"The Pop-Gospel According to Mariah Carey"

Mariah Carey has the air of an ambitious teen-ager who was forced to grow 
up too fast. One-half diffident youth, one-half brusque sophisticate, she 
seems to be a woman who doesn't believe in wasting words. And her shyness 
is only partly concealed by the determined set of her jaw.
        One day last July, the 21-year-old singer, who had been up until 
6 in the morning, was back in the studio by 2 in the afternoon, helping 
mix final vocals on her new album. She was clearly relishing her 
workhorse schedule. For, appearances to the contrary, Ms. Carey did not 
magically ascend from nowhere 15 months ago to the top of the pop charts. 
        "Most people don't think I've paid any dues," she said during a 
break at Right Track Recording in midtown Manhattan. "But I condensed 10 
years of work into 3. It was like fast-forwarding. I worked around the 
clock. I would waitress until midnight, then go to the studio and work 
till 7 in the morning on the album, then sleep, then do the whole thing 
again, day after day. No one helped me out, and I lived on very little 
money."
        That debut album, "Mariah Carey" -- one of the most intensively 
promoted in Columbia Records history -- has sold more than five million 
copies and won Ms. Carey a Grammy for best new artist of 1990. The 
follow-up, "Emotions" (Columbia 47980; all three formats), to be released 
Tuesday, arrives less than a year and a half later. Coming so soon on the 
heels of her megahit, the release cuts against conventional wisdom in the 
record business. Most pop stars wait two to three years between albums.
        "I discussed it with everyone," she said. "We decided I should 
put out a new album soon, becuase I was growing so much from the last album.
        "I wanted 'Emotions' to be more sparsely produced than the first 
one," she continued, "and for the most part it is. I also wanted to use 
the influences of all the music I loved, like Motown stuff and Stevie 
Wonder. I felt the uptempo songs were a little overproduced on the first 
record."
        Both records feature Ms. Carey's technically impressive and 
impassioned pop-gospel singing. Few vocalists in any musical genre have 
voices as flexible as Ms. Carey's nearly four-octave instrument.
        The new record should mute critical dismissals of Ms. Carey as a 
Whitney Houston vocal clone, even though their albums have been made by 
many of the same hands. In the last year, Ms. Carey has succeeded in 
stealing some of Ms. Houston's thunder. Sales of "Mariah Carey" have 
exceeded those of Ms. Houston's third and latest record, "I'm Your Baby 
Tonight," by some two million copies. 
        Ms. Carey is uncomfortable discussing the comparisons. But Walter 
Afanasieff, who helped arrange Ms. Houston's three albums and co-produced 
several tracks on "Emotions" with Ms. Carey, is not.
        "Mariah is a songwriter and prducer as well as a singer," he 
said. "Whitney doesn't write songs and doesn't produce. She usually comes 
in and sings at the last stage of the recording process. Whitney has a 
beautiful voice, but Mariah has infinitely more control. Mariah will 40 
ideas of what to sing on a particular lick and choose the best. I think 
'Emotions' will show a total separation between the two."
        Although most songs on "Emotions" stick to the pop-gospel format 
of the first album, Ms. Carey's profile has been dramatically sharpened 
with leaner, springier arrangements. And her vocal trademark -- in which 
she leaps into a high coloratura register and swings like a virtuoso 
trapeze artist -- is showcased much more effectively on "Emotions." If 
Ms. Carey's sonic feats are comparable to those of Yma Sumac or Minnie 
Riperton, what distinguishes them is a rhythmic charge. At the opposite 
extreme, Ms. Carey's dark lower register is showcased powerfully for the 
first time in "If It's Over," a collaboration with Carole King that harks 
back to Ms. King's late-60s classic, "A Natural Woman."
        Here and there, Ms. Carey's singing takes on a raw, rockish edge 
that recalls the soul belter Teena Marie. And on the album's final cut, 
"The Wind," she moves promisingly into the realm of jazz-torch singing. 
The song was discovered by Mr. Afanasieff on Keith Jarrett's "Paris 
Concert" album. Ms. Carey added her own lyrics.
        The only sign of pop immaturity on "Emotions" can be found in Ms. 
Carey's lyrics, which describe the rapturous highs and desperate lows of 
romance in blunt, strung-together pop cliches, with minimal rhyming. 
"You've got me feeling emotions," go the opening lines of the album's 
title song. "Deeper than I've ever dreamed of/ You've got em feeling 
emotions/ Higher than the heavens above."

        Ms. Carey, who seems much too practical to be the tortured 
romantic her lyrics suggest, insisted that her writing does not mirror a 
tempostuous love life.
        "Sometimes the inspiration is more real life than romance, but I 
make it about love because it's easier to write about, and more people 
can relate to it."
        Ms. Carey's no-nonsense attitude reflects the pragmatism of 
someone who has always viewed herself as independent. Her parents were 
divorced when she was 3. Her father, an aeronautical engineer, is black 
and Venezuelan. Her mother, Patricia Carey, who is of Irish descent, is 
a vocal coach and opera singer who was a soloist with the New York City 
Opera in the late 60's and early 70's. Her brother and sister, who are 9 
and 10 years her senior, left home by their late teens. Beginning at age 
7, Ms. Carey said, her only baby sitter was a little radio. 
        "My mom and I almost grew up together," she said. "We were like a 
team. She used to bring me with her everywhere, and I was like a 
young adult at 5 or 6. Because she sometimes worked during the day and at 
night, I often had to stay home alone. It was what gave me my independence."
        The family moved 13 times, though at least during her teens Ms. 
Carey was able to stay in one place, Huntington, L.I., long enough to make 
friends. While most of them went off to college, she moved to New York to 
pursue her career. Obsessed with pop music since she was a toddler, Ms. 
Carey began songwriting at 13. Through friends of her brother, she met 
Ben Margulies, her first impotant collaborator. Together they wrote six 
songs for her first album, including the No.1 hits "Vision of Love," 
"Someday" and "Love Takes Time." The two are now estranged because of a 
business dispute. 
        "When we met she was 17 years old and I was 24," Mr. Margulies 
recalled the other day. "We worked together for a three-year period 
developing most of the songs on the first album. She had the ability just 
to hear things in the air and to start developing songs out of them. 
Often I would sit down and start playing something, and from the feel of 
a chord, she would start singing melody lines and coming up with a concept.
        "I'm looking forward to getting back to together in the not too 
distant future and working again like we used to. Hopefully, art will 
prevail over business." 
        Through Manhattan's musical network, Ms. Carey landed a job as a 
backup singer for Brenda K. Starr, a dance-music performer who became her 
outspoken champion. It was Ms. Starr who, at a record-industry party, 
dragged Ms. Carey over to meet Tommy Mottola, the president of CBS 
Records (now Sony Music Entertainment), and gave him her tape. Mr. 
Mottola made Ms. Carey his protegee and served as executive producer of 
both records (published reports have linked them romantically, though 
neither will discuss their relationship publicly).
        The personalized star treatment undoubtedly jump-started her 
career, but it's likely her phenomenal gospel voice would have propelled 
her to the top of the charts anyway. Though Ms. Carey sounds as if she 
grew up singing in a Harlem church, she discovered gospel in a roundabout 
way.

        "When I was a little girl, my brother and sister were listening 
to records by Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Gladys 
Knight," she said. "When I got older, I found out that Al Green and 
Aretah Franklin had recorded gospel records, and I went out and bought 
them. From ther I discovered the Clark Sisters, Shirley Caesar, Mahalia 
Jackson, Vanessa Bell Armstrong and whoever. I love that style because 
it's so free and real and raw."

        She was never tempted to study opera, although she has the voice 
for it. "I respect incredibly all the years of vocal training you have to 
sing that way," she said, "but it's just not me." Still, without her 
mother's example, she probably wouldn't have become a professional singer.

        "Because my mom did it for a living when I was young, I knew it 
could be more than a pipe dream," she said. "My mom always told me, 'You 
are special. You have a talent.' She gave me the belief that I could do 
this."

        If Ms. Carey is a major pop celebrity, she is the temperamental 
opposite of a star like Madonna, who demands attention, revels in 
controversy and loves performing. Although she has yet to embark on a 
tour. Sooner or later, she realizes, she will have to make the leap.

        "I'm not a Broadway type of person," she said. "I'm something of 
an introvert, who is happiest when I'm creating in my own little world in 
the studio. I'm not into performing. I have to make myself do it because 
it comes with the territory. If I toured, I wouldn't have had another 
album out for at least another year. It's so hard on my voice. I need a 
lot of sleep, and my songs are all strenuous. Because I'm not a 
dancer-slash-singer, when I go out there people don't want to hear me 
just breeze through them. They want to hear every note. I'm definitely 
not going to do a full-out tour for this album either.

        "I don't want to be about hype and media," she continued. "I 
don't want to put myself in everyone's face and make them sick of me at 
this early stage of my career. I make pop music. That's what I do, and it 
makes me happy. I want to be around for a while."