Friday, October 22, 2010

ALBUM REVIEW FROM THE SCENE: Mariah Carey Debuts "Merry Christmas II You"

TheYBF.com was on the scene at Wednesday night's intimate listening party for Mariah Carey's Merry Christmas II You album.  It went down in the beautiful theater in the Lincoln Center in NYC.  And we've got what you can expect from Mimi's second Christmas album we've been waiting over 15 years for.

 

Read on for the deets....

Set in the Rose Theater of the Lincoln Center, Mariah had the place decked out with gorgeous Christmas decor.  It's usually difficult to slip into the Christmas spirit on a fall day in October, but the decorated white Christmas trees, gold and silver oversized metallic ornaments and gifts around the room, and endless champagne made it way easier.

The current Def Jam head honcho L.A. Reid hosted the evening for the intimate group.  And started off the evening reminding everyone that Mariah's first Merry Christmas album is still one of the best selling Christmas albums of all time.  And her pure love Christmas inspired her to do it again. 

"Anyone who knows Mariah knows she absolutely LOVES Christmas," he said. "She spends so much money on Christmas--probably too much money--gifting everyone, decorating, everything. So this project was purely done out of her love for the Holiday."

There were very personal and never-before-seen pics of Mariah and her friends and fam during Holidays of the past running on large screens as the album played.  Halfway through the album, much of the first part upbeat and produced by Jermaine Dupri, L.A. brought out Mariah to gush about the project.  Peep the video above.

Mrs. Carey was decked out in an interesting blue dress with rosette details on the hem, and blue shiny pumps.  The fact that we still couldn't tell if this chick is pregnant even this close up is just odd.  She's definitely thicker...but there was no pronounced baby bump. 

She brought out her hubby Nick Cannon to talk about having their place decorated with Christmas decor damn near the whole year so she could be in the right mind to record this. 

There are 4 new original Christmas songs on the album, and many of the usual classics like "Little Drummer Boy" and "First Noel."

One of our fave tracks is a beautiful duet with her mom, Patricia, on "O Come All Ye Faithful".  Her mother is an opera singer, so it was a rare sound of Mariah reminding us of her multi-octave abilities infused with her mom's operatic verses.  Chillbumps.  Simply fab.

Another one of our faves is her remake of the Charlie Brown Christmas song.  With the Charlie Brown pianos straight from the childhood movie playing at the beginning, it flipped into an actual song with Mariah singing the same song as the kids in the movie.

She also included a live performance of "O Holy Night" she did at the West Presbyterian Church with their choir in South Central, LA.  Gave us the same vibe as her live choir-backed performances of "Anytime You Need A Friend" and "I Want To Know What Love Is".

For our fellow Merry Christmas album stans, Mimi included an updated version of "All I Want For Christmas," complete with a remixed intro.  And wrapped the album with a fab version of "Auld Lang Syne".

Overall, her voice sounded better than it's sounded in years.  And it was the perfect mix of classics and originals.  We weren't huge fans of the couple of overly upbeat tracks at the beginning, but 8 out of 10 aint bad. Grade: a semi-biased A-

A few more pics from the event:

Gayle King and AJ were also spotted there.  Fun times.

Photog: Mazur

 

Source: http://theybf.com/2010/10/20/album-review-from-the-scene-mariah-carey-debuts-merry-christmas-ii-you

lupe fiasco dj khaled nelly britney spears christina aguilera

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