Mariah Carey Hits Top Spot in Video Debut

Columbia Records is reported to have spent as much as $450,000 on the first video for 20-year-old newcomer Mariah Carey. That’s a lot of money for a big production number, let alone a video with minimal sets and no actors or dancers besides the singer herself.

The tremendously gifted Carey, though, is seen as a future “franchise” for the label, which no doubt thought it a good investment to spend the time and money to light and photograph her good looks just right. It paid off: Her single, “Vision of Love,” hit No. 1 in short order. Visually, she doesn’t exude the kind of out-of-the-box confidence in this video that Whitney Houston did her first time out, but there’s every indication that she’ll offer less flash and more finesse than Houston, and her modest (despite the cost) clip tops this month’s edition of Sound & Vision, where videos are rated on a 0-100 scale.

VID PICK TO CLICK:

Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love.” (Director: Andy Morahan.) Are the golden sunset hues that illuminate upstart Carey in her first video merely photogenic, or intended to perpetuate the initial is-she-black-or-is-she-white confusion among fans as she steps out of the gate toward conquering both the pop and R&B; charts? Either way, this straightforward clip is a simple but effectively inviting introduction to a new star (or superstar--we’ll see). Carey’s delivery on this subtle, propulsive ballad is like that sunset--muted and gorgeous--and never slips into the compulsive melismania of a Whitney or Patti LaBelle, at least not until the economical big finish. She’s as good as gold. 75

WORTH A LOOK & A LISTEN:

Jon Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory.” (D: Wayne Isham.) Cheesy would-be outlaw Jon Bon Jovi is near-impossible to take when he’s pretending to be a rock ‘n’ roll cowboy, but the inventive visual scheme director Isham has concocted makes it a lot easier: He plops Bon Jovi down in an ersatz drive-in impossibly constructed (and understandably deserted) atop a high desert butte, with clips from the Brat Pack Western “Young Guns II” unspooling on the screen. The drive-in is itself an endangered species these days, making for a perfect marriage of setting and theme--even if the song itself is pure hooey. 68

Jane Wiedlin’s “World on Fire.” (D: Julien Temple.) Go-Go Wiedlin is slightly miscast as a sex bomb in a Marilyn Monroe get-up, and all the incendiary imagery here is so hackneyed it barely ignites a spark. But this clip is worth catching for one great shot: As Jane necks with some fellow outside the infamous Frolic Room on Hollywood Boulevard, flames start at her high heels, shoot up the seams on the back of her pantyhose and engulf an overhead tree. 50

GAMMA RAY ROT:

Peter Wolf’s “When Women Are Lonely.” (D: Dominic Sena.) When women are lonely . . . they put on lingerie and pout, natch. Is this earnest advice for the lovelorn, or a dead ringer for one of those late-night ads for “true confessions” 900 lines? 30

Phil Collins’ “Something Happened on the Way to Heaven.” (D: Jim Yukich.) Collins has brought a much-needed light touch to MTV with his often self-deprecating videos. This one, though, has more of a self- defecating sensibility: Many of the camera angles are from a dog’s-eye-view, as a cute pooch mischievously wanders the stage during Collins’ rehearsal. One of the “gags” has a backup singer stepping in number two, and the climactic joke has Bowser letting number one loose on the bass player’s leg. It’s hardly a howl. 30

Tom Petty’s “Yer So Bad.” (D: Julien Temple.) Petty’s song, while light-hearted, had at least a whiff of sympathy for its divorced protagonists; director Temple, though, turns it into an ugly cartoon. Comic actor Charles Rocket, who played yuppie scum in Temple’s feature film “Earth Girls Are Easy,” does the same kind of turn here in miniature as a spoiled, spurned husband who finally winds up with the kind of mate he apparently deserves--an inflatable doll. Yer so misanthropic. 30

Bruce Dickinson’s “All the Young Dudes.” (D: Storm Thorgerson.) There’s amusement value in seeing someone as long in the tooth as ex-Iron Maiden member Dickinson proudly march down the street with his rocker mates, past the pointedly confused faces of much older folks, singing “We’re juvenile delinquent wrecks”; there’s something even more hilarious about him using David Bowie’s early-’70s gay/glitter anthem as the stuff of early-’90s macho/metal pride. Any irony seems to have escaped the dude twice over. 18