They're back, and up-front
Dethroned divas Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, climbing Comeback Hill, put carefully selected parts of their hearts on their new CDs.

By Tom Moon
Inquirer Music Critic


Weep not for Whitney Houston. Don't grieve over the travails of Mariah Carey.

For these women, charter members of the Divine Diva Sisterhood, are strong. They've loved. They've been hurt. They've been lost. Found. Torn apart by circumstance and rescued, in the final reel, by their abiding faith.

Having suffered the effects of their disastrous career and life choices, and done the requisite TV interviews to atone, each is back with new music in hand, eager to be accepted - if not loved - again, and share what she's learned about carrying on through the storm.

Houston in one of the defiant climb-every-mountain odes on her long-awaited Just Whitney, due Tuesday: "Tell me no, and I'll show you I can."

Carey on Charmbracelet, the self-actualization soundtrack that came out last week: "I know that I am strong enough to mend."

Houston, the bourgeois bohemian: "I'll live my life the way I feel, no matter what, I'm gonna keep it real, you know."

Carey, the aspiring motivational speaker: "Keep pressing on steadfastly and you'll find what you need to prevail."

(Yes, she really sings the word steadfastly, turning it into a florid mini-aria with echoes of Minnie Riperton.)

Cue up "I Will Survive" and get ready for some career-rehab melodrama. Because Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, duet partners four years ago on the Prince of Egypt single "When You Believe," are unintentionally in tandem again, storming back from the depths with heartwarming music in the key of triumph-over-adversity.

There's Houston, the 39-year-old former ingenue who ruled urban pop in the '80s, trying to make people forget about her now-acknowledged substance abuse, her arrest-prone husband, and the public appearances where she failed to show - or did show, and looked so frail and emaciated that fans were shocked.

There's Carey, the apple-cheeked 32-year-old with the five-octave range, the only singer to have a number-one hit every year of the '90s (which may say more about the decade than about her talent). She's got baggage, too: After entering into a much-publicized mega-deal with Virgin/EMI Records and self-consciously sexualizing her image, she was hospitalized in July 2001 for what was described as "extreme exhaustion" caused by overwork. Her meltdown occurred just before the release of her screen debut, Glitter, and its soundtrack, which tanked spectacularly two months later.

Since then, Carey has spent much of her time away from the cameras, brokering a new deal after Virgin/EMI paid her $20 million to void its contract, writing music, and rebuilding a relationship with her dying father as the rumor mill pondered the state of her mental health.

On their new works, Houston and Carey return to the approach that was once so magical - boilerplate urban pop in which impossibly trite expressions of devotion are redeemed by luminous vocal razzle-dazzle. With help from a predictable cast of top-shelf producers (for Houston, it's Babyface and Kevin "She'kspere" Briggs; for Carey, Jermaine Dupri and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis), each serves up what her fans expect: power ballads that celebrate or lament love, symphonic moments of squishy uplift, faintly funky pop.

Still, it's possible to detect desperation in the tracks. Pop has changed dramatically since Carey and Houston were its ruling class. Their formula is everyone's now. And for perhaps the first time in their careers, their personal setbacks seep into, if not inform, their work.

Having cruised on poise and polish, sharing just enough of themselves to get by, these once-aloof beauties known for singing the words of others are trying to invest songs of limited emotional dimension with did-it-my-way performances that make them almost confessional.

Just Whitney is very direct that way. "Whatchulookinat," a vituperative tirade straight out of the Michael Jackson media-victimization canon, castigates those "trying to dirty up Whitney's name." (Speaking in the third person, never a good sign.) And in a duet with her husband, Bobby "Pass Me That Doobie, I'm Bipolar" Brown, the two lovebirds talk a good game, but demonstrate little spark.

Houston is more compelling when she expresses resolve (as on "Unashamed" and "Try It on My Own") or facing a mountain to climb. "Dear John Letter," which shares the thoughts of a woman who's written a lover farewell but can't seal the envelope, captures the drama of being caught in the middle of a tough decision, torn up by both choices.

Despite a beautiful tone poem that grieves her father and a routine attempt at gospel ("My Saving Grace"), Carey is less forthright on Charmbracelet. As on Glitter and several previous efforts, she tries to be all things to all listeners - the independent woman and the gangsta-moll arm-candy, the wounded lover and the spiteful ex. The result is a puzzling parade of costume changes that can't disguise the midtempo sameness that dominates the only intermittently charming (and too, too long) Charmbracelet.

Carey will evidently do anything, even put up with derisive treatment, to be an official diva of the hip-hop nation. She lets Cam'Ron bark orders at her on "Boy (I Need You)," a dim rewrite of the rapper's hit "Oh Boy," and tolerates some second-rate Jay-Z rhyming on "You Got Me." Throughout, the rappers address her as "MC," as though her monogram alone confers street cred. Turns out Carey - who is credited with contributing to almost all of the committee-written songs on Charmbracelet - is better off generating her own rap-inspired heat, as she does on the taunt "You Had Your Chance" and the incandescent karma lesson "Clown," one of two cuts produced by Philadelphians Andre Harris and Vidal Davis.

The most revealing glimpses of Carey and Houston come when they stop singing the prescribed melodies, spread their arms wide, and let loose some hearty ad-libbing. Carey does her songbird-in-the-stratosphere trick at the close of several tracks. (On "You Got Me," her backing vocals are speeded up, Chipmunks-style, leading one to wonder whether vocal-processing technology helps her in other ways.) While the notes are plenty impressive, there's a feeling of empty ritual about her improvisations - she rarely puts enough of herself on the line to own a phrase fully. She hides behind melismas and curlicue explosions of virtuosity, committing herself only to the display of technique.

The brazen Houston, on the other hand, lets her heart run the show. Her voice is more brittle and less suave than it was, but she digs into the sometimes thin gruel of the songs, and does everything in her power to elevate them. When she belts an ill-advised "You Light Up My Life," she makes sure you feel the light, and when she talks about what she's been through, her tone is fierce, prideful. She's fully engaged and singing steadfastly, begging and beseeching, seeking redemption with every tortured word.

------
Just Whitney- 3 out of 4 stars
Charmbraclet- 2.5 out of 4 stars