Shuesday: Calling Mariah

I'm not a fan, but I did read Sasha Frere-Jones' recent career summary in The New Yorker, and I had to be impressed. Ms. Carey is one of the most successful artists of her time. To wit:

Mariah Carey is thirty-six years old, and, barring a debilitating illness, or another movie as bad as “Glitter,” her 2001 vanity project, she will likely break the world record for the most No. 1 songs before she turns forty. She was the biggest-selling female artist of the nineties and is the first woman to have three studio albums sell more than eight million copies each in this country. She has written or co-written sixteen of her seventeen No. 1 hits, more than any other female composer, and has produced twelve No. 1 songs, more than any other woman.

And these are clearly shoes designed with her in mind.

(Carey has often described herself as an “eternal twelve-year-old,” an assertion borne out by her enthusiasm not just for rainbows, butterflies, and glitter—all of which appear on her album covers—but for the songs that were actually on the radio when she was a teen-ager.)