Mariah Carey: The elusive chanteuse

MANILA, Philippines–Reports of Mariah Carey experiencing vocal malfunction in one of her tour stops may have affected her image as a singer, but at the end of the day, when you actually get to attend her show, one will unknowingly realize that Mariah Carey is indeed an elusive chanteuse – and she is one that is definitely a rare find.

Though in some of her performances you will feel her struggle to reach high notes, in the end, her distinct vocal abilities and tone quality that made her the Mariah Carey that she is now showed, and this made this writer understand why she has always been relevant in the music industry even until today when her talent is not as seamless as it was.

Mariah Carey opened her October 28 show at the Mall Of Asia Arena with “Fantasy”. It was followed by “Touch My Body”, “Shake It Off”, and “Emotions”.

Embraced by her skin and curve-showing dress, Mariah walked from one stage end to another to send her “lambs” sweet waves and smiles to acknowledge their presence. And then her set continued with “Cry”, “Fly Like A Bird”, “My All” (which was arranged lower and delivered shorter), “Heartbreaker”, “#Beautiful”, and “I’m That Chick”.

From time to time Mariah would exclaim sweet nothings to her Filipino audience, sample of which was when she shouted “Mariah Carey Philippines!” to prove that she knows who they are.

And then she performed “Honey”, “I’ll Be There” with her back-up vocalist Trey Lorenz, “Thirsty”, and “Meteorite”.

Though Mariah’s delivery of her big hits sounded different from her renditions back in the days, the soulful approach to each song was still there, especially with the timeless “Hero”, “Supernatural”, and “We Belong Together”.

Before finally leaving the stage, Mariah came back for a one-song encore where she sang “Always Be My Baby”.

Indeed there is now some sort of, for lack of a better word, “rust” in Mariah Carey’s overall presence on stage–which by the way is inevitable for every artist. But for what it is worth, majority of the time, she behaved and performed exactly like the one-in-a-million chanteuse that she was two decades ago.

And if anything, her whistle registers are still there, still astounding as how they were from ‘90s.