You Want to Know Why This is so Bad - You Want Love Machine to Show You

On the face of it, Mariah Carey's new version of I Want to Know What Love Is, is almost too easy a target. She's taking on an absolute undisputed classic which will be almost impossible to top. There are rumours her voice isn't what it was after her lamentable X Factor performance last year (nb. does the song really say, 'and I'm gon' fart like a whale each time you let me down' at 1:24?) and she hasn't done a decent song for years.



BUT SERIOUSLY

THIS IS RUBBISH

Incredibly, the overriding thing that makes this cover bad is that it's actually too restrained. Not something we ever thought we'd say about Mariah. If Leona had done this, it would have got the balls out treatment, with 2 key changes, a drumkit from hell and a choir of descended archangels. Mariah's version is insipid and limp, there's that terrible minimal R&B production and her voice, out of her immediate comfortable range,  is just horrible. As ever, let's put it to the Love Machine test:



0:29 Fingerclicks....bloody fingerclicks

1:16 Horrible horrible chorus. She sounds a bit like this (1:37)


2:28 Change this lonely liiiiiiiiiiiaaahhoohahahahahiiiiiife

2:32 WHY ISN'T THERE A MASSIVE SNARE DRUM IN NOW. At least there's a gospel choir

2:58 At last a sort of crap drum kit but it's only got 41 seconds to do anything

3:04 SOMEONE'S GETTING STRANGLED HERE

3:15 AND ANOTHER ONE

3:23 Kettle's boiled

Leona's Stop Crying Your Heart Out had better be preposterously enormous and brilliant, that's all we're saying