Mariah Carey: E=MC2

Plenty of people have

looked up to Mariah Carey over the years, but has anyone ever related to her

It seems impossible: from the beginning, with 1990's plastic-soul-gone-pop

"Vision Of Love," she's never seemed especially personable. (Or even, frankly,

human.) She was a hit machine in a very literal sense: Her songs were

inescapable, most of them sounded alike, and they seemed like they were never

going to stop, until the belly-flop of Glitter and her attendant public

meltdown. It wasn't just well-wishing that made 2005's The Emancipation Of

Mimi the

first Mariah Carey album with a sense of urgency: She'd also calmed down as a

vocalist, removing many of her fripperies and mannerisms, and bearing down hard

on the lyrics in songs like "We Belong Together." Which gave Carey's music

something else it had never previously had—subtlety.

So it's only natural that E=MC2 is a more formulaic

(maybe even robotic) variation on Carey's previous triumph. But much of the

album uses that formula cannily. "Touch My Body" is airily teasing, though much

more effectively in the stacked backing vocals than on the occasional vocal

breakouts. "I'm That Chick" is appealingly coy, Michael Jackson-quoting disco

that's safe as milk, but goes down like Strawberry Quik. That isn't too far

from the way the album works as a whole: It's skillful and winsome enough that

the other hits it spins off will stay pleasant, if not revelatory.