When Mariah Carey kicked off 'The Elusive Chanteuse Show' in Asia last night, she struggled to perform some of her biggest hits. It was so painful to watch. In recent times, she has been panned for lipsyncing her performances but this time she decided to sing her iconic power ballads 100% live.
While this move can be applauded, what came out of it was not so good. She cracked several times in her performances, TALKING her way through songs to avoid hitting the big notes and coming across as very lazy in some segments. I cannot believe her manager would let MC embarrass herself like this. I have seen unfortunate vocal malfunctions from her previously but nothing as bad as this.
I saw Alicia Keys in concert last year and she smartly switched up the vocal arrangements to compliment the change in her "new" vocals. I also saw Beyoncé last year as well, and while she can still sing really well, it was plain obvious that she uses backing tracks to add a layered effect to assist with her live vocals. I wouldn't necessarily say it's cheating (and in her defense, she does dance a lot), but she certainly uses a little help with the more vocally challenging numbers. When Mariah was at her prime, she never needed to do any of this! Her vocals were 100% and amazing. Obviously, in this present time, her vocals have aged and deteriorated. Therefore, the necessary adjustments needed to be made in order to accentuate the changing nature of her voice. Whoever advised her to go on a big tour lucked out on that one. Bad decisions all around. Check out the unfortunate moments from last night’s show below.