18 February 1994
Well, hello at last to the person who created one of the dominant pop forms of the whole ’90s: the OTT power ballad style of Whitney, Celine, Boyz II Men and more. While ‘Vision Of Love’ in 1990 certainly blew the diva starting whistle, you can’t say it was by design. Its famous piercing high note and a cappella melisma are just flourishes at the very end of an otherwise old-fashioned soulful ballad, and a really good one at that: who’s to say the takeaway couldn’t have been old-fashioned soulful ballads instead? Also, hadn’t Whitney released similarly extravagant singles like 1988’s ‘One Moment In Time’ already, without any such seismic effect? However, the crucial factor here was timing: in 1990 the US music industry was shaken and embarrassed by the Milli Vanilli lip-syncing scandal. Luckily for them, the colossal star-making success of ‘Vision Of Love’ gave them a convenient ‘out’: shove all their chips onto showy vocal virtuosity (and also loud, visceral grunge, by the way, which in turn incited Britpop) as easy shorthand for emotion and authenticity. So, there’s my Grand Unifying Theory of ’90s Music, and here’s Mariah.
Before anyone sings anything, ‘Without You’ has its maudlin histrionics baked in. (I won’t go into the astonishing tragedy and misery that befell the writers of this song, Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger. Content warning for that link: self harm.) Mariah, like Harry Nilsson in the hitherto most famous version, keeps things low-key for the first verse, but there’s simply no way to sing that chorus other than go in high and hard, and no better woman to do it. From there on it’s the full Mariah portfolio of money notes and showboat runs, with the song relegated to incidental delivery mechanism. By the time the gospel choir comes in to take up the chorus, Mariah is on her lap of honour, the ovation is standing, and you’ve either chosen to stay that long or already baled out. Apart from these few listens, I’m usually an early baler myself.
Though I only like two of her songs, and she’s had to apologise for some ill-advised private concerts to dictators, I have time for Mariah. She’s obviously a superbly gifted singer, her diva persona is as entertaining as Elton John’s (who among us likes to ‘do stairs’?) and her poppier numbers—including the other song of hers I like, that ubiquitous Christmas hit—at least show that she has range of taste as well as range of octave. By her own telling, even though ‘Without You’ was a childhood favourite of hers, she had long wanted to move towards R&B but was stymied by her domineering then-husband, who was also her record company boss and would-be Svengali. Unfortunately it’s a familiar story in pop music history, though Mariah succeeded in finding her freedom sooner than others did. On several levels, I don’t like ‘Without You’ and what it represents. Let’s all move on.
Irish Number Ones 