Mariah Carey makes merry in holiday show at Garden
Just in case there was any doubt, the elusive chanteuse made it all of four words into Monday’s concert at TD Garden before unleashing one of the trickiest and most celebrated and feared weapons in her arsenal. “Hello, Boston, it’s tiiiiiime . . .,” she singsonged, emphasizing that elongated final word with an eardrum-defying whistle note, letting it flutter this way and that before landing it back on solid ground. Mariah Carey had taken the stage.
As befits the “Queen of Christmas” title that’s attached itself to Carey over the past decade, the show was designed more in the vein of a Rockettes holiday spectacular than a pop concert. There were costume changes, bellhop-suited dancers, giant gift boxes containing child ballerinas, and a car-sized toy Christmas train that trundled Carey onstage for the finale.
The songs ranged from devotional classical standards like a “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” sung with a little grit in her voice to the punky-cheerleader romp “Oh Santa!,” which was essentially Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” if it had used Mr. Claus as an intermediary. Many selections drew on music from the Black church (such as the hard gospel-funk of “Fall in Love at Christmas”) and the ’70s/’80s R&B that Carey grew up on, with her “Silent Night” splitting the difference.
Carey, meanwhile, remains a curious contradiction: a megastar with precious little stage presence. When she wasn’t planted in one spot, she (very) casually swanned around the stage, content to simply let the audience take in her fabulousness. The sparks she did show came mostly when she deviated from the script, something that began right away, when she interrupted her own grand entrance to patiently complain about her microphone pack until it was fixed. As a holiday Mariah Carey Barbie (still in its packaging, of course) was sent to the stage, she began quietly singing a vamp of “Barbie . . . I’m gonna sign it . . .” as she searched for a marker, and she took the delay of her Glam Squad touching up her makeup and hair to ponder whether Boston cream pie was technically cake.
As for Carey’s vaunted vocal firepower, her band did its best to overwhelm her, and she faded into the mix as often as not. In fact, her best vocals tended to be less show-offy. Her voice in the first verses of the lush ballroom-jazz “Christmas Time is in the Air Again” was light and breathy before finally opening up, while she sang gospel power ballad “Jesus Born on This Day” simply enough to harmonize with her tween daughter Monroe. And for “We Belong Together” — a devotional song of a different stripe following a whirlwind medley of non-holiday hits — she delivered powerful, clear notes with zero tricks.
She did much the same on a regally powerful “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and her ebullient closer, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” As a confetti snowfall filled the Garden, Carey rode the crest of her band and backup singers to capture the joy that comes with pining. There’s another word for that — hope — and it’s the essence of Christmas.