Mariah Carey - Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel Review

Posted by Michael James on 10.03.2009

It's been years since Mariah released a truly strong album. Is the twelfth time the charm?

At this point in her career, I don’t listen to Mariah Carey all that much. It’s not because she doesn’t put out some decent songs. Instead, it’s just because it always frustrates me that she never quite manages to reach the lofty heights reached in her early career. She may not have managed to fall quite as far as fellow diva Whitney Houston, but in the ‘90s she routinely put out all time classic songs. Now, not so much. So it’s with trepidation that I sit down to review her 12th album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel.



1. Betcha Gon Know
2. Obsessed
3. H.A.T.E.U.
4. Candy Bling
5. Ribbon
6. Inseperable
7. Standing O
8. It’s A Wrap
9. Up Out My Face
10. Up Out My Face (The Reprise)
11. More Than Just Friends
12. The Impossible
13. The Impossible (The Reprise)
14. Angel (Prelude)
15. Angels Cry
16. Languishing (The Interlude)
17. I Want To Know What Love Is

Honestly, this album is the equivalent of a warm bath. Its pleasant and soothing but at the end of the day, very little stands out and it’s not particularly memorable. Most of the songwriting and production on the album is courtesy of hitmakers du jour The Dream and Christopher “Tricky” Stewart. While some might think that’s a good thing, I’m not one of them, as I continue to maintain that The Dream is one of the most overrated songwriters in the business. Sure, “Umbrella” was a great song, but outside of that and Usher’s “Moving Mountains”, I don’t think he has a memorable song in his catalog. His work on Memoirs is no exception.

Maybe it’s because most of the songs share a similar mid-to-slow tempo, but it often seemed hard to distinguish where one song on Memoirs ended and the next began. It probably doesn’t help that Mariah sings every song in the thin, breathy tone she’s adopted in recent years. With the exception of “Angels Cry” and a decent, if American Idol-esque cover of Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” there is nary a hint of Mariah’s past as a powerhouse belter of a torch singer.

While Mariah’s vocals may not stand out, one thing that is unavoidable is the constant stream of awkward and borderline cringeworthy lyrics. Lyrics like “Love you like a freeze pop/ Love you like a milkshake/Love you like a high school girl on a first date” (“Impossible”) might make sense coming from a Cheetah Girl, but when sung by a woman about to enter her 40s, they scream midlife crisis. Elsewhere on “Up Out My Face”, the less said about the timeless lyrics “Not even a nail technician with a whole jot of gel and acrylic/can fix this when I break/If we were two Lego blocks/ Even the Harvard University graduating class of 2010/couldn’t put us back together again,” the better.

Memoirs occasionally teases with hints of original and novel sounds, but these moments are fleeting. “Ribbon” starts out with a slowed down sample that gives hope of a decent dance track a la “Side Effects”, the Young Jeezy collaboration that was the highlight of her last album, E=MC2. Instead, it’s little more than another love song, albeit one of the album’s better ones. “The Impossible (Reprise)” features an interesting Roger Troutman-esque vocoder breakdown.

While I almost made it through my whole review without mentioning Eminem, I must mention that it’s a shame Mariah decided to go with an Em-baiting video for “Obsessed,” as it is one of the album’s catchier tracks. Again though, try not to focus on lyrics like “See right through you like you’re bathing in Windex.”

The only tracks on the album that distinguish themselves enough to be deemed highlights are the atmoshpheric “H.A.T.E.U,” “It’s a Wrap,” (which features Mariah’s most powerful singing), and “Angels Cry”, a big ballad of heartbreak by new Mariah standards. Other than that the album sticks to the middle ground—nothing too high, nothing too low. That maybe the best Mariah is capable of at this point. If so, it’s a tragedy.

To cleanse the palate, let me sprinkle you with an old school Mariah classic:



If you’re like me, most of your music ends up in an endless .mp3 “shuffle.” In order to preserve your valuable disk space, here’s what’s Ipod-worthy from Memoirs of an Imperfect Angels:

“H.A.T.E.U.”; “Ribbon”; “It’s a Wrap”; “Angels Cry”

The 411: If you like Mariah's recent work, I can't imagine this will be any different. Memoirs is an album of decent cookie-cutter R&B, and I'd probably like it more of it came from an anonymous newcomer. But instead, as a Mariah Carey album it just highlights how far she's strayed from the iconic path she started down almost 20 years ago. As a side note-- Mariah Carey's been around for twenty years? Damn I feel old.

Final Score:  5.0   [ Not So Good ]