First Listen: Mariah Carey’s “I Want to Know What Love Is”
Written by: Money Mike
So, Mariah Carey’s no stranger to covers, right? She’s shown a special interest in soft rock ballads. After all, she covered Nilsson’s “Without You”. Then there was her remake of Journey’s “Open Arms”. Oh! She also covered Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)”. Even though I certainly don’t mind Mariah’s music, none of these songs held a candle to the originals, with “Without You” being particularly wretched.
As the second single from her upcoming “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel”, Mariah’s reached back into lite rock again and decided to tackle Foreigner’s #1 hit from 1985, “I Want to Know What Love Is”. It serves a couple of purposes. It brings Mariah back to power ballad territory after forays into deeper R&B and hip-hop production, in the hopes that the fans who abandoned her after she went hoochie will come back. It also brings back the dog-whistle. Remember back when Mariah first came out and she used to hit those insanely high notes in damn near every song? Well, despite the rumors that she’s lost a bit of her upper register and belting ability (remember the less-than-stellar performance of “I’ll Be There” at the Michael Jackson memorial?), this song makes it apparent that she’s still got it. Heaven help our ears. I was actually wondering if it was studio trickery, but I heard a live version of this song in which she unleashed the whistle, so it hasn’t totally left her.
Anyway, this is another case in which the original is much better, and quite frankly, Mariah doesn’t really add anything to the song. As Simon Cowell would say, it’s a bit karaoke. What do you think?
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I think that song lends itself well to a female vocalist. Wynona actually remade it a few years back. (Random!) I <3 Mariah, but this song is a little too whispery. I hate when she does that. Ooh, I like the gospel choir, though. MAKE IT HAPPEN. Oh and a key change! OK, this song is pretty good.
Yeah, I’ll admit. I fell for the key change too.
I heard about this with everyone else a few months ago and thought “Grammy” at the time.
I’ll revise that. She’ll get a Best Pop Female award and probably a ROY nomination for the album. Don’t know how she’ll fit that many producers up there, but now we’re going to have to listen to American Idol folks sing this all season since they know Randy Jackson is carrying a producer credit.
I know the album keeps getting pushed back, but it’s one I’m looking forward to buying. She’s got a little bit of everything on there.
Good pick, Money Mike. Mariah still turning out relevant music at 40. Think Virgin feels stupid when they look at her track record since Mimi? She’s got to be closing in on 15 million unit sales between the last two albums, and this one is selling 2 million units just for the 2 hits.