Experiencing Mariah Carey live nowadays is like listening to someone start to make a Forrest Gump reference: You pretty much know what you’re going to get, but you can’t be certain what kinds of twists, turns, and yes, surprises are in store. Mariah’s voice ain’t what it used to be, on account of her being in her third decade of singing her lungs out for public consumption. Sometimes she is good, sometimes she is bad. She’s in the weird position of being a superstar underdog, a singer who’s still a billion times more talented than your average human being but who has been brought back down to earth over the years via unmistakable humanity.

Oh Hollywood. It used to be hard to get ahead here on talent alone. At the very least you needed famous family members, perhaps even a proclivity for allowing yourself to be blackmailed, all for a shot at the dream. But now it can all be yours, provided you have more than twenty dollars and less than $25,000.