Glitter - Carey, Mariah (CD 2001)

Her last solo album of original material was at the time, the only bad record she'd ever done. It was subpar material for a superstar recording artist. Rainbow saw Carey score the largest first week sales of her life, but for an album that was un-Carey like. It favored R&B and hip hop production more than ever, and wasn't as good as Butterfly which saw the start of her new style. With Glitter, Carey was going to do a throwback record to the 80's that was the soundtrack to her movie of the same name. It was an exciting time for Mariah with a huge new record deal, except that she supposedly overworked herself and had a physical and emotional breakdown that caused the release of both the movie and the record to be delayed. On top of that, the record had the distinction of being released on September 11, 2001.

This is Carey's most chaotic work. It's directionless. It's trademark Mariah ballads, and then it's Ja Rule singing horrendously. It's daring covers that are diluted with cheesy rap production gaffes. It's as overworked as she was at the time. Loverboy and the remix are both on this album and the remix was the first single off the album. The song samples Candy and even features Cameo redoing his original vocals. My song is downright annoying. It needles you. Add Da Brat and Ludacris and it becomes funny bone tingling. More Heartbreaker than Honey, it didn't get much radio airplay, and it set the tone for the rest of the album.

Mariah wanted an 80's vibe. She wanted the sound to be retro, a throwback if you will. If that was the case, what do Ja Rule, Fabolous, and Mystikal have to do with the 80's? You'd think Mariah would bring back some artists from the 80's to help her be true to the sound. On If We, Ja Rule puts 12 marbles in his mouth and decides to sing. On Don't Stop (Funkin' 4 Jamaica), Mystikal raps his familiar "shake your a**" lyrics. And on Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, F-A-B (you get the idea) decides to share with us many more ways to rhyme words with Mariah. But he's not the biggest problem. Busta Rhymes decides to put on his shiny suit and do his best P. Diddy impersonation by speaking all over the record. All three songs on their own, aren't Mariah's best material, but it does show that slapping on a random rapper without reason can take an average song, and make it bad. I'm not blaming it all on the guest rappers, but it doesn't help.

Carey's trademark adult contemporary ballads are what saved this record from being a complete and utter joke (though folks will say it still is). Out of the ballads, there's one specifically that is excellent. Never Too Far is Greatest Hits quality, and probably the only song that is of that high quality from this album. It starts out slowly, almost to a point of urging her to get it in gear. But when she hits the chorus, it explodes. The production is light and dreamy, letting her voice shine, which surprisingly doesn't always happen on this album. Reflections (Care Enough) is your paint by numbers Mariah ballad, but it's done well enough and at this point, you're dying to hear something half way decent. I'm not fond of her singing throughout most of the song, as she's sort of in the middle of a high note and a really high note. It doesn't even really sound natural. But, production wise, it's solid and again, let's us hear her voice, rather than how many bells and whistles are in the song. Twister is an odd song, which seems to be sung from the perspective of the lead character of her movie, and it clocks in at under 3 minutes. Just by the time alone, it's total filler. Lead The Way is the worst of the four, but mostly because of the mundane piano work. She's still in that awkward note for much of the song as well.

Two fun songs which aren't really all that good or bad, but at least fit the framework of what she was trying to do are All My Life which was written and produced by the late Rick James and Didn't Mean To Turn You On. The Rick James tune is as funky as Mariah's going to get. He brings out the genuine fun in her. Carey said at the time that she was a little worried about the sexual style James writes in, but decided to go with whatever he had for her. Didn't Mean To Turn You On fit the genre to a tee with it's overly synthetic feel. The production gets tired after a while, but I believe this was the song in which Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis pulled out of their archives from their Time era. There's a reason they left it out originally though.

This record is a complete and total disaster for someone like Carey who had just signed a huge new record deal and was trying to embark on a film career, and one in which she hasn't yet completely recovered from.

1.5 stars.