If anyone told Mariah Carey ahead of time that Friday night’s MusiCares Person of the Year tribute would feature a live auction — an auction in which a meet-and-greet with the singer in Abu Dhabi was offered to the highest bidder — you sure couldn’t tell by observing her reaction.
Seated near the stage at the Los Angeles Convention Center, a camera feeding close-up images of her face to several screens, Carey appeared genuinely surprised by an auctioneer’s description of the backstage hangout in which she’d be expected to participate next month.
But such is the life of a queen.
Watching Carey respond in real time was actually the best thing about this annual Grammy-weekend gala meant to honor an artist’s work and philanthropy. Though the 56-year-old herself sang for only a minute or so at the end of the show, Carey was a delight to behold as a series of admirers took turns performing some of her many hits (and a handful of deep cuts).
The look of game recognizing game as Jennifer Hudson crushed “Vision of Love.” The tenderness with which she regarded her old friend Busta Rhymes doing their “I Know What You Want.” The slowly dawning realization that this heavily tattooed white man named Teddy Swims was really going to pull off “Without You.”
“That was terrifying,” Swims said when he finished the song — an all-timer of a power ballad with a lengthy chain of custody going back through Carey, Harry Nilsson and the doomed Welsh band Badfinger.
Best of all was the sight of Carey proudly singing along to Foo Fighters and Taylor Momsen as they blazed through a pair of tunes from the cult-fave grunge album she secretly recorded in the mid-1990s under the name Chick.
Other acts on the bill included Adam Lambert, who went slow and moody for “Can’t Let Go”; the British girl group Flo, which gave an airy performance of “Dreamlover”; and Laufey, who kept a watchful eye on a giant prompter scrolling lyrics at the back of the room as she did “It’s Like That.”
Then there was Billy Porter, who took “Always Be My Baby” way over the top with wild vocal runs that made up for what they lacked in precision with — well, mostly with volume.
Carey took the stage late in the evening to give her thanks to “so many friendly and familiar faces — people I’ve worked with, people I’ve long admired, even people I thought I’d never see again.” After her speech, Jon Batiste popped out to lead a random assortment of stars through an all-hands finale of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which recently set a new record for the most weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Charlie Puth? Gayle King? Rita Wilson? Carey looked pleased(-ish) to see each one.
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