Tuesday 23 November 1999

In the flesh

  The American pop star met the Asian media last Saturday and won over self-confessed critics with her easy charm that saw her discuss topics from her sexy image to her relationship with new beau Luis Miguel.

  Mariah Carey is puzzled. All the media fuss about her flashing flesh bewilders her. Sweeping her eyes over the eight Asian journalist in her hotel room, she asks earnestly: "Okay, you guys tell me what you think. Do I give off vibes of raunchiness?"

"No, no," comes the swift chorus. But futher assurance seems to be wanted, and she devotes a meaty chunk of this 20-minute group interview to discussing her sexy image.

It is 8.30 pm last Saturday and the singer is lounging in bed in an army-green, low neck tank-top and jeans in her Hongkong Grand Hyatt suite. But no, she's not ready for bed yet. Far from it. She will spend the next two hours telling the press her reasons for doing something simple like donning skimpy outfits.

Up close, there is no sign of the flab that plagued her in magazine spreads last year. Shots of a perfect-10 body in her latest album, Rainbow, are also a little off the realistic mark. But at arm's length, one tends to be distracted more by her dusky good looks and generous smiles.

"If Madonna goes wild or when Janet Jackson does it, it's considered normal. But people still expect me to be this Little Miss Sweet Innocent," she laments with a touch of frustration. There are still shades of innocence in the racier image, she insists. Indicating the cover of Rainbow, for which she was in Hongkong to promote last weekend, she says: "Yeah, I'm scantily clad, but I have a rainbow painted across. It's fun, not curde."

The unwarranted attention does dampen her sense of humour though. With a coquettish smile, she teases: "Don't I still look like the girl-next-door, sitting here talking to you?" The "snowsuit ensemble where the turlteneck comes up to here and the skirt goes down to there" is no longer her cuppa, she says. After nearly a decade of glittering chart-topping success, can the press not cut her some slack, she wonders.

"I should be allowed, if I'm in good shape, to show off my body," she decides. No one demurs to that. Many have been bowled over by her honest charm and easy manner since a press conference earlier that day. During the cosy gathering in her suit, she compliments a reporter on her tartan skirt and invites another to sit by her on the bed. Even those who admits to coming with poison pens poised for action are heard exclaiming later: "I never thought much of her. But after this... She's so NICE!" From the word go, Carrey scores crucial pointswith the 100-odd Asian fans and journalists at the morning eventfor taking the effort to pick up a Cantonese greeting.

"Dai ga hou! (Hi, everybody!)" she chirps, and the group from India, Indonesia, Korea,  Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines and Singapore join the Hongkongers in their applause. For the rest of the long day, with her good humour intact, she swould be swept up in a whirlwind of photo calls, TV interviews, group chats and a session with ardent fans who had won a trip to meet her in the flesh.

The 29 year old American singer had arrived the previous day from the United States. Asked to give a brief demonstration of her famed vocal gymnastics at the press conference, she declines with a throaty laugh: "If I sing now, it will send all of you out of the room!"

Fatigue is etched all over her face, yet there is no whiff of the diva air that some claimed she is shrouded in. "Oh, this whole diva thin. It's always diva this, diva that nowadays," she says good-naturedly. Even if she pops her head of chesnut curls into the clouds occasionally, few could fault her.
Heartbreaker, her first single from Rainbow brings her tally of no. 1 hit singles to 14, overshadowing that of Madonna (11) and places her in third place behind The Beatles (20) and Elvis Presly (18). With the sassy single, she also surpassed the Fab Four'd throne as the artiste who spent the most number of weeks at No.1 on America's Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Its hogging of the top spot for two weeks stretched her run to 60 weeks, smashing the Beatles' record of 59 weeks.

The string of superlatives gives the New York native a heady rush, but her feet are still Earth bound. "When I hear these things, it's almost like they are unreal. These are legends we are talking about... I have to be humble about it."

Obliging is an understatement when describing her attitude to the probing media. Toss her a question and she will think it through, slip in a joke, embellish it with anecdotes and then pitch it back with a surprised "How did I get to this far?" Even when a question taps a tender spot, she fashions an indirect reply rather than cold-shoulder it. To those who are curious about her ties with her current boss and former hubby Mottola, 47, whom she wed in 1993 and divorced last year, she hints that the answers are in her latest work.

   "I'm talking about people I don't talk to anymore. I'm trying to send messages," she says hal-cryptically. The 14-track release, infused with varied musical textures from gospel to hip-hop to R&B, relates tales about her life and current state of mind.

Her reply is more direct when asked if wedding bells chime soon for her and current beau, Latin Singer Luis Miguel, 29. "If I say 'not now', it will be taken to mean that it will happen in the future. But if I say 'no' it's not very optimistic, is it?" she says with a smile. As her minder emerges to usher in more scribes, the original batch scrambles to get her celebrity squiggle. "Sorry it was my fault. I just kepp rambling on. Did you guys get enough from this?" she asks.

Murmurs of "yes" are interspersed with urgent "Can you sign this for me please?" "Don't dwell too much on the image thing," she calls out laughingly. "I still look like a nice girl."



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