"Pop Meteor Mariah Carey Reaches Back to Aretha for EMOTIONS"

Mariah Carey is remembering the highlights of a trip she made to Los 
Angeles early last year. "I met Michael Jackson," she says. "he didn't 
know who I was, though."
        Jackson would have had to spend the rest of 1990 sealed in a 
hyperbaric chamber to stay ignorant of Carey. Her debut album, MARIAH 
CAREY, full of catchy pop hooks and octave-busting crescendos, spent 22 
weeks at BILLBOARD'S No. 1 spot. The first single, "Vision of Love," was 
everywhere at once, from boom boxes on the beach to in-flight airline 
sound systems. Two Grammy Awards capped the breathtaking rise of a 
twenty-year-old from Long Island who had been sweeping hair off the floor 
of a beauty salon barely two years earlier.
        Now, with MARIAH CAREY having sold 7 million copies worldwide, 
the singer sits behind a mixing board at Right Track Recording on West 
48th Street, finishing her new album, EMOTIONS. "I still don't think of 
myself as a big deal," she says. "There's so many pop fads, I can't start 
thinking of myself as a big deal.' In some ways, Carey seems to have 
remained downright girlish, doodling on a legal pad with a grease pencil 
as she talks, drawing tiny red hearts all over the page.
        But it's clear Carey's trying to grow up and change musically. 
Unlike Whitney Houston, who's looked to hip-hop to spice up her slick pop 
sound, Carey looked backward for inspiration, to the soul and 
rhythm-and-blues of the late sixties and early eighties -- people like 
Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. "There's a rawness about those periods 
in R&B that's somewhat lacking today," she says wthout a hint of irony. 
"EMOTIONS has a little bit of an older-type vibe, a Motown feel. The 
music I like is vocally driven."
        Carey's got miles to go, however, before her music approaches the 
fierceness of Franklin's. EMOTIONS still has plenty of Top 40 sheen, 
particularly on the cuts produced with David Cole and Robert Clivilles, 
of C&C Music Factory. The trio collaborated on four up-tempo numbers, 
including the album's title song, which has an irresistibly bouncy bass 
line an Carey's signature vocal trick -- soaring high notes that most 
singers couldn't reach from the top of the Empire State Building.
        But on other tunes, Carey's reined in the pyrotechnices a bit. 
Inspired by the Mahalia Jackson tapes she buys off late-night television, 
Carey's written "And You Don't Remember," a sentimental, gospel-heavy 
song about a fractured relationship that glides along on the whoosh of a 
Hammond organ. A jazz ballad called "The Wind" draws on Carey's sadness 
over the drunk-driving death of a young friend. Horns and the soulful 
guitar of Cornell Dupree, a veteran of some of Franklin's gems, punctuate 
the sassy "If It's Over," a song Carey wrote with Carole King. "She 
called and wanted me to do a cover of 'Natural Woman,'" Carey says. "I 
didn't want to, because Aretha's one of my idols and that's an 
untouchable performance." So King flew in from her home in Idaho and 
spent a day improvising with Carey.
        Fame has also brought in less welcome guests. Gossip columns have 
said Carey and Columbia Records president Tommy Mottola were making 
private music together. ("I read that stuff and I throw it away," she 
says.) A critic dismissed her as "another white girl trying to sing 
black." (Her father is black, her mother white.) As she talks about these 
bumps in the road, Carey starts jabbing a small square of the legal pad 
with the grease pencil, over and over again, creating an oily red smear.
        Carey's certainly happy with her new album, though, and she's 
shooting a new video to show her EMOTIONS. There'll be no tour, 
unfortunately -- "I like to travel," Carey says, "but it messes up my 
voice, because I have problems sleeping." With the rash confidence of a 
21-year-old who's on top of the world, she says it wouldn't trouble her 
if EMOTIONS bombed -- the success of her first album has given her a 
sense of security. "If I wanted to stay home and write songs and make a 
moderate living, I could do that," Carey says. "I'm not worried that I 
have to go back and waitress."