New Year’s Eve performance reveals timeless pop diva

This past New Year’s Eve, Manhattan witnessed a second hotspot of frenetic plastic sunglass and top hat-clad citygoers in addition to the 12-hour long bash at Times Square. Barely 10 blocks south of the world’s most famous bejeweled ball, “the world’s most famous arena” was abuzz with something much larger than an ordinary Knicks or Rangers game.

Outside Madison Square Garden, a mix of people more eclectic than the area’s usual inhabitants, darkly dressed commuters hurrying to Penn Station, flocked to the angular arena like lemmings: barely 21-year-olds in sequined mini dresses, couples ranging from conservative to ghetto-fabulous and families that looked like they wound up in Manhattan via the Midwest.

All were there to watch a singer whose multi-syllable name is instantly associated with unprecedented success, chart-topping record sales and inexplicably devoted listeners that span decades in age and continents in race.

As the ambiguously named and even more ambiguous-looking Lady Gaga released her second album last November and jump-started a worldwide tour shortly thereafter, one would naturally expect me to reveal the mystical Stefani Germanotta as the focal point of the evening.

But instead, I’m kickin’ it old school: Mariah Carey.

Carey’s Dec. 31 performance — the opening date of her “Angels Advocate” tour, which supports Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, her 12th studio album that was released last September — marked a homecoming for the Long Island native.

What Carey delivered, however, was not an over-the-top display fit for a Homecoming Queen one might expect, but more a fairly haphazard exhibition of a pop diva whose body of work generates her hype.

On the verge of turning 41, Carey is the oldest consistently working female artist in pop and R&B, churning out albums year after year that more often than not produce Billboard 100 hits and sell-out stadiums — call her the Meryl Streep of popular music.

But much like the film industry, the pop music circuit is not so open and friendly to females — or anyone, for that matter — past the age of 25. So how has Carey — who according to the Nielsen SoundScan is the best-selling female artist in the U.S. and has the most No. 1 singles for a solo artist — managed to hold her place at the top despite a mental breakdown in 2001, a horrendous performance in the kind-of-based-on-real-life film (Glitter) and several poorly reviewed records?

After beginning her New Year’s Eve show singing “All I Want For Christmas Is You” from an old-fashioned sleigh suspended above the arena floor, slowing it down with the hauntingly raw “H.A.T.E. U” and, much later, bringing in the shamelessly provocative “Touch My Body,” Carey’s appeal becomes a bit more clear.

With a minimal set design, a modest-sized group of dancers performing choreography that harkens back to the era of In Living Color’s Fly Girls and a closet’s worth of tasteful gowns and mini dresses, Carey’s performance was about restraint.

As my concert date said to me moments before the show began, Carey is one of the only pop stars not known for her dance moves — save for her trademark zig-zagging of the hand. Nor is she known for her theatrics, instead replacing pop music’s pyrotechnics and extravagant set changes with a spiraling vocal range and emotionally charged lyrics.

And though she underwhelmed at times — lip-syncing as if without a care through “Make It Happen” and “Obsessed” — Carey’s finest moment of the night came at the show’s end, minutes after she downed a glass of champagne with husband Nick Cannon at midnight.

It’s undeniable that 2009 was the year popular music went burlesque: From the most mainstream pop stars to obscure indie songstresses, the 20-something vocally-inclined females currently reclaiming the music industry staged Broadway-worthy productions that have taken live performances to an otherworldly level.

Britney Spears nearly flashed it all on her attempted comeback tour, “The Circus;” Bat for Lashes adorned her stage with Jesus figurines and images of animals; Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine made it a point to fill her sets with video projections and one eccentric costume after the other. But after her catchy synth-driven hits, “Poker Face” and “Bad Romance,” and the debut of her kitschy Kermit the Frog gown, Lady Gaga has undoubtedly become the epitome of spectacle — a trait that drives her career more than her racing beats and gauzy synth-lines.

Carey, too, can be somewhat of a spectacle. A quick Google search and first-listen of her tipsy stream of conscious speech on Jan. 5 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival — where she accepted an award for best breakthrough performance for her turn as a mustached social worker in Precious, Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire — is proof that in her personal life, Carey’s a bit unhinged.

Yet only Carey can have The New York Times deeming her in a recent headline a “Pop Star in Her Own Time Zone.” Only Carey can celebrate the New Year almost a minute after the fact — and convince a stadium of 20,000 concertgoers that their iPhones were falsely set and her countdown was accurate. And only Carey can enchant those 20,000 and make them oblivious to the lip syncing, multiple spots of onstage disarray and lack of the 90s tunes that cultivated her fame.

If Lady Gaga were to play Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve, the spectacle wouldn’t have amounted to much more than balloons and confetti exploding over the arena at midnight.

But for both Mariah Carey and her music — acceptance speeches aside — less has always been more.

Lauren Barbato is a senior majoring in writing for screen and television. Her column “Sound Check” runs Tuesdays.