Earlier this year, Mariah Carey sent her creative team in search of an important piece of tour memorabilia. It had been nearly two decades since he had last seen it: the glowing 'MIMI' sign that lit up the stage during The Adventures of Mimi tour in 2006. Each night, the lighting structure descended from above the stage as Carey — shimmering in a black, menswear-inspired outfit — launched into “Shake It Off,” one of the most successful singles from The emancipation of Mimi, released on April 12, 2005. The sign was a reference to both the album title and the artist, who earned the nickname “Mimi” from her closest friends and family. It also captured the brilliance that the record brought from Carey.
“There's just something about that period of time and everything that happened in my work and my music and my life during that time that's really the essence of who I am,” says Carey. Rolling rock above Zoom in on wardrobe accessories for Mariah Carey: The Celebration of Mimi Live in Las Vegas, residency that began at Dolby Live at Park MGM on April 12 — and why she was so curious about where that sign was. (“He really wanted us to look for it in storage,” notes the singer's longtime music manager Daniel Moore. “We certainly tried, but we couldn't find it, so we had to recreate it.”)
While the original gold sign has been lost to time—now reproduced in a bright neon pink—the music of the era and what it stood for remains. Recently expanded to 16 dates, the Las Vegas show travels back to the long road that led Carey to an artistic breakthrough. Likewise with her memoirs The meaning of Mariah Carey, the show follows a narrative thread from the beginning of her career to her emergence as one of the most legendary figures in pop music. Every segment of the show is a celebration of the music that, without a doubt, cemented her in this pantheon.
“I came up with the idea of doing a residency in Vegas and I just thought, 'Hmm, do we want to do this?' Carey recalls. “I was going to do it the traditional way. And then when I thought about doing Mime festival and bringing back the songs – many of which I'd never performed – I just thought, 'This is the way to do it.'
Carey opens Mime's feast with her debut single 'Vision of Love', released in 1990. 'That's why we did it the way we did it where we started on 'Vision of Love' in the black dress. It's a little different than the original black dress, but you know what I mean — we just started with that vibe. And then it connects to everything and we get to Imitation,” she says. This makes the arrival at The emancipation of Mimi in the long setlist taste even sweeter. Her tenth album, the record followed 2002's critically divisive Bracelet and unlocked something refreshing within Carey. The pivotal, dominant pop comeback debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 404,000 copies sold in its first week and spawned two chart-topping singles with “Don't Forget About Us” and “We Belong Together.”
But when Carey looks back on her memories of that defining time, what stands out is how free she felt. “I know that's what it's all about,” he says. “But it's really about being free and feeling emancipated.” The singer was able to think more deeply about the album when planning Mime's feast launched in January 2024. It marks Carey's fourth Las Vegas residency and her first since The butterfly returns closed at Caesars Palace in 2020 after nearly two years. “It's been a long time – and I don't like counting years,” he says. “But it was something that I could actually sit back and listen to and then rearrange and figure out exactly what the sequence was going to be – as opposed to a record or a single or an album.”
Mime's feast includes eight dancers, four band members and three backing singers. “With every rehearsal, with every run, she gives us more and more of herself,” says Jana Thompkins, the show's creative director and choreographer. “That then turns into an inspiration for us to give and create more to build on that and support it.” Moore adds, “We wanted to tell the story. We will literally take you on a journey from the first time you saw and heard Mariah Carey. We don't do numbers, but you can't make music for these decades without having a six-hour show.”
Carey prefers to operate in a space of timelessness. she and her camp are reluctant to emphasize the anniversary of a nearly two-decade, career-defining album. Instead, they're focused on celebrating Carey herself. “It was about: How do we find the journey, musically through the lyrics and the transitions, to get to the Emancipation? The whole show is not alone Emancipation,” Moore continues. “He starts by telling you the story of how he became an artist from day one, to what those experiences were like and why he felt the need to break free. And then here we are, celebrating.”
Creating the live show arrangement with Moore reminded Carey of the ways in which her relationship The emancipation of Mimi has changed over the years. “I think I'll love it more, if anything. Some songs that I really didn't get a chance to perform a lot — like 'I Wish You Knew,' 'Your Girl,' and 'Circles' — we kind of did a medley of a lot of those songs,” he says. “This album just it ended up being my favorite body of work I've done.”
The emancipation of Mimi has been certified seven times platinum and spawned four hit singles, including “It's Like That,” “We Belong Together,” “Shake It Off” and “Don't Forget About Us.” In addition to spending 14 weeks at Number One on the Billboard Hot 100, “We Belong Together” earned nominations for Record and Song of the Year at the 2006 Grammy Awards. The song was awarded Best R&B Song and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance . That night, Carey also took home Best Contemporary R&B album for The emancipation of Mimi, which was also nominated for album of the year. She earned two additional nominations for “It's Like That” and “Mine Again” for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance, respectively.
“We started working on some songs that would end up being my favourites, like I mentioned 'Your Girl' before and I worked with the Neptunes on 'Say Something' and 'To the Floor' with Nelly. Those songs, I thought, OK, this is the direction of my album,” Carey recalled. “And then when I ended up sitting down with LA Reid, he said, 'Oh, you're not going to work with Jermaine. [Dupri]?' And of course, I will work with Jermaine. We're just not there yet, take it easy.”
Her process was collaborative and deliberate, as she hoped to strike a balance between her classic ballads and a more hip-hop-inspired approach to R&B. “When you sit down and go through the set Emancipation of Mime as an album, and say, 'Some of these songs were a little more like this or a little more like that,' it's just really interesting,” he adds. “I love the album so much that it's hard to pick it apart and say, 'Oh, I like this part less than that.' It really is a unit.”
Moore and Thompkins—working alongside co-choreographer Ashley Seldon Smith and creative consultant Jimmy Smith—were tasked with shaping how Mime's feast it would translate to the performance in both music and movement. “Not only did we try to time travel with the choir, but we also tried to literally embody what the music makes you feel, how it makes you want to move, how it inspires you, and what it visually portrays,” says Thompkins.
He adds: “When you get into some of these more hip-hop elements, like the moments in 'Breakdown' or 'Baby Doll,' things like that — I'm kind of thinking about the setlist, but it's okay — where it has these rap characteristics, we really wanted to visually bring you into that hip-hop element as it juxtaposes with the softness of the music in the song he sings. So you'll know it in this choreography when you see it visually. It's not all jazz. It's not all hip-hop. There are even moments where we go from a version of the song and then we go to a hip-hop version of the song.”
On the musical end, Moore tweaked the medleys to include nods to past performances, such as when she sang “Always Be My Baby” live during the Music Box time. “There's a moment where it's just a mix of music and we have a jam between the dancers and the band and everyone just gets into it,” Thompkins teases. “I think it's going to be a really enjoyable experience for the audience because I don't know that anyone has ever done this set of songs that I'm referring to.”
Carey and her creative team wanted to create a live experience that would exceed the audience's expectations. “My desire is not to see it as a Vegas show. We try to bring you into Mariah's world. The hope is when you leave this show, you're not just singing in concert, but actually getting to know her in a more intimate space,” Moore explains. “You can understand the whole of her thoughts, the way she wrote the songs, why they're important to her, and you could see inside that anything is possible. You can come from this or you can come from that. But you can be free. You can be emancipated on your own journey.”
Almost 20 years after the discovery of liberation within The emancipation of Mimi, Carey continues to fill it. “It's like the emancipation never ends because I worked so hard to get there,” she says. “Coming back to residency and doing this, it's something I really didn't think I would do. And now, in the midst of it, I realize that this is the essence of who I am.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/mariah-carey-las-vegas-celebration-of-mimi-behind-the-scenes-1235001397/