Most helpful customer reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely Insightful!, Oct 1 2009
This is an unauthorized account of Mariah Carey's beginnings from the "girl-next-door" to super star diva! From reading tons of biography books on music artists, this one struck me as being exceptionally professionally done. However, many portions of the chapters were extremely glossed up leaving the reader wondering. Perhaps, more research, interviews, and talks with actual acquaintances would've helped. Either way, the book is excellent in getting to know more about Mariah Carey as a whole. It brings the facts on her musical career from her early beginnings up to the album Rainbow and lightly touching on Glitter.
There is a discography, videography, awards section, and epilogue definitely a plus! Also, there are many glossy colored photos of Mariah to enjoy vs. the black and white bad photos seen on other books. The vibe from the entire reading is of Mariah Carey starting with very little money, family issues, and much hardships to little by little through her faith in God and love of her passion keep the dream alive. From being a waitress to other not so good jobs she eventually gets her break to be a background singer with Brenda K Star to later end up moving up the ropes as they say. Through her demos, pass long through friends [Brenda] she manages to meet many important players --one in particular named Tommy Mottola. When they met it was not Mariah's intention to hand him the demo but Tommy grabbed it faster than imagined. After that, they get together, chemistry ignites and well the book describes their love tale. Although, it starts off well, the break-up section seemed rather rushed toward the end. Also, her relationship with Dereck and Luis Miguel was not extensively talked about. Oddly, no other guys were talked about. It would seem almost hard to believe that she didn't have more conquests. Either way, the book maintains great reading, excellent accounts, and fabulous details to enjoy.
From the music point of view, her albums were discussed from the very first up until "Rainbow". The first set with Tommy Mottola being all pop with her famous pitch octave and in the control of Tommy. Later, she decides to break free and explore her own style to include more hip-hop with R&B sounds thus paving the way for a new sound. The first experiment began with Daydream under Tommy Mottola's supervision and with only a few tracks. Later when the air was clear and she was on her own she began with Butterfly to include more hip-hop and featured artists. After that, she loved her new sound and was creating shock waves of new fans all over.
On the whole, all the chapters were done 4 stars with nice explanations to learn and find out more about Mariah's career behind the scenes not on documentaries or concert behind footages. Since many albums have evolved since the book I did find it to be somewhat outdated. However, die-hard fans will find it remarkably great and most definitely cherishable!
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Glossed Over, May 29 2003
Marc Shapiro's book on Mariah Carey is pretty well written with a few exceptions. There are a few misses. I felt that while he did pay specific attention to her beginnings and various stages of her careers, he rather mulled over her relationships with Tommy Mottola, Derek Jeter and Luis Miguel. He's explaining her start in her career then boom all of a sudden its just that she was in love with Tommy Mottola, and he describes their wedding and shortly their marriage from there after, then suddenly their break up, which he barely even covers. I mean yes of course their relationship was short lived and these things did happen rather quickly, but it would have been nice for a little more detail. He explains how Mottola became controlling at the end of their marriage, then suddenly they are just seperated. A few more details would have been nice too for the time spent on Derek Jeter or Luis Miguel, glossed over and didn't really delve into anything.His writing is good though, for the most part. The career notes are very well written, you really get a sense of what Mariah may be like (since this is just one author's version of what may or may not be the truth). He starts at the very beginning, background on Mariah's family, her childhood, what she did, her love for music. Moving along to when she moved to New York and how she found success. Although I found some of his information was a bit off track, which isn't the best when you consider a biography should be an accurate depiction of the person it's being written about. For example, he talked about her MUSIC BOX album and how there were three singles, "Dreamlover", "Without You" and "Anytime You Need A Friend". Yes they were singles, but what about "Hero"? That was one of her biggest hits, and it's pretty alarming that an author would forget such a fact. He only mentioned that she wrote the song and it ended up on the album, not that it was a hit song that changed many fans lives. Same goes for "One Sweet Day", that song was her biggest hit and had a huge global impact, but it was really just an afterthought in the book. He talked about her BUTTERFLY album as controversial in the sense that she was spreading her wings and doing music with a bit more R&B and hip hop, which was true, but it wasn't such a drastic change from her other music, an evolution that started with DAYDREAM in 1995. Her real hip hop and R&B music was truly realized when RAINBOW was released in 1999, which was a very collaboration heavy project, whereas BUTTERFLY only had two vocal collaborations, the other collaborations being of the producer sort. He also mentions a song on BUTTERFLY he quoted as being called "Shook Ones", last time I checked there was no song titled that, but there was a cover of Prince's 1984 song "The Beautiful Ones". Someone should get their facts straight. Nevertheless, it's decent enough I suppose. There are baring omissions but that's to be expected I suppose, until Mariah writes her own book. He did explain about media reaction to her music quite a bit, which was a nice touch. Overall it's an easy read, interesting, but there is definately room for improvement here.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Book !, April 8 2003
If you don't know anything about how great Mariah's story is .. then this book is for you, and if you know everything about Mariah's story except the little details .. then this book is for you too :)
Buy it im sure you're gonna love it!
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