MDJ Celebrates Mariah's 20 Years In Music: 2000

Posted by Raiff on Tuesday, 25-May-2010, 12:01PM EDT

"I'm so thankful that this talented young woman has shared her talent with the world. I love her," Olivia Newton John told the audience at the American Music Awards in January 2000, as she presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Mariah Carey. In less than two months (yet spread between the 20th and 21st centuries), she had been presented special awards by two different legendary female artists she looked up to. The honors came barely ten years after the little girl with a demo tape and a dream had released her first single. For millions of fans around the world, Mariah Carey had proven that dreams do come true.

Mariah opened the show that night with a performance of her latest single, "Thank God I Found You," joined on stage by Joe and rapper NAS, with whom she had recorded a remix. The song was the second single from Rainbow. This song was popular among the teen-pop audience, many of whom got to know Mariah's music through the latest album. As had been the pattern with the past few singles, Mariah managed to sell a lot of CD singles with relatively little airplay. The song became her 15th #1 single, but only stayed at the top for one week, sandwiched in between two weeks at #2.

One thing Mariah had come under fire for in the media for over the past couple years was her image. She was wearing shorter ensembles than she had in previous years, and her dress at the American Music Awards left little to the imagination. In a February appearance on "The Rosie O'Donnell Show," Rosie called her out on this specific outfit, and in one of her more memorable TV moments, Mariah clapped her hands and exclaimed, "I have something to say!" Now that she had made sure she had everyone's attention, she proceeded to explain, "For the first five or six or seven years of my career, they made me wear a top up to here, and things down to there, so if I wanna show my body in a dress, I'm gonna show it!"

At this point, Rainbow was holding steady on the charts and had produced two #1 singles. The momentum was going strong, and Mariah decided to keep it going by taking her music - and her new wardrobe - on the road. Many of her fans, old and new, around the globe had never had the chance to see her live before, and that was about to change. On February 14, The Rainbow Tour kicked off in Antwerp, Belgium, before a sold-out crowd at Sportpaleis. Over the course of the next month, Mariah played to the masses in Europe and Asia. This included returns to France, Germany, United Kingdom, and Japan, as well as first-time performances in Spain, Italy, and Singapore. Soon after, it was the moment that millions of fans had been waiting for: Her first U.S. tour in seven years. The North American leg of the tour kicked off at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on March 16, and took her through major markets including Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, New York City, and Toronto, Canada.

"The Rainbow Tour" had something for everyone: long dresses, short ensembles, video skits, a boxing scene between Mariah and "Bianca," a "Miss Diva 2000" pageant, and of course plenty of the hits, most of which many fans were hearing live for the first time. Throughout the course of two hours, Mariah took the audience through the past ten years, from "Vision of Love" and "Emotions" to "My All" and "Heartbreaker." Also featured were "Close My Eyes" and "Petals," two fan favorites which surely brought smiles to the faces and tears to the eyes of many fans in the crowd. Although the fans were pleased with the show, the critics were not won over. Variety proclaimed that "Mariah Carey's show begs for either simplicity of coherency," while the Boston Globe stated that "Carey's voice great; visuals a mess." This did not deter Mariah, who told her audience at the Fleet Center in Boston, "This show is for you and I too have a good time! And if you have fun, then I have succeeded and nothing else matters!" Two shows on the tour, Boston and Toronto, were cancelled and re-scheduled after Mariah came down with food poisoning in Atlanta. The final show, in Toronto, was filmed for release on DVD and home video, but never came out.

On April 9, in between tour stops, Mariah appeared at Madison Square Garden to film the third annual "VH1 Divas" concert to benefit the Save The Music foundation. The show premiered on April 11, which incidentally was the same night that the Rainbow Tour stopped at Madison Square Garden. Mariah opened the show with a mashup of "Heartbreaker" and Diana Ross' "Love Hangover." Later on, she returned to sing "Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)," which she dedicated to "anyone going through any sort of adversity, any sort of struggle, any kind of pain." She joined Diana Ross in a medley of "Baby Love" and "Stop! In The Name of Love" and later took part in a group performance of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," which featured all of the evening's divas on stage.

In May, Mariah was honored at the World Music Awards. In addition to being awarded World's Best Selling R&B Female, she was recognized as the World's Best Selling Female Artist of the Millenium:

"This is a completely and totally bizarre experience for me, to be receiving the award for Artist of the Millenium... It's the same award that Michael Jackson is receiving. I mean, he's been making number one records, prior to my birth. He's truly a legend and I just feel blessed to be here tonight. I still actually feel like that little girl, living on a mattress, on the floor, making a demo tape and just trying to get heard, and there's a lot of those people out there. So everybody out there, keep your head up. If you're working towards a dream, don't give up and don't stop."

A month later, Mariah appeared at the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, where she performed "Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)" and won Favorite Female R&B Artist.

The final single to be issued from Rainbow (and for that matter, by Sony Music) in the U.S. was a double A-side: "Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)" and "Crybaby." Under Billboard regulations for double A-sides, the song that led in airplay when the single first charts received the sales points for the life of the single, and in this case, it was "Crybaby."

The music videos for "Can't Take That Away" and "Crybaby" were directed by Sanaa Hamri. "Can't Take That Away" featured footage of fans who had won the "Double Rainbow Contest," which asked fans to film their interpretation of what "Mariah's Theme" meant to them. In the video, Mariah is depicted in an apartment writing in a journal and watching stories of people who have overcome hardships on television. These people included tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, and her nephew Shawn. It is raining throughout the video, and at the end, Mariah comes to the window in time to see a rainbow appear. The "Crybaby" video shows Mariah on a restless night in her apartment, as she texts with Snoop Dogg, who appears in the video via Mariah's telephone screen.

"Can't Take That Away" and "Crybaby" made little to no impact at radio or at music video outlets. It fared better at retail, however, where two singles were issued: a regular CD single featuring the two songs plus Mariah's performance of "Love Hangover/Hearbreaker" from VH1 Divas Live, and a CD maxi-single featuring two David Morales remixes of "Can't Take That Away." Because of Mariah's power to sell singles, the double-single made the top 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The release of "Can't Take That Away" was the center of a very public battle between Mariah and Sony Music. Sony did not feel that an additional single from Rainbow was necessary, but Mariah fought very hard to get the song released. As a result, Sony Music did little to promote the song at radio. Mariah, who was growing increasingly unhappy with her label, spoke out against this lack of support several times via voice messages on her official website. One such message was taken down by Sony almost immediately after it had been posted:

"As a lot of you know, the political situation in my professional career is not stellar and I am getting a lot of negative feedback from certain corporate people. Still, I'm not willing to give up on 'Can't Take That Away' and I just don't want to let you all down if it is not a big top 5 or 10 record. The only reason I say this is because lots of you write that it is a #1 song... What is most important to me are those of you who say the song has given you hope and strength. I just want to reach as many people as possible, and it is so hard with my professional situation to ever really know what is going on- so it's truly a complete mess. I love you all so much for caring about my music and I always will."

Internationally, "Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)" was pushed as the final single from Rainbow. For maximum appeal, the song was re-done as a duet with Westlife, a hugely successful boy-band in Europe. Although Mariah did not re-cut her vocal, the instrumental was re-produced with a more prevalent violin section. A music video was issued, featuring Mariah and Westlife recording the song and sight-seeing on the island of Capri. The new version of "Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)" peaked at #1 in the UK. This was only Mariah's second #1 in that country, the first being her cover of "Without You."

In the fall of 2000, filming commenced on All That Glitters, which would later become known simply as Glitter. The project had first come up more than three years prior, and now it was finally coming to fruition. "This is a project near and dear to my heart," Mariah told Rolling Stone. "It's something I've wanted to do for a long time." It was quite an ambitious project she had ahead of herself: In addition to playing the lead role, Mariah also co-produced the movie and had already recorded the soundtrack.

All That Glitters was based on Mariah's own concept: An aspiring singer, Billie Frank, struggling with her multi-racial identity and trying to re-connect with her mother, who abandoned her at a young age. Many drew parallels between the movie's plotline and Mariah's life, but she was quick to point out that the film was not autobiographical. "My mother is white, and she was never unstable. She's an opera singer," she would later tell Movieline. And the DJ that Billie meets isn't like any man I've ever been with. Trust me, Billie has totally different issues than I do."

As filming began in New York and moved on to Toronto, the process took its toll. "At times in this film, I have been an emotional wreck," she told US. "It's good I have this outlet to release my feelings."

MARIAH QUOTES

"I think that I internalise a lot of my sadness, but I try to laugh through the difficult times. Even when I'm in a moment of intense despair, I'll think of some joke, and if I'm crying hysterically, I'll just laugh." Cosmopolitan

"I think it was the right decision, early on, for me to be very simple and very, you know, for people to just focus on my voice and songwriting - although people didn't even realize that I wrote songs, and some of them still don't - and that was cool for a year and a half, two years, but hey, there comes a time when you say, 'Can I get a different hairdo and a new ensemble please?" MTV News 1515

In addition to having two personae, Mariah has three physiologically distinct singing voices: what's called a whisper voice, which is the uppermost part of her range; the high voice, breathy voice that falls in the middle; and the belting range. "They stick a thing down your throat - I have pictures of it," she says. "When my doctor lectures, he uses me as an example. A freak example." Rolling Stone

Patricia Carey, Mariah's mom: "If I didn't see and experience all the things she does in a day, I wouldn't believe it, either. She's always been like that: never stopping, always writing, always doing something."

"She's certainly more content with herself, and there's a peace that she has now that she didn't have for a long time, that she certainly didn't have when she was married. But now she's back to being the old Mariah. The Mariah who grew up fun-loving and outgoing is back. And she wasn't here for a while."

Trey Lorenz: "I always said that if Mariah's personality came out as it really is, there would be no stopping her and people would really love her. I think it was different even a few years ago, when she really wasn't able to express herself. Now, when people are like, 'She's so different!' I say, 'No, you're actually seeing more of Mariah, as far as the cool side and the person who's just like you, more than you ever got to see.' Because she's cool people."

TV APPEARANCES