I am about to speak in defense of Mariah Carey, which is a bit strange because I know little about her and am not what one would call a fan. Her experience at the “ABC’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” broadcast was so widely criticized, that I thought I could throw in my two cents’ worth of opinion as a third-party observer who has no interest either way.
I didn’t stay up to see it live (I’m getting to that age when balls dropping remind me of my future of declining dexterity and skin tone rather than a new year), but I saw enough repeats of what happened to know that everybody involved was somewhat at fault. Performers, and singers in particular, are commodities whose wants, needs and goals are at war with their contract-wielding, money hungry executives. Putting on a performance such as the NYE event costs bundles of cash, all of which the producers intend to get back from their working capital, namely Mariah. The other party is the audience, and let’s admit that we are a demanding and fickle mob.
Let’s take a song like “Emotions,” which is one of her hits. From the moment the song hit our virgin ears back in 1991, we knew we always wanted to hear Mariah sing it just that way every time she sings it, and we want her to sing it all the time. This means producers and managers and agents line her up to sing it just that way, and that means if a performance is going to be on a cold stage at the end of December, some setting up has to be done.
If anybody thinks for one minute that a song recorded in a sterile, acoustically perfect studio can be put on a stage anywhere and sound exactly the same, they need to hire a crew to hoist a rock from on top of them.
Then of course you need the panoply and effects brought by high-tech sets and back-up dancers and singers, who stand in front of immense high-volume speakers with Mariah and try to make the audience excited and thrilled.
Now you add to that all the electronics which can suffer quality loss under cold temperatures, and you have a recipe for a musical failure. But we came to see and hear Mariah sing just that way, so they give her an earpiece and mic her up and the show goes on. Except the earpiece wasn’t working. Tough, they said. The show must go on, she said.
The fickle audience had the gall to be surprised.
Sure I’ve been to concerts. In stadiums it works a bit differently. One time back in the day, the producers of a Billy Joel concert moved my seat and those of about 30 or so people so the console used to control the action onstage could be seated there. I didn’t mind; it wasn’t my first time at the rodeo. This is how these things are done.
It’s all hugely coordinated, because it’s popular music and that’s how the bigwigs want it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they did urge Mariah to go on in spite of the problems, because Dick Clark was not there to give the artist what was needed. Dick Clark knew performers and he would not have stood for that.
Well, that’s not what I normally watch anyway. A bunch of choreographed song and dance pop is not my thing so much anymore. Give me a Broadway show any day. Give me true singing artists like Hugh Panaro and Hugh Jackman (who were both performing on the same block sometime back); men of talent whose voices can tickle the hairs on the backs of the necks of the last guy in the nosebleed seats (and now somebody will grumble that the performers have mics and I’ll challenge them to see if that little dingly thing glued to their foreheads can work outdoors). Give me Placido Domingo or Marcello Giordani at the Met; now that’s singing.
In our forebears’ days, Frank Sinatra had the stage by himself with a stool, a mic stand and a glass of water. I’d like to see Mariah Carey do that, and even though I’m not a fan, I’d pay for a seat.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 