Mariah Carey distinguishes herself from singing competitors like , and because of her elastic voice, which spans more than five octaves. Whereas the aforementioned ladies have their material supplied by producers and songwriting teams, Mariah Carey wrote most of her hit-sensitive repertoire herself. It made her the best-selling American singer of all time. The lack of a creative safety net made
… her fall hard from her pedestal, in a tumultuous period when Carey was temporarily less inspired by personal problems. The film and accompanying soundtrack(2001) flopped so mercilessly that the film was not even released in the Netherlands. With the successor Charmbracelet, Mariah seems to have recovered. The tone is more subdued than we are used to from her. Few heaven-storming ballads and obvious covers this time, but a lot of intimate R&B songs, in which the instrumentation is deliberately kept small. More than ever, Mariah's voice, with which she has influenced an entire generation of R&B stars, is central. (MS)more
