I know I am bit late but I will join the Bill Board Awards bitch fest today.
Better late than never.
We all knew who was going to walk away with the most Top-of's.
National Treasure Taylor Swift and newly slimmed down and on the road to recovery Sam Smith took home basically all the top acknowledgements of the night.
Taylor was sporting a white jump suit and gray-ish green-ish hair color and premiered her new video for her new song. Bad blood and bad ass warrior chicks to the front of the line please.
Sam thanked his fans on a mute video in witch he showed us a series of written messages since he is not allowed to talk after his vocal chord surgery. Sweet boy but he could have made an effort to look a bit more presentable. His voice is at rest but his stylist should have remained fully functional...
I don't think I saw anything groundbreaking during this year show.
- Britney lipsynched her new single with Iggy Azalea - groundbreaking;
- Taylor Swift looked awkward (yet beautiful) in her new high-end music video - groundbreaking;
- Some of the Kardashian-Jenner family were there regardless their lack of contribution to the music industry whatsoever - groundbreaking;
- Kanye Genius West gifted us with some more mastermind wizardry...groundbreaking;
But let's talk about the elephant in the room. Finally Mariah Carey returned to the Bill Board stage after 17 years.
Boy oh boy.
What can I say.
She shouldn't have.
I understand that she has yet another #1 hits album out and a two years residency in Las Vegas to promote but this live performance was very much like bad publicity more than anything else.
Actually it was like watching a car crash happening, you are fairly sure of the outcome and you know it won't be good news but you still can't help but keep your focus on the action even thought the result won't be pleasant.
Have you seen Mariah's latest album cover? I am all up for some good old hair-brushing. Fix a blemish, smooth some wrinkles. But don't blatantly lie to me! Miss Carey is an attractive woman and it would be so amazing if she would just own up to the fact that she looks the way she looks. That album cover is not enhanced, it is a total lie. There she was onstage looking like the inflated version of herself. Not because she was unpleasantly put together but only because our term of paragon were all those damn promotional pictures for her album and Vegas residency. See for yourself.
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| Album cover... |
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| Live Performance... |
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| Hmmm...spot the differences... |
Don't get me wrong I LOVED her for most of my life. For a while she was invincible and she had an amazing career to prove it. Her voice (now only her recordings) still makes me a little bit gayer every time I indulge in my guilty pleasure of working out while listening to the 90's and early 2000's Mariah.
During Carey's performance at the Bill Board Awards I only felt very sad. Her voice is gone and it's not coming back any time soon. What she sang live was barely decent and all of the high notes and her signature whistle-like finale were all together manufactured and prerecorded. You can argue as much as you like but you will never convince me that any of those crystal clear notes she hits nowadays are coming out of her mouth. It is sad and disappointing. And it keeps happening...I have not forgotten her less than pleasant rendition of "All I want for Christmas" from the last Rockefeller Plaza Holidays show. I prefer to watch her great past live performances. Period.
There is such a thing as knowing when it's time to become smarter about career decisions.
Mariah has the status to be a great attraction in Vegas but unfortunately she doesn't have the goods to backup her diva rank.
For instance the other night at the finale of Dancing with the Stars Patty LaBelle (now 70) gave us an unbelievable LIVE performance of "Two Steps Away". YOU MUST HEAD TO THIS LINK AND LISTEN!!!!
She is a diva because no matter how much of a bitch she may be she still has an incomparable instrument to rub in your face: her VOICE.
Mariah shouldn't have any excuse. If she is going to put a whole parade together to promote her new enterprise she should have more to offer than her past glories.
The New York Times basically killed the opening night of her show in Las Vegas (May 6).
Here below the worst-best lines from the article:
Ms. Carey is still durable, and sometimes excellent, but her once-transcendent voice is like decaying manufacturing machinery: It still churns, but the product might be polished or dinged.
When it came to the notes, though, the struggle was real. From the beginning of the night, she was tentative and inconsistent. She sang parts of several songs an octave lower than the recordings.
“Fantasy” featured Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who died in 2004, rapping via video, and he felt more alive than Ms. Carey, who was right there onstage.
She
stood the most still when she was aiming the highest: not for the
run-of-the-mill big notes, but the stratospheric ones that made her
untouchable 25 years ago. She has a routine. Before she sings them, she
pauses for a bit, puts her hand to her eardrum, then points to the sky
as the laserlike shrieks come out.
All
those gestures were there during this show. But as the night wore on,
it became increasingly unclear whether the sounds coming through the
speakers were coming from her mouth. They were crisp and clean, while
many of her lesser notes were gruff and unsteady. It’s more probable that
to fail at those places would have been too great a tragedy to bear.
And
so went this show, which was far more about defense than offense.
Whether the decision to undertake this project was born of necessity,
hubris or obliviousness, it has put Ms. Carey in a precarious position —
she is in decline and trapped in a cage of her own making. It would be
so much easier to turn away if the spotlight weren’t so bright.
Mind you Mariah still have 50 something shows to get herself through. By the way she already cancelled one because of "bronchitis"...and it won't be rescheduled.
It's true what some say:
better retire while you are still on top.
The higher you are the greater the fall. And I am not talking about notes.
Ciao for now.
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