The 47-year-old singer canceled several of her Manhattan Christmas concerts on the advice of her doctor.
Mariah Carey, one of the best-selling pop musicians of all time, announced this week she was canceling three of her annual Christmas-themed concerts in New York City. In an upbeat Instagram post, the 47-year-old singer explained she needed “a few more days” to recover from the respiratory infection that interrupted her tour earlier in November.
Carey’s annual Christmas themed tour was originally scheduled to begin November 27, but Carey will instead start in New York on December 2 and wrap in Las Vegas on December 22. Since we have an extra week to check in with the Queen of Christmas and decide whether her vocal cords are in good shape, it feels like a good time to analyze the role she’s taken on during the holiday season.
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Though she’s written a children’s book about Christmas, voiced an animated feature about Christmas, released a Christmas-themed make-up line, and continues to tour singing her 1994 hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” Carey said in multiple interviews that she doesn’t identify as the queen of the holiday. “I’m just a person who likes Christmas, OK? Who happened to write some songs,” she told The Hollywood Reporter this month.
Carey famously pretends she’s never heard of—or met—any pop stars in her age range, but regardless of her facade, she’s been put in a very specific place in pop culture alongside her contemporaries.
Let’s consider what Carey’s fellow female vocalists, whose images were somewhat sexualized in their youth, are up to now. Gwen Stefani, 48, has sanded down all vestigial signs of being a former punk singer and is a judge on The Voice alongside her boyfriend, country star Blake Shelton. Jennifer Lopez, 48, went the Vegas residency route after Britney Spears, 35, rebranded herself as a Las Vegas staple in 2013. Spears is, of course, younger than Carey, but she, Beyoncé, 36, and Christina Aguilera, 36, aren’t far behind Mimi in the process of rebranding after twenty years as a pop star. Beyoncé, however, found a way to fuse sexuality with domesticity and mature womanhood on Beyonce and Lemonade, but her complex image is still pretty unique.
If nothing changes by the time Taylor Swift, 27, and Rihanna, 29, reach their mid-forties, they might have to choose, as Carey once did, between a Las Vegas residency, judging a vocal contest on cable television, or playing their old hit singles on tour after tour. Not that any of those gigs are necessarily embarrassing or low-paid; it’s just strange to see Carey, a woman who has been heralded as one of the most powerful female figures in media, relegated to a holiday-specific role she doesn’t even seem to want.
If Carey recovers in time, her “All I Want for Christmas Tour” begins Saturday.
