Carey Sounds Like Gold On 'Charmbracelet'
By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY
Album Review: 3 stars (out of 4)
There's no mistaking that rippling purr at the beginning of Mariah Carey's
Through the Rain, the lead single from her new album, Charmbracelet.
It's the voice that launched a thousand junior divas.
However you feel about Carey or her music, it's impossible to deny the
impact her vocal style, a florid blend of breathy riffing and resonant
belting, has had on today's young pop and R&B stars. It's impossible to
imagine how Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Beyonce Knowles or any of
the female contestants on American Idol would sound in a Carey-less world.
At 32, Carey is a 12-year chart veteran. And although she may not look
grizzled, the songs on her new CD reveal, for anyone who hasn't
picked up a tabloid lately, that experience has provided a few tough lessons.
Yet Charmbracelet is no post-breakdown self-pity party.
True to fashion, Carey has taken lemons and made lemonade, heavy on the
sugar. There is more of a tartness to her new fare, though, suggesting
that although hard times may not have clipped Carey's butterfly
wings, they have grounded her.
Rain, the first track, is an unabashedly sentimental bolero that recalls
Carey's early-'90s hit Hero. But as a whole, Charmbracelet is less a
calculated return to Carey's roots than a reflection on her musical and
personal evolution, and a promise that it will continue.
The girlish sass that has long been a hallmark of her up-tempo songs is
evident on breezy tracks such as Boy and the rap-kissed You Got Me.
Elsewhere, though, Carey makes a concerted effort to project more maturity
and sophistication.
The jazz-inflected Subtle Invitation wouldn't sound out of place on an Anita
Baker album, and the elegantly wistful I Only Wanted and
sharp-witted Clown evoke deeper conviction — and melancholy — than previous
hits.
Carey may not have lost the preternatural peppiness that always has driven
her flamboyant singing. But her vision of love has seldom seemed so hard-won or firmly rooted.
Sources:
Chris, USA Today
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Mariah's New Album "CharmBracelet" is coming soon
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