Love Machine

Mariah Carey - ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’

Snowman? Check
Fairy lights? Check
‘Sexy’ santa costume? Check
Deep’n’crisp’n’even snow? Check
Chimney? Implied
Yonder star? Check

We’re only a reindeer short of a full house, basically.

Apparently the album will include four new tracks. Will any of them be as good as ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You?’ Of course not, but we’re getting prematurely excited about the Love Machine Christmas Special all the same.

On the face of it, Mariah Carey’s new version of I Want to Know What Love Is, is almost too easy a target. She’s taking on an absolute undisputed classic which will be almost impossible to top. There are rumours her voice isn’t what it was after her lamentable X Factor performance last year (nb. does the song really say, ‘and I’m gon’ fart like a whale each time you let me down’ at 1:24?) and she hasn’t done a decent song for years.



BUT SERIOUSLY

THIS IS RUBBISH

Incredibly, the overriding thing that makes this cover bad is that it’s actually too restrained. Not something we ever thought we’d say about Mariah. If Leona had done this, it would have got the balls out treatment, with 2 key changes, a drumkit from hell and a choir of descended archangels. Mariah’s version is insipid and limp, there’s that terrible minimal R&B production and her voice, out of her immediate comfortable range,  is just horrible. As ever, let’s put it to the Love Machine test:



0:29 Fingerclicks….bloody fingerclicks

1:16 Horrible horrible chorus. She sounds a bit like this (1:37)


2:28 Change this lonely liiiiiiiiiiiaaahhoohahahahahiiiiiife

2:32 WHY ISN’T THERE A MASSIVE SNARE DRUM IN NOW. At least there’s a gospel choir

2:58 At last a sort of crap drum kit but it’s only got 41 seconds to do anything

3:04 SOMEONE’S GETTING STRANGLED HERE

3:15 AND ANOTHER ONE

3:23 Kettle’s boiled

Leona’s Stop Crying Your Heart Out had better be preposterously enormous and brilliant, that’s all we’re saying