamped a version of mastery on the music industry at its financial peak: the Cinderella story of the session vocalist and producer prince surpassing Elvis in number ones. You could embed plenty of cynical connotations there, but then who can resist the lure of a heyday, especially one that encompasses such a pure (somehow naive, somehow Clintonian?) aggregated form of American style-power.
The “Fantasy” shift for Mariah also brought with it the assertion of a personality, which was awkward for everyone for many years and something only the drag queen fan in me can really get behind. Though the pleasures of “Honey,” “Always Be My Baby” and “We Belong Together” are many, the experience is fractured and dependent on neutralizing the source; accepting it as a cultural document instead of the heart-infused output of a set of lungs. Gone is the young, black bodysuited Mariah of B-cup, bland video, and “Emotions” high note; the coherent source of prosaic joy emblematic a pop period that she made and was.