Talk:Mariah Carey/vocal problem

Original edition of "Voice and timbre"
Carey possesses a five-octave vocal range, and has the ability to reach notes beyond the 7th octave. Referred to as the "songbird supreme" by the Guinness World Records, she was ranked first in a 2003 MTV and Blender magazine countdown of the 22 Greatest Voices in Music, as voted by fans and readers in an online poll. Carey said of the poll, "What it really means is voice of the MTV generation. Of course, it's an enormous compliment, but I don't feel that way about myself." She also placed second in Cove magazine's list of "The 100 Outstanding Pop Vocalists".

Regarding her voice type, Carey said that she is an alto, though several critics have described her as a soprano. However, within contemporary forms of music, singers are classified by the style of music they sing. There is currently no authoritative voice classification system within non-classical music. Attempts have been made to adopt classical voice type terms to other forms of singing, but they are controversial, because the development of classical voice categorizations were made with the understanding that the singer would amplify his or her voice with their natural resonators, without a microphone.

Jon Pareles of The New York Times described Carey's lower register as a "rich, husky alto" that extends to "dog-whistle high notes". Additionally, towards the late 1990s, Carey began incorporating breathy vocals into her material. Tim Levell from the BBC News described her vocals as "sultry close-to-the-mic breathiness", while USA Today's Elysa Gardner wrote "it's impossible to deny the impact her vocal style, a florid blend of breathy riffing and resonant belting, has had on today's young pop and R&B stars."

Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker adds her timbre possesses various colors, saying, "Carey's sound changes with nearly every line, mutating from a steely tone to a vibrating growl and then to a humid, breathy coo. Her wide vocal range allows Carey to take melodies from alto bottom notes to coloratura soprano upper register." Carey also possesses a "whisper register". In an interview with the singer, Ron Givens of Entertainment Weekly described it this way, "first, a rippling, soulful ooh comes rolling effortlessly from her throat: alto. Then, after a quick breath, she goes for the stratosphere, with a sound that nearly changes the barometric pressure in the room. In one brief swoop, she seems to squeal and roar at the same time."

Her sense of pitch is admired and Jon Pareles adds "she can linger over sensual turns, growl with playful confidence, syncopate like a scat singer... with startlingly exact pitch."

Revised edition of "Voice and timbre"
(to be developed)
 * NYTimes article from 1991: Goes into great detail about her voice and stylings in her prime.


 * Baltimore Sun article from 1997: Goes into pretty interesting detail on her breathy vocals: "Catching her breath Mariah Carey: She could always belt out a song, but now the pop vocalist is using an airier, more private voice. And her slick, lush sound is getting funkier." is just an excerpt.


 * Slant Magazine article from 1997: "Carey's much-debated "whisper voice." The relatively high and thin register that she sings in when not belting (and that's often) is sometimes cited as a sign of a waning vocal prowess. But it could be the most important of Butterfly's changes, as it marks the first time that Mariah the vocalist seems consistently real. She's not a robo-diva and she isn't even on autopilot. She's utterly soulful. We often think of guttural growling and belted vocal runs as the height of soulfulness (thanks, no doubt, to gospel's values, which gave us the notion of soul in the first place), but when Carey sounds almost hoarse and entirely heady, she's just about tangible."


 * Allmusic review in 2002: "What is a greater problem is that Mariah's voice is shot, sounding in tatters throughout the record. Whenever she sings, there's a raspy whistle behind her thin voice and she strains to make notes throughout the record. She cannot coo or softly croon, nor can she perform her trademark gravity-defying vocal runs. Her voice is damaged, and there's not a moment where it sounds strong or inviting."


 * Allmusic review in 2005: "As good as those Wright-helmed cuts are, they are also the times that the mixes slip and don't hide the flaws in Mariah's voice, and it sounds as airy, thin, and damaged as it did on Charmbracelet, where her ragged vocals dealt a fatal blow to an already weak album. Here, apart from those Wright tracks, the producers camouflage her voice in a number of ways, usually involving putting the groove and the sound of the production in front of the vocals."


 * Stylus Magazine in 2005: "It’s easily the strongest album that she’s made in this millennium, but suffers from the fact that her vocals have deteriorated—a simple fact of the ravages that her voice has undergone in the past fifteen years. Perhaps the best we could have hoped for, Emancipation is redemption and resignation at the same time."


 * BBC article in 2008: Describes Carey's deeper and lower voice throughout her younger years.

Mariah Carey's latest makes every effort to obscure what should be her calling card - her singing. Certainly, it's a cynical move, if hardly a new one for the singer. Carey's last CD, "E=MC2" also applied a heavy layer of gauze to her voice, though a less gloppy one than this time [...] Coupled with the nervous over-correction of her voice, the result makes Carey seem like the proverbial aging actress who's trying so hard to cover her perceived flaws, all she does is call more attention to them."
 * NY Daily News in 2009: "From the treatment of the vocals, to the strategy of the songwriting, to the use of instrumentation, "Angel" reeks of idealization and self-consciousness. That's most obvious in the way the producers dealt with Carey's signature feature - her voice. Rarely do we hear it clearly. Nearly every syllable sounds like it's been tricked up by a war room full of compressors, echo-chambers, filters, audio-tuners, and God knows what other contraptions too much time and money can buy. Isn't this how producers treat stars who can't sing? Then again, non-singers regularly score big singles these days. So perhaps it was a savvy move for Carey to mimic their style.


 * NYT article in 2009: "When exactly did Mariah Carey stop singing? Even when she began flirting aggressively with hip-hop in the mid-1990s she was happy to impose her titanic vocals atop even the scrappiest production. And no matter how grimy her surroundings became — Ol’ Dirty Bastard, anyone? — she remained inexorably Mariah, an impenetrable acrobat of technique. Of late though, Ms. Carey has been whispering, as if newly scared of grand gestures. On paper Ms. Carey shouldn’t need that help, but her collaborators have underdelivered with largely listless arrangements just as she has thinned her voice to a hush."


 * Entertainment Weekly review in 2014: "That Voice has been through a lot, and you can hear it. There are times on The Elusive Chanteuse when she’s trying to power through a note where it sounds like digital technology might be holding her up by the straps of that crocheted swimsuit."


 * Pittsburgh Courrier review in 2014. Goes into great detail on her voice and holiday performance.


 * Well this is a start. Definitely when including all the recent press from Asia and onward etc.-- Peter Griffin  &bull;  Talk2Me   05:10, 7 February 2015 (UTC)