Granted, this is only my third season of even watching one episode, but damn if this isn’t the sorriest crop of contestants I’ve ever seen in my life! Was I spoiled by Season 5? ‘Cause damn, I’d take McPhee, Bennett, Daughtry, Yamin and Taylor over any of this year’s final three.
David Cook is bland beyond milquetoast, David Archuleta is a pretty-singing cipher, and Syesha is in a bit over her head.
Moreso than the blandness of the finalists, though, this season’s episodes have had the slightly sour air of a fix. The product placement is amazingly obvious, and this episode seemed as much of an advertisement for Switchfoot and Diane Warren as it was anything else. (Is it me, or does it seem amazingly obvious that Cook has won this competition?-or at least that the judges are pulling ridiculously strongly for him?). This just feels a little preordained for me, and it makes me feel more than a little uncomfortable. Not like I should care at all, but still…
No, I’m not writing this to discuss her marriage to bad actor/bad rapper/semi-funny comedian Nick Cannon. Hey, if Mariah’s happy (after what seems like decades of bad relationships), then more power to her.
I’m writing this to discuss the slippery slope of suckitude that her music has bobbled around for nearly a decade now. Not that Mariah’s ever been a particularly consistent listening experience-even this diehard pop fan can’t think of more than 2 or 3 Mariah albums completely worth your time. However, her last two albums in particular have been hailed almost as masterpieces by a segment of the critical community when they’re, well…they’re not very good.
Hey, I don’t want to hear “Hero” again either, you know? But I can see what people are getting at when they turn their noses up at “hip-hop” Mariah. Not only has she caught the same excessive collaboration bug that’s afflicted just about every pop & R&B performer of recent days, but she seems to have regressed lyrically. She’s never exactly been Joni Mitchell (or even Mary J. Blige), but her earlier songs had a maturity to them that newer songs like “Touch My Body” completely lack. And “Touch” is one of the *better* written songs on her new “E=MC2” album.
Despite the fact that “E=MC2” is well on it’s way to unseating Jack Johnson as 2008’s best-selling album, it’s not much different qualitatively than Mariah’s two relative “flops”: “Glitter” and “Charmbracelet”. From the hip-hopped out “One Sweet Day” rewrite of “Bye Bye” to about 4 or 5 songs that directly rip Mariah’s comeback smash “We Belong Together”, the album is overall a lazy and unadventurous experience. And while contemporaries like the aforementioned Blige seem to be at their creative peaks in their late thirties, Mariah (who’s just a year and change older than Mary J.) seems to be regressing. Listen to “Love Takes Time” or “Can’t Let Go” (two of her best early career songs) and then listen to…well, just about any song on “E=MC2” or even half of “Emancipation”. The difference is almost startling.
For my money, her best work came on mid-career albums like “Daydream” and “Butterfly”. The former album is her only completely satisfying listening experience other than her debut. I can even tolerate her somewhat sappy cover of Journey’s “Open Arms” (although I’m not sure I can say the same about the overwrought Boyz II Men collaboration “One Sweet Day”, which I’ve deliberately avoided listening to for at least a decade) but it’s the album that best balances “Adult Contemporary Mariah” with “Urban Mariah”. The latter album ODs a bit on the collaborations (“Breakdown” with Bone Thugs ‘n Harmony, is particularly atrocious), but makes up for it with a wicked awesome song built on Mobb Deep’s unforgettable “Shook Ones” sample (“The Roof”), her all-time best ballad (the title track) and a truly bizarro cover of Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones” with Dru Hill (‘memba them??). She’s more or less been off the rails ever since. And even though I own each of the five albums she’s recorded since, there’s maybe an album and a half’s worth of great material between them.
Despite her astounding success (hell, she has more #1 singles than anyone except for the friggin’ BEATLES) and the fact that critics seem to actually dig her nowadays, it’s probably safe to say that not only has Mariah’s music been decidedly average for the past ten years or so, but that it’s *never* been consistently great. How she’s sustained a two-decade career as (more or less) nothing more than a pretty solid singles artist is one of those mysteries I don’t think I’ll ever figure out.
…but it might be interesting to see her as a guest on “Wild ‘N Out”…
Over at Popdose, my current favorite music site, DW Dunphy prophesizes the end of the album as we know it. In a sense, he says the music industry could very well go back to its’ Sixties model, where artists were signed to “singles” contracts (with singles being the primary income source for the label), and albums were generally an afterthought.
The industry’s boom period of roughly 1995-2002 coincided with the death of the commercial single, an industry move that I think is reason #1 for the situation it’s in today. iTunes is popular now not only because it allows people to purchase music without leaving the comfort of their own home (because, lets’ face it, we’re some lazy motherfuckers), but because you don’t have to spend $12.99 on a piece of shit masquerading as an album. The public went along with the “no single” gambit for a short time-it’s how “artists” like Lou Bega, Aqua and Chumbawamba went on to sell millions of records, but the public eventually wised up (and technology helped) and we’re back to what music has always been to the casual fan (and I’m pretty solid in my belief that 75% of music buyers are “casual”)-a question of whether they like a song, not an album or even necessarily an artist.
Does this mean the album as we know it will die? I’m not too sure about that. I’m positive the industry will move towards signing more artists to single deals in the future, but there’s no way that bands like Radiohead, U2, The White Stripes, Kanye West, Dave Matthews Band, Linkin Park…artists who generally make cohesive statements will follow suit, nor will most of the kids influenced by these acts who are just starting out. There’ll be a changing of the guard, to a degree, but I don’t think the album will ever vanish nor will major labels completely stop signing artists to album deals (although they’ll hopefully be a little more discriminating going forward!!)…
Here’s the original Popdose article here: http://popdose.com/dw-dunphy-on-the-end-of-the-album/
(As a sidenote: I am slowly getting settled in a new locale, and we’ll be ramping the entries up here at the Musichelpweb blog, so stay tuned and keep checking often!!)
