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Don't cry for Mariah Carey.
The pop diva might have been rudely dumped by Virgin Records, but she walks away with almost as much money ($49 million) as some of those Enron executives.
And everyone knows rival labels are lining up to sign the Long Island native with a low-ball offer, knowing that she needs desperately to reestablish herself after her recent album and movie flops. Billy Crystal scored one of the biggest laughs of 2001 when he used "Glitter" as the butt of a joke during "The Concert for New York City," the Sept. 11-related benefit concert.
Setting everyone up by suggesting the country needs to pull together, Crystal said, "Whether we are Christians or Jews or Muslims, we all have to agree on one thing ... we can never, ever again let Mariah Carey make another movie."
Truthfully, Crystal would have been just as on target by saying, "We can never, ever again let Mariah Carey put together another tour."
How bad was the movie "Glitter," which cast her in the apparently too challenging role of a pop diva?
I didn't see "Glitter," and judging from the box office receipts, neither did you. But I did see Carey's concert at Staples Center in the spring of 2000, and it was the most vacuous show by a major pop- music figure I've ever attended. You'll see more imaginative staging concepts at middle-school talent shows.
The bad movie and the bad tour are no surprise.
For all her record sales, Carey has never been a very satisfying artist. Carey is blessed with one of the great voices in modern pop, with a range that stretches across octaves, but she has shown little imagination in the use of it.
The only reason record companies are interested in her is that she has sold more than 40 million albums in the U.S., but those sales figures shouldn't be used...