Waiting for Mariah
On rare occasions, I will do freelance writing gigs for the Singapore media. Last year, I interviewed Maroon 5 for two magazines. It was set up by Universal Music and these guys have always been on the ball when it comes to promoting their artistes. I’m glad that I managed to keep in touch with the staff there. The money is frankly not much but it’s something fun to do and I’d like to keep some connections open with work-related peeps back home.
Last weekend saw the MTV Japan Music Awards so a few of their artistes were in town. I was supposed to interview Nelly and Mariah Carey. The kangaroo was quite excited for me, too, “Wow, Mariah Carey?!”
Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of either celeb. In fact, I cringed when I watched Nelly’s new music video, Party People, on Youtube. His TV interviews were punctuated with a lot of hip-hop lingo, like “You know what I’m sayin’?”, “You knooow…”, “It gets doooown”. But I was impressed when I met the man in the flesh — he was funny, down-to-earth, and came across as a disciplined, talented partial vegetarian (he doesn’t eat red meat).
He is a big star, but Mariah is huge in comparison.
Alarm bells should’ve rung in my mind when the regional marketing manager from the music label informed me that the Mariah interview was pushed back a whole three hours.
When I arrived, the air was buzzing outside the conference room doors at the Peninsula Hotel Ginza and rumour had it she would be two hours late. But in the end, she was over six hours late — the interview started after midnight. The first thing you would think: god, she’s such a diva!
But that statement was not the case on Monday night. I learned so many bits of Mariah trivia that for a night, I think I was a Mariah convert.
Myth: She’s always late.
True, she joked that she was not good at being on time, but I put my ear to the ground and the folks who worked with her before said she is a perfectionist and her management is very demanding when it comes to her image and her work. If a hair is out of place or a tiny smudge or shadow is even seen on film — it’s a re-shoot.
Apparently, she shot eight TV interviews back to back before the interview with us Asian journos. They did many re-takes and the 20 minutes allotted to each TV station were dragged on.
Also, before she makes a new appearance, she has to do a hair and makeup re-touch. You could simply label her as a diva but she and her team obviously work hard to keep the flawless image she projects 24/7. During the media photo call, we couldn’t shoot until we were given a signal, that is after her stylists re-adjusted her hair, makeup, and clothes to fall just the right way, and then Mariah did her thing for 20 seconds exactly. It was an insight into the clockwork manufacture of perfection for a big star by professionals.
Myth: She’s rude and demanding.
Everybody in the room who had interviewed her before or knew someone who did gushed that she was a very nice person. One amazing story I heard was that a Japanese reporter flew to New York to get a one-on-one interview. He waited two hours but was told she wanted to go for a swim so he was invited to wait for her by the swimming pool. After her work out, she requested to have the interview lying down on a bed. Said journo was so nervous he had a hard time focusing, but allegedly, she was very sweet during the interview.
Myth: She’s a ditz.
What I find to be true after my years of interviewing celebrities is, the more famous they are, the smarter and more focused they come across. In fact, the newbies tend to over talk and give careless anecdotes that are so silly (and un-newsworthy) you wouldn’t print them.
She spoke about her work with a lot of passion — even with that geekiness I repeatedly witnessed from singers and bands who love making music; they dive into the minute details about their creative process and it’s not something the press is usually interested in. You cannot reach that level of success and be stupid. Yes, she does have that girly-girl attitude and can seem bimbo-ish to some, but it looks like she’s just a gal who loves to have fun.
What does she look like in person?
She is quite tall, but with her monster designer heels, she appears larger than life. Her va-va-voom curves truly make her look like a life-sized Barbie doll. She lost 20 pounds (9.1kg) over the past year — now that’s discipline, if you ask me. She has never looked better and she can say goodbye to her heavy post-Glitter period.
“She smells so good!”
Every journalist was given a 50ml bottle of M, Mariah’s debut perfume. As a perfumista, I tend to ignore celebrity scents but sincerely think that Sarah Jessica Parker did a fabulous job on hers.
So imagine the surprise I had when I took a whiff of M on the star herself. She was taking a toilet break (she took half an hour; yes, it’s possible Mariah was doing a number two!!) and walked past all the journalists in the hotel corridor.
Can I say, the sillage is just gorgeous but not in any way overwhelming. The top note is marshmellow — you would expect it to be sickly sweet but it’s not at all, in fact it’s not overly gourmand. I couldn’t pin point what it was before I read up on the perfume notes. The middle note is the Tiare flower from Tahiti and the base note is musk, which gives it that sexy edge.
I am unashamedly smelling like Mariah right now in the office. In an interview on Barbara Walter’s The View, one of the anchors read out the PR release for M, “M is for the woman who wants a man to fall in love with her immediately, stay in love, and treat her like royalty.” Now, if her perfume can do that, don’t you just want to try a little spritz?
Was it worth the six-hour wait?
The interview bombed, obviously, because three round table sessions were merged into one press conference where each journo could only ask one question. Some were not professional and took the opportunity to declare how big a fan they were and then asked useless questions like, “When will you come to [my country]?”
I think half of them were hardcore fans since the beginning of Mariah’s career and they knew all the songs in her albums and even where her concerts were held and those that were made into DVDs. That was all well and good — their enthusiasm was infectious and I checked out the tracks in Mariah’s latest album later and I like them.
My experience waiting for Mariah amongst Mariah fans was incredible and even if you don’t like her music or anything, you still have to admit that she’s truly an icon of her time and people absolutely adore her songs.
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