Mariah Carey famously said she doesn’t acknowledge the “passage of time”, so true to form, she arrives to headline at Brighton Pride five years after she was originally scheduled to appear. The delay clearly hasn’t put off the throngs of devoted Lambs (Carey’s stans), displaying their fandom with T-shirts referencing other quotes from the diva such as “I don’t know her” and “I don’t have time for the rigmarole”.
Carey appears wearing a trans flag-inspired pink, blue and white minidress and a leather jacket embroidered with the slogan “Protect the Dolls”. The opening is relentless as she storms through snippets of Type Dangerous, Emotions, Make It Happen, I’ll Be There, Vision of Love and Dreamlover. While her voice is not as pristine as it once was, her whistle register is still intact and thrills the crowd every time.
After that promising start, the show falters with a setlist that hurries Carey – and the crowd – through some of her biggest hits. Fantasy is sloppy and rushed, with only one verse and chorus (plus the Ol’ Dirty Bastard rap, piped in), while a Heartbreaker/Honey mashup is similarly cut short. The crowd are eager to carry her, but even with knowing every word they struggle to keep up with the stop-start pacing.
After an outfit change, covered by the first of many drum fills and dance breaks, Carey returns for #Beautiful, her 2013 duet with Miguel, which she rarely performs, exciting those fans (and there seem to be many) who have been tracking her recent setlists. She follows it up with a swaggering rendition of Obsessed – widely understood as her diss track of Eminem – and a playful Touch My Body, which marks the show hitting its peak.
A glam moment during Say Somethin’, where the singer’s hair and makeup team come on stage mid-performance to do touchups, is as camp and silly as you’d expect from a diva such as Carey. But after another leisurely outfit change (into the next of a series of sparkly minidresses), the interludes really start to drag, and people begin to drift away. There’s no number of energetic shirtless male dancers who can keep the crowd entertained while Carey is frequently off stage and then, when she returns, increasingly going through the motions.
It’s a shame, as the closing numbers feature four of Carey’s best songs from 2005’s The Emancipation of Mimi, including We Belong Together and Fly Like a Bird, but by this point many have lost interest or legged it for the train home. To anyone who thought Brighton Pride would be too small a stage for her to bring her best, Carey proved that she’s still got it, but she could have probably given a little more.
