[情報] 眾樂評

看板MARIAH作者amo07 (I'm tired of you)時間16年前 (2009/09/28 22:59)推噓1(1推 0噓 1→)

留言2則, 1人參與討論串1/1

應該還算中上吧～ USA Today By Brian Mansfield Rating: 3 /4 stars 'Angel,' while imperfect, flies high nonetheless Mariah Carey albums typically boast an assortment of producers, but not so on Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel. Working primarily with hot hip-hop producers Tricky Stewart and The Dream but without her usual supporting cast of guests brings the focus squarely on the singer for what, as its title suggests, is essentially a musical memoir. Most tracks stick to midtempo R&B grooves and slow jams, but Carey is all over the place emotionally – seductive, nostalgic, vindictive, occasionally within a matter of lines. Sometimes, she pulls the songs in different directions. First single Obsessed conveys pride and repulsion at being the object of unwarranted advances. Betcha Gon' Know, which plays like a first-person account of The Persuaders' '70s R&B hit Thin Line Between Love and Hate, suggests both vulnerability and violence. Just as many listeners assumed Obsessed to be about Eminem, they'll also hear Up Out My Face, with lyrics like, "I know you're not a rapper, so you better stop spittin' it," to be the continuation of Carey's beef with him. That song also contains one of Memoirs' many funny lines: "If we were two Lego blocks, even the Harvard University graduating class of 2010 couldn't put us back together again." By the album's end, this imperfect angel seems no closer to finding heaven – though her gloriously gospel-infused version of Foreigner's I Want to Know What Love Is certainly comes close. Download:Obsessed, I Want to Know What Love Is Skip: More Than Just Friends, Ribbon ====== Los Angeles Times By Ann Powers Rating: 2.5 / 4 stars She shows off her talent by coming off as just another girl at the nail salon On her recently leaked and soon-to-be-released 12th studio album, Mariah Carey and her latest producers, Terius "The-Dream" Nash and Tricky Stewart, attempt to get at something by distilling it. They're seeking the Essence of Mimi, the liquor in the oyster of Carey's famously luscious voice.But instead of showcasing this musical Olympian's dazzling way with a vocal run or her nearly unmatchable whistle register -- obvious choices when it comes to Carey's talent -- she and her team tune into a particular tone, the one that earned her another nickname, Honey. There's a breathiness to this album that's not only sexy but emotionally intimate. Heavy on slow jams, quiet confessions and kiss-offs closer to the work of the rappers she admires than to Carey's soul sisters, "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel" capitalizes on an underrated aspect of the singer's talent: Her ability, even when she's scaling vocal heights, to still come off as just another girl at the nail salon. Carey's lyrics -- she co-writes everything here, except for her fairly unremarkable cover of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is" -- make this point most obviously. Even when fully dressed in the armor of her glamour, as when she advises an ex (Eminem? More likely it's Latin pop star Luis Miguel) to "pretend you on a sofa, and I'm on MTV" when he spies her walking by. Carey still compulsively shares details about her runny mascara and her appetite for Duncan Hines yellow cake. "Bubble baths on the jet" might be a ridiculous fantasy, but it's not at all elitist. Any real housewife or working girl has been in that daydream. What The-Dream and Stewart help Carey realize is that her vocal style also communicates this accessibility. Even at its most extravagant, Carey's singing has a warmth, a sensuality and openness to it that sets her apart from peers like Whitney Houston and younger pretenders like Leona Lewis. When she tones down her singing, those qualities dominate. Not incidentally for a big-ballad singer who's hit 40, stressing her more endearing small voice keeps Carey from any embarrassing shortfalls. Throughout "Memoirs" she locates that mode of expression in whispers, murmurs and late-night lovers' quarrels. (She tosses off some amusing zingers in the latter.) The tempos here lean back slowly, and the sound is thick, a little heavy, inevitably responding to the sonic shift that occurred in R&B in the wake of Nash and Stewart's first female foil, Rihanna, and their smash "Umbrella." Even the more aggressive songs on this album -- "Obsessed," Carey's volley in that silly Eminem feud, and "Up Out My Face," in which she recovers via her now-husband Nick Cannon's specialty, the drumline -- proceed with a laid-back nod instead of a disco spin. After a while, the approach is too much of a mildly interesting thing, and Carey's restraint stops serving her agenda. As every long-married couple knows, intimacy loses its power when the gestures that define it get repetitive. That happens about halfway through "Memoirs," when Carey's soft outpourings start to melt into each other, and it ceases to matter whether she's mourning a broken heart or celebrating a new start. Nash and Stewart have settled into their own groove as producers; their unctuous, Caribbean-inflected, R. Kelly-inspired tracks work well song by song (especially on the sad ones, like "Languishing" and "Angels Cry," and the sex ones, like "The Impossible"), but there's a point where a trademark sound starts to be a cage, not a calling card. "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel" will stand out in Carey's catalog as an experiment that illuminates her place in the pantheon without either boosting it or damaging it. I wouldn't be surprised if, a decade from now, Carey cites this effort as a personal favorite. It's that kind of wholly decent effort: a self-exploration that settles on its unpretentious insights by not pushing too hard. ============= All Music By John Bush Rating: 3.5 / 5 stars Any Mariah Carey album carries a lot of weight – fan dreams, commercial expectations, the prospect of genuine pop thrill, the star's outsized persona – and 2009's Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel is no different. Trailing a pair of hits, "Obsessed" and her anthemic cover of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is," it's a lock for commercial success, and it includes plenty of the soaring vocals and falsetto trills that fans love her for. It's also remarkably unified, with no guest features and a very special coup, in that every song on the album was composed by R&B's best songwriters of the late 2000s, Terius Nash (The-Dream) and Christopher Stewart (Tricky); they give each song the intelligent mid-tempo bump-and-grind they've made into a specialty. Personally, it finds Carey probing and investigating her inner life, with lines like "I can't wait to hate you" and "Why you so obsessed with me?" shot at targets both public and private. ============== New York Times By Jon Caramanica 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. In 2005 it made for a surprise success with "The Emancipation of Mimi," one of her best-selling albums, but also one of her most deceptive. Though the melodies were straightforward, Ms. Carey was working hard, imbuing them with vulnerability and ache even while keeping her vocal power in check. That nuance is mostly gone on "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel," Ms. Carey's 12th studio album, which manages simplicity and clutter all at once. "Memoirs" is produced almost entirely by Ms. Carey with The-Dream and Tricky Stewart, who are masters of compensation, helping elevate mediocre singers – like The-Dream himself or Rihanna, on "Umbrella" – to something sublime. 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. (The Dr. Dre-esque stomp of "Obsessed" is a notable exception.) On "Betcha Gon' Know (The Prologue)," she's almost mumbling, and the talk-singing on "Ribbon" and "Inseparable" is typically the preserve of far worse singers. Even more troubling are the perplexing, jumbled lyrics full of daffy references and batty assertions. On the unintentionally hilarious "Up Out My Face," she insists, "Not even a nail technician/ with a whole lotta gel and acrylic/ can fix this, when I break, I break." On "Obsessed," she tells an ex, "See right through you like you're bathing in Windex." (Inexplicably, two songs, "Standing O" and "More Than Just Friends," echo "Umbrella," a move unnecessary and outdated.) "H.A.T.E.U." has some of the ease of her recent successes, and "It's a Wrap" swings with girl-group melody. But it's the vintage notes here that resonate most intensely. She lets her voice go at the end of "Candy Bling," a cold splash of water that reminds us what Ms. Carey can do when left unfettered. The same is true of the smoldering "Languishing (The Interlude)," which despite its language of self-improvement seminars, is Ms. Carey at her most astute, devastatingly precise in tone and feeling; notably, it's the only song on this album untouched by Tricky and The-Dream. It bleeds into the closer, a cover of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is," that begins in surprisingly modest fashion. Then comes the gospel-choir backup and the glass-shattering high notes, restoring Ms. Carey to the role she was born for: a singer unafraid of pomp, of ambition, of herself. -- ※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 114.43.5.27