Mariah will be joining the ladies of The View on Monday, May 5 and HBF is giving one lucky member and a guest a chance to attend the show.
Source: MariahCarey.com
Seven years after making what is widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever, Mariah Carey is back with another road-trip flick.
But her new movie, "Tennessee," has little in common with 2001's "Glitter."
Premiering at New York's Tribeca Film Festival last Saturday, it follows two brothers seeking their estranged father. On their travels, they meet Krystal, a waitress played by Carey.
"Mariah said, 'This is going to be refreshing for me; this is actually something that I want,' even knowing that it was a gritty, hard shoot," director Aaron Woodley told Reuters in an interview. "Some people even told me that they forgot it was Mariah Carey when they were watching the film."
In 2001, Carey released the semi-autobiographical film "Glitter," which was a commercial and critical flop. She also appeared on MTV's Total Request Live, nearly disrobing in front of a baffled Carson Daly, amid rumors of a nervous breakdown.
Carey, 38, has spent the years since atoning.
"The whole 'Glitter' experience was very, very hard to go through, but I learned a lot from it," she said in a statement.
In 2005, the Long Island, New York native made a big comeback with her multiplatinum album "The Emancipation of Mimi" and won rave reviews for her performance in "WiseGirls," a comedy-drama that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
"She's not a diva and she came to work -- and work hard she did," said "Tennessee" producer Lee Daniels, who acknowledged: "People do feel negatively about her as an actor."
But that didn't stop him from offering her the lead female role. Daniels, producer of the Oscar-winning film "Monster's Ball," said he saw Carey in "WiseGirls" and decided "it was clear that she's a very talented actress."
Carey's new album, "E=MC2," shot to No. 1 on the U.S. pop chart, debuting with 463,000 sales in the week ended April 20, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. That was the best debut sales week of her career and the strongest of any artist this year. Figures for the week ended April 27 are out on Wednesday.
Carey's latest single, "Touch My Body," is her 18th U.S. No. 1 -- taking her past Elvis Presley -- and just behind the Beatles, who managed 20 No. 1 songs.
Source: Reuters.com
King, meet Queen. This month, Mariah Carey eclipsed Elvis Presley's record for the most Billboard No. 1 hits by a solo artist with her 18th chart-topper "Touch My Body," the first single from her strong new album, E=MC²—whose first-week sales of 463,000 were the highest of Carey's career and the most by any artist so far this year. Now only the Beatles have more No. 1s, and Carey will surely pass them soon—although, to be fair, the Beatles racked up their 20 big hits in a span of just seven years, a batting average likely never to be bested.
The news of Carey's triumph has been greeted in many quarters with hue and cry. The Presley estate got technical, arguing that Billboard had fouled up its numbers—that Mariah had merely tied Elvis' record. In a Huffington Post blog entry titled "Mariah Carey Is Destroying the World," Ken Levine wrote: "For the sake of this country and—oh let's just say it—mankind, Mariah Carey has to retire. … She can always host a VH-1 reality show or learn a trade at the DeVry Institute." Editorialists soberly pointed out the obvious: Whatever the hit count, Carey had not matched Presley's and the Beatles' "seismic" cultural influence, a line echoed by Mariah herself. "I'm just feeling really happy and grateful," she told the Associated Press. "I really can never put myself in the category of people who have not only revolutionized music but also changed the world."
Humility doesn't come naturally to Carey, so let's commend her for the gesture. (You can practically hear the table-saw buzz of her grinding teeth as she pushes the words out: never… put … myself … in … the … category …) But need she be so modest? Sure, Carey is not as important as Elvis or the Beatles, nor are any other musicians of the past 50 years, with the possible exceptions of James Brown and Bob Dylan. She is nonetheless hugely significant, and not just because, as Elvis once put it, 50 million fans—or if we go by Mariah's total album sales, 61.5 million fans—can't be wrong.
Mariah's accomplishment begins, of course, with her voice, or, rather, The Voice—that cyclonic force capable of hurtling unnumbered octaves, shattering crystal ware, and inducing musicogenic epileptic seizures in Japanese women. Carey is the most influential vocal stylist of the last two decades, the person who made rococo melismatic singing—the trick of embroidering syllables with multiple no-o-o-o-o-o-tes—the ubiquitous pop style. Exhibit A is American Idol, which has often played out as a clash of melisma-mad Mariah wannabes. And, today, nearly 20 years after Carey's debut, major labels continue to bet the farm on young stars such as the winner of Britain's Pop Idol show, Leona Lewis, with her Generation Next gloss on Mariah's big voice and big hair.
The rampant use of melisma has generated considerable criticism. (I myself railed against it several years ago in a New York Times article—whose haughty tone and slighting references to Carey, I now regret.) It's certainly true that overuse of the device, particularly by mediocre vocalists, can be annoying. It is also true that many performers, in the thrall of Carey hits like "Vision of Love"—which New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones rightly called "the Magna Carta of melisma"—have seemed to lose all interest in melody and lyrics and meaning, packing songs with dozens, hundreds, of gratuitous notes.
But it is unfair to damn Carey for the sins of her lesser imitators or to judge her based on a set of musical values that she explicitly rejects. Emotion is not really the point of Carey's songs—not even when she's singing "Emotions." Her music is first and foremost an expression of power and technical prowess. There is a place in pop for bombast, especially when it's coupled with virtuosity. I have learned to cherish Carey's singing for its brute force, blinding technique, and, yes, showboatiness—to place Mariah's vocal "runs" in the tradition of John Coltrane's "sheets of sound," the pummeling drumming of Led Zeppelin's John Bonham, and Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption" (aka the Magna Carta of shredding 1980s guitar solos). Listen to the piercing final notes Carey sings in this clip from her 1992 MTV Unplugged performance of "Someday." Mariah's poodle head isn't the only thing about her that's heavy metal.
Carey may not have had the "seismic" impact of Presley, but there's a whole lot of zeitgeist up in her big, maudlin ballad hits of the 1990s. A cultural historian might detect the complacent feel-good vibes of the post-Cold War Clinton era, or maybe a musical gigantism akin to baseball's literal gigantism in those peak steroids years. What I hear most clearly, even in inspirational dreck like "Hero," is hip-hop: a lite-FM analogue to the feisty egotism of the rappers who conquered '90s pop culture. After all, Carey was engaged in a rivalry nearly as fierce as Biggie and Tupac's: a yearslong cutting contest with Whitney Houston, whom she matched melisma for melisma, bromide for bromide.
Source: Slate.com
Mariah Carey is not a diva, according to the co-stars in her new film.
Starring newcomers Adam Rothenberg and Ethan Reddick, Tennessee is about two brothers who embark on a journey to find their estranged father. On the way, they meet Mariah, a waitress running away from her abusive husband.
"She was great, and a hard worker," Ethan Peck told us at the film's world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
Director Aaron Woodley was also struck by the singer.
"Directing Mariah was wonderful. She was a joy to work with," he said.
"Being in a film with very little money that we had, we had very little time. Things had to move very quickly, and she was incredible. She was so prepared to hang on every time. There were times when we were chasing the sun, and she would do it in one take. She was just lovely, and very little diva-like behaviour."
He added: "After meeting her, she said to me, 'I don't want all the bells and whistles. Whatever all the other actors have, that's what I'm going to have. I don't want anything more than anyone else'."
Lance Reddick, who plays Mariah's abusive husband, admitted he had initial concerns.
"The biggest, most dramatic scene that I had with her was on the first day," he said. "That was scary, but she was so open and so wanting to do the work."
Tribeca Film Festival runs until Sunday May 4. See www.tribecafilmfestival.org.
Source: Metro.co.uk
Mariah Carey shows off her curvy figure on the red carpet of the premiere of “Tennessee” during the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday in New York City.
The Glitter babe, 38, sold 463,000 copies of her new album “E=MC2″ during its first week out. It was the best first-week sales in 2008, beating out Jack Johnson’s “Sleep Through the Static” with 375,000. Mariah’s “Touch My Body” single is no. 6 on the charts with a total of 627,000 sold.
25+ pictures of Mariah Carey, the Tennessee Tiger…
Source: Justjared.com
Mariah will be appearing on MTV 's TRL at 3:30 ET/PT & BET's 106 & Park at 6:00pm ET/PT, both on Monday, April 28th for the premier of her new video for Bye Bye directed by Justin Francis and featuring an appearance by actor Nick Cannon.
Source: MariahCarey.com
