What Separates Mariah Carey from Britney Spears?

What separates Mariah Carey from Britney Spears?  

Talent for one thing.  Ms. Carey can sing.  Ms. Spears can’t.

Comparing the two pop divas might seem pointless.  But with Ms. Carey’s new residency underway at Caesars Palace this week, the adroit singer-artist with a remarkable 18 number one hits spread out over the course of her illustrious 25-year career does draw inevitable comparisons to the empty-headed bimbo lip-synching her entire show across the street over at a Caesars’ sister property Planet Hollywood, while living inside a cocoon most of the time and charging her nitwit “fans” $2,500 a pop for an up-close-and-personal meet-and-greet that’s been timed as short as 3 seconds.  Oh, and no autographs or photos are allowed when the pop princess is present in the room.  No folks, I’m not making this up.

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I’ve been accused of being a hater, and there’s some validity to the charge.  Indeed, I do hate mediocrity being celebrated and obscenely rewarded in our society.  Yes, I do hate it that so many marvelous singers and talented songwriters can’t get into the music business let alone make a decent living while blundering Britney makes a whopping $475,000 per show [SOURCE HERE] for basically doing this every night:

On the other hand, we’ve always known that Ms. Carey was an astounding singer with an amazing voice.  Even those who don’t particularly care for her style of music, or those of us who ridiculed her disastrously short-lived movie career, do acknowledge she’s worthy of being an American musical icon, deserving of marquis prominence at one of the world’s most famous showrooms, like Caesars Coliseum.  In short, Mariah Carey’s name deserves to be up in bright lights, and the bigger and bolder the better.  She should command $120 a ticket, or whatever the mid-range price of seats goes for nowadays.  Meanwhile, Spears should probably be singing at a Holiday Inn lounge somewhere in Monroe, Louisiana, so long as it’s happy hour and the beer’s ice cold and really cheap, and the sax player is really good.

So, why make such a lame overworked comparison between these two Las Vegas headliners?  For a very good reason, which I’ll explain.

I tend to like music that’s raw, rather than overproduced.  Just a personal preference.  I also prefer live shows over studio recordings.  Yes, studio gimmickry is fine and recorded music merits the very best that sound technology can offer the listener.  But when I pay for a ticket to a live show, and particularly when I shell out my money for an expensive ticket in a highly competitive market like Las Vegas which bills itself as the so-called “Entertainment Capital of the World,” then I damn well expect those we have come to revere as our most celebrated musical and cultural artists to deliver some measure of authenticity that all the hype is merited.  I know it’s asking a lot, but I want to see a live show that’s really live, not pre-programmed into a sound machine and dicked around with that horrific atrocity called Autotune.  I know– this all makes me a dinosaur.  I’m such a hater.

But what about the mistakes and inevitable errors one always sees in live performances?  Hey, I’m more than willing to forgive flaws in a show.  Even giant flaws.  I don’t want to see an opera or hear a perfect rendition of a hit song.  If I wanted that, I’d just launch into iTunes and sit back and relax and enjoy.  What we’re hoping to get from a live show that we don’t get with a recording isn’t so much note-for-note perfection so much as an experience.  Mariah Carey, from what I can tell, more often than not delivers that unique experience to her fans, and then some.  My supposition is that Ms. Spears doesn’t, not that most of her fans consisting of bachelorette parties who grew up on Britney’s jailbait act when they were teens themselves, seem to care.

Mariah Carey as an artist grew on me in a big way last Christmastime, when she was blasted in the national media for what was described as an epic musical fail while performing at Rockefeller Center, during a live show that was seen nationally on NBC television.  Ms. Carey went onstage with a live orchestra backing her up, dissed any question of mouthing the words or using Autotune, and then gave us a performance that admittedly wasn’t up to the standards one might expect of Mariah Carey’s remarkable singing voice.  Check it out here:

My reaction to this reported fiasco was, who cares?  Scratchy voice.  So what?  A few high notes fail.  Okay, big fucking deal.  A performance not up to Mariah’s high-standards?  Okay, probably true.  To me, that performance by Ms. Carey showed remarkable confidence and character, something that’s seriously lacking in so many pop artists today when just about everything on stage and on television is over-rehearsed and choreographed to the point where all the juice has been squeezed from the fruit and there are no surprises anymore.

Fortunately, many other artists are now joining the crusade.  They’re calling out the lip-synchers and phonies.  Pink, Elton John, and others have ripped the singers who can’t sing, the performers who parade onstage while squeezing out the real artists who struggle to get heard and who never get the breaks of these lucky few.

Watch more here:

By the way, don’t skip past Elton John’s remarks (above).  He’s dead on ripping the fakes.  I blasted his show once, but I have to admit that took some balls to say what was said about the lip-synchers.  A implore you to click and watch that 90-second clip.

As for me and my entertainment plans, I plan on seeing Mariah Carey sometime in the near future.  I’ll even go and see Britney Spears, that is, when and if the occasion ever comes when we discover that she’s really singing the songs that made her famous, rather than faking it all and conning the whole fucking world, while the real talents out there linger aimlessly among the unknown and remain undiscovered amidst the drudge of flash and mediocrity.