Those looking for insight into the romantic mind-sets of
single-again divas Mariah Carey and Vanessa Williams won't
have much luck listening to their new albums, though Carey's
"Butterfly" (in stores Tuesday) offers some tantalizing
possibilities. She wrote the lyrics to all but one of the album's
12 songs, and fans are likely to read more than they probably
should into lines like these from the title track: "Blindly I
imagined I could keep you under glass/ now I understand to
hold you/ I must open up my hands/ and watch you rise."
Ten-to-one that's not what Tommy Mottola's thinking -- and
wouldn't we like to know what he is thinking as he watches
"Butterfly" rising up the charts in the next few weeks (the first
single, "Honey," is already No. 1). Mottola is Carey's
soon-to-be-former husband, as well as the head of her record
label, to which he himself signed the then-unknown Carey just
eight years ago. Talk about conflicted!
There are two Mariah Careys on "Butterfly." One is the
pop-oriented, ballad-leaning traditionalist who works very
effectively with her longtime professional partner,
composer-producer Walter Afanasieff. The other is a
self-styled hip-hop fanatic who worked with Ol' Dirty Bastard
on her last album and teams up here with several of that genre's
movers and shakers, most notably Sean "Puffy" Combs, the
godfather of hip-hop soul and the hottest producer in pop
music today.
Unfortunately, Carey's not quite as confident, or half as
convincing, in this second role as she is in the first. Part of the
problem is that her voice -- naturally strong, emotive and full of
presence -- is built for sweeping melody and grand gesture.
The Combs-produced "Honey" -- about being addicted to love
and apparently giddily dependent -- has a spare funkiness
about it, but it doesn't really take advantage of Carey's power
or prowess. She seems more visitor than homegirl, even in the
company of rappers Mase & The Lox.
Combs, the master of recombinant hip-pop, may be spreading
himself a little thin these days. His other track (co-produced
with Carey and Stevie J) is "Breakdown," which features guest
raps by Wish Bone and Krayzie Bone of Bone
Thugs-N-Harmony. Unwisely, the singer seems to defer to her
guests, opting for an odd singsong vocal delivery that's a
clumsy corollary to Bone Thugs' singsong rap (happily, Carey
doesn't try to emulate the group's rapid-fire delivery).
The song itself is one of those open to interpretation. Seemingly
about romantic disassociation, it posits Carey as victim (though
she's the one who sought a separation). "So what do you do
when somebody you're devoted to/ suddenly stops loving you
and it seems they haven't got a clue/ of the pain that rejection is
putting you through," she broods. "Do you cling to your pride
and sing `I will survive' . . . I go home at night and turn down all
the lights and then I break down and cry." (This takes some
time when you're living in a 28-room mansion in Westchester
County.)
There's one other hip-hop track, "The Roof," produced by
Poke and Tone of Track Masters (Nas, Mary J. Blige). An
"Up on the Roof" for the '90s, it's deeper on mood than
melody, and Carey's vocals glide over the rhythms as she
describes an endless ache to "relive the splendor of you and I/
on the rooftop that rainy night."
Carey runs the gamut of emotions on "Butterfly," but it's
Afanasieff who seems best suited to keeping pace with her.
The Afanasieff-produced title track is a lush pop ballad that
frames Carey's voice quite effectively and while it belabors its
point -- "I have learned that beauty/ has to flourish in the light/
wild horses run unbridled/ or their spirit dies" -- its bridge soars
and there's even a faint glimmer of possible reconciliation.
"My All" is another yearning ballad with Babyface-style
romantic extremism ("I'd risk my life to feel/ your body next to
mine"), while "Fourth of July" is a giddy remembrance of what
seems to be a youthful tryst in which a couple settles "on the
flowery hillside/ breathless and fervid" amid dandelions and
fireflies. And when was the last time you heard "fervid" in a pop
lyric?
The album's lone cover is Prince's "The Beautiful Ones," which
features Carey trading verses with Baltimore's hot vocal group
Dru Hill on an arrangement that's pretty close to the original's
seductively devotional mood.
Other than providing grist for the rumor mill, "Butterfly"
suggests that Carey's just beginning to find her voice as a
writer. Had Andrew Lloyd Webber written "Love Hurts," it
might have sounded like "Whenever You Call." A separation
song with classical echoes and grand sentiments -- "we cannot
turn back/ we can only turn into one" -- it builds to an
emotional and orchestral climax that's nonetheless more
constrained than similar ventures on previous Carey albums.
By Richard Harrington, Sunday, September 14, 1997; The Washington Post
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