Back in 1994, Mariah Carey launched a takeover of Christmas so complete it rivalled the landgrab executed by Coca-Cola. Starting in 1931, Coke made Santa Claus jolly and his coat, which had previously been a variety of colours, Coca-Cola red. The company’s website denies the colour change but admits the wider branding point.
Sixty-odd years later, All I Want for Christmas Is You made Christmas all about Mimi. On the song itself, so full of yearning and shocking anti-consumerism (“I don’t care about the presents…”), Carey paid jingling tribute to the girl groups on A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector (1963). The fug of abusive testosterone that now hangs over Spector’s every opus can’t quite dent the magnificence of those largely African American young women; two songs from that album still figure in Carey’s repertoire. In the AIWFCIY video, Carey lands in Santa’s lap – a cameo played by her then-husband, Columbia exec Tommy Mottola, whom she subsequently accused of controlling behaviour. Often caricatured as a petulant diva, one indicator that Carey has a personality is how the songbird with the five-octave range referred to their shared mansion as Sing Sing.
All I Want for Christmas Is You – back in the charts this week at No 2 – came from an album, Merry Christmas (1994), so successful, Carey made another one, Merry Christmas II You (2010). There is clearly nothing that says “Christmas” so much as a fortysomething female superstar who has overcome adversity: not even the combined forces of two other stars – Sia (whose Everyday Is Christmas LP came out in November) and Gwen Stefani (You Make It Feel Like Christmas, released in October) – have managed to unseat Carey from her position atop Christmas’s tree.
Every year, Carey stages a series of seasonal extravaganzas in New York. Last year, one disastrous New Year’s Eve show filmed for live TV was beset by technical problems, revealing that Carey expected to mime to her songs.
Undaunted, this year Carey delivers this saturated figgy pudding of a show to us. Dressed, at least initially, as a mermaid clad in champagne, Carey emotes her way through an opening medley of hymns, which segues – visually and aurally – into a Peanuts Christmas special.
“I wrote this song for my second Christmas album,” Carey confides of Oh Santa!. “This one is from my first Christmas album,” she says of several other songs. Inter alia, we learn that live reindeer form part of the festivities chez Carey. Seasonal themes include a giant tree, fake snow, gospel choirs, a snowman, Santa, bits of The Nutcracker, another choir, Carey’s own children, some other children, Dick Van Dyke-calibre faux British accents, actual presents, trimmings, trappings. There is much beefcake on display, too – including Carey’s current partner, dancer Bryan Tanaka, who has a great throwing arm, lobbing one toy bear into the stands.
The yeti in the room is whether Carey is singing at all, of course. On balance, her mouth and throat move; corresponding sounds come out of speakers. You wait and wait for Carey to hit at least some of the frequencies that made her such a prodigy, however.
There’s a tease on Oh Santa! when Carey hits one dog-whistle note. Then nothing, for ages. On Silent Night she is joined by her three backing vocalists and about 30 choristers; who knows who is singing what, frankly.
Carey is justly famed for her melismas – the now tiresome habit of inserting as many notes into a syllable as possible, which currently defines “proper singing”, at least as seen on TV. And yet you find yourself yearning for a Carey vocal run that will floor you beyond doubt. She parcels out the vocal histrionics very carefully: a note held here, some lower register warblings there. On Joy to the World – just Carey and piano – her performance certainly sounds like the real deal.
But it is a medley of three non-Christmas songs that gets the crowd overjoyed. If everyone who ever saw the Sex Pistols formed a band, everyone touched by Mimi has gone on to be a belter – even if it’s just in the shower. As a result, these singalongs are deafening.
On Hero, she finally sounds in strong voice. On Emotions, however (from the 1991 album of the same name), she really gives the melisma some welly, finally making way for those high, high notes. All we wanted for Christmas was some near-inaudible frequencies, and – barring any footage that reveals otherwise – Carey finally delivers.
