Begin as You Mean to Go On

Lambs: Happy 2020!

The year is off to a great start for me and I intend to rededicate myself to the blog this year. At least a post a month seems reasonable, right? I mean, at least! I have so much to bestow uponst thou.

Mariah is having an epic 2020. "All I Want for Christmas Is You" went to number one after TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, and she also became the first artist to have a number one on Billboard's Hot 100 in FOUR DECADES: the 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s. My girl is flowing and growing.

But as longtime (lol) readers will realize, this isn't a blog about MC news but rather a meandering, free associative, interdisciplinary exploration of her oeuvre. With that in mind, I'd like to relate a little anecdote from earlier this week.

As many of you may know, I have a Mariah Spotify playlist I'm rather proud of (dm me for the link). Clocking in at six hours and 52 minutes, it's a carefully curated musical document containing only her best works (sadly Glitter is not currently on Spotify so gems like "Reflections" and "If We" are absent. May this please manifest in 2020). As I was driving along, I was treated to one of my faves, "Underneath the Stars."

Was there a better moment in 1995 than when MC sang:

And I lay in bed all night and I was

Drifting, drifting, drifting, drifting

There was not.

And then, through some cosmic intervention, the playlist gifted me "Angel (the prelude)" (touched upon lightly in this post).

Separated by 12 years, the two tracks offer an amazingly undiluted artistic vision, consistency of tone, appeal to our ethereal souls, habitation among the stuff of cloud wisps, vocalization of the essence of starlight -- etc etc. They are not the same; rather they call to each other over the years and hear an echoing response.

It's tempting to call this simply a maturation/evolution of style. Case in point: Piet Mondrian's "The Gray Tree" from 1912, compared to his famous "Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue" from 1942.

The early work clearly shows the Cubist struggle Mondrian was exploring as he applied the style to representation, a struggle that dissolved in the purity of the later abstractions. I would argue that the distinction between an artist's maturation and the process at work in the above Mariah comparison is real, and important. I posit that Mariah's work from Daydream onwards (pre-Daydream was unfortunately overly Mottola-controlled ("Mottrolla"? Heh.)) is less an evolution than a series of episodes of completed arrival, form fully expressed. There is no "forward motion" in this oeuvre, unless we subscribe to the Gregorian calendar and a linear concept of time (sooooo 2015). Rather there are continued mature explorations of expression. Glitter is as perfect as Charmbracelet  as Me. I am Mariah. 

In a nod to Truman Capote, Mariah's post-1995 body of work can be heard as One Voice, Many Rooms. Happy new year, and here's to more fully-fledged MC masterworks this year.

The Message

**Ed. note: Hard to believe, but I started writing this post about 11 months ago. I'm guessing (part of) the reason it has remained in draft mode until now was the stress/depression/horror sandwich served to all citizens of conscience for the first few months of the year, and which is still served on the daily now, but the diners' coping mechanisms have improved (awkward metaphor). So read on for what I was thinking at the beginning of the year, and what I'm thinking at the end of it...**

From January 31, 2017:

Damn.

I need Mariah to get POLITICAL.

I'm talking about it's January 31 and we're not even two weeks out from Obama turning in his pool pass and we've entered a gigantic spiral of SHIT. This is beyond the usual stuff...I'm talking about attacks on the very fabric of our democratic institutions that kind of, you know, afford us our national identity. Attacks on people who happen to live outside of the arbitrary imaginary lines that draw our "borders," or who happen to adhere to different religious beliefs besides one very narrow (and inaccurate) interpretation of Christianity. Attacks on the health of our environment and our schools. Attacks on years-long foreign diplomacy efforts that jeopardize our national security in ways we couldn't have imagined like, LAST MONTH.

I need M to call Killer Mike. I need M to call D'Angelo. I need M to call Tribe. I need M to call Solange.

I got a lot to be mad about

Despite her cultivation of the diva image froofing around in high heels and bodysuits, I think M is fairly political, meaning I think she has some fairly pointed opinions on issues and does care about who is running this country and in which direction it is going. But is this ever reflected in the music?

Incredibly, "There's Got to Be a Way" from Mariah Carey (1990) still stands as M's most overtly sociopolitical commentary to date:

[Chorus:]

There's got to be a way

To connect this world today

Come together to relieve the pain

There's got to be a way

To unite this human race

And together we'll bring on a change

In another land they still believe

Color grants supremacy

I don't understand

How there can be

Regulated bigotry

Some of us don't even wonder

Some of us don't even care

Couldn't we accept each other

Can't we make ourselves aware

[Chorus]

And maybe then the future will be a time

Without war, destitution, and sorrow

And hungry children won't have to die

If we work together today

We'll save tomorrow

This is fairly standard early 90's social consciousness stuff, lacking specificity as well as any suggestion that M had actually experienced any real pain or angst (see "Make it Happen" from Emotions for allusions to her bio, but only as it plays into the rags-to-riches rising star narrative).

One song that I've never seen discussed is "Reflections" from Glitter (probably why it's rarely discussed -- sadly, too few have heard it). Granted the song is sung from the perspective of the main character, Billie, and directed towards her mother, but I doubt M would have included a pro-choice lyric if she herself didn't share the sentiment:

Did you care at all for me?
If I'm not quite good enough
Or somehow undeserving of

A mother's love
You could have had the decency
To give me up
Before you gave me life

December 31, 2017:

Looking back at this draft from January, I remember the despair and depression I was feeling then. The sense of hopelessness and powerlessness. I still feel that way to some extent, but there have at least been some wins (Doug Jones, keeping some parts of Obamacare) and overall the momentum seems positive heading into the 2018 midterms. Also life intervened and distracted me. The good intentions I had at the beginning of 2017 to faithfully complete the weekly actions of Wall of Us and Jen Hoffman, and to reconnect with Black Lives Matter and Speaking Down Barriers didn't last the whole year. How can I now ask of M what I haven't done myself?

I guess the ultimate message is, on the eve of this new year, that it's never too late to turn it around, to get back in the swing, and to pick up again. It starts with each one of us. And we can start again, we can reconnect to the message every day.

.

P.S. There's hope after all for M -- did you know she's fighting climate change??