“I don’t acknowledge time,” is one of the first things Mariah Carey sings on her new album, Here for It All. Within the larger scheme of her public persona, this has come to be a refrain, a fun fact about her that is oft repeated in interviews. Her aversion to time is one of her diva affectations, like punctuating sentences with dahling or insisting on being photographed from the right, such that when she appears on Watch What Happens Live, she takes Andy Cohen’s usual seat. There are obvious reasons why someone of Carey’s superstar stature would ignore the clock. One is plausible deniability when she shows up late for an appointment. Another is that time is held against pop stars, especially women, whose years of hard work are met with apathy or even contempt as they age out of charting on Billboard. It’s just not fair. If Carey can’t bend the world to her will, she can at least blank out its needless punishment.
Time, on the other hand, does acknowledge Mariah Carey, and that’s made clear on Here for It All. Her voice, a force of nature that launched her career into the stratosphere, is often hoarse on the album. At times, her rasp flirts with an alternate key. Whereas in the past Carey’s voice glided between notes as though her saliva were silicone based, here it sometimes trips. There are plenty of the kind of creamy, luscious vocals Carey’s known for on Here for It All, particularly when she projects from her chest. Sometimes she still soars. But her vocal roughness is too frequent to be an oversight. It’s unlikely that she just didn’t feel like doing another take, given the perfectionism evinced throughout her career. No, this is Carey opting for realistic portraiture of where she is now as a singer, and if her voice sounds blown out, well, of course it does after singing with the force she has for decades. The grit is alluring, bringing a tear-stained realness to her vulnerable lyrics and teasing out the soul of Paul McCartney and Wings’ previously easy-listening ballad “My Love.” Carey’s raw-piped cover saps much of the song’s schmalz, giving it an unlikely edge.
The voice, and Carey’s decision to spotlight where she is (which, whether she admits it or not, is a tacit acknowledgment of time), is the boldest of Here for It All’s moves, a kind of no-makeup sound for a persona devoted to glamour. The album is otherwise a pleasant collection of the kind of well-constructed melodies that typify Carey’s output. It leans toward a full-band sound, particularly on its collaborations with Anderson .Paak and Carey’s bandleader Daniel Moore II, though there are bassy electronic ballads as well, like the skittery opener “Mi,” the lovely Caribbean-kissed single “Sugar Sweet,” and the deliciously petty “Confetti and Champagne,” a fuck-you to an ex in which Carey proclaims, “Cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers/To me, not you, just me.” It sounds crafted to become an audio meme.
