In years gone by, a residency in Las Vegas was a sure sign that you were on the skids, but these days there is a little shame in being a “legacy artist”. Even if the kids (or anyone else apart from hardcore fans) aren’t interested in new records by the titans of the 80s and 90s, there will always be an audience for their old hits, and Mariah Carey’s new residency in the uber-gaudy Caesars Palace takes this to a new extreme.

The show is titled Mariah #1 to Infinity, and the concept is that she performs all 18 of her US No 1 hits (more than any other artist) in chronological order, with Infinity, her new single, concluding the show. This means that we get 14 singles from the 90s, four from the 00s, and Infinity from the present decade – which probably suits the audience, an eclectic bunch ranging from twentysomethings to pensioners – just fine. No new material to sit through, just the hits, and the biggest ones at that. There’s no All I Want For Christmas is You (it only reached No 21 in the States), though that may be just as well given that it’s May.

Vegas demands a showbiz extravaganza, and while Carey doesn’t ride a bicycle across a tightrope at any point, as Celine Dion apparently did in her residency, there’s no shortage of costume changes (six), choreography (performed by other people: Mariah requires assistance to make it down the stairs in heels, never mind dance) or grand entrances – she launches into Honey in a gown split to the thigh astride a jet ski. The big question mark hovers over her vocals. Whether you liked her records or not, her technical mastery was never in doubt, though recently she has been filmed failing to hit her famously stratospheric high notes. Can she pull off all her old numbers in front of a live audience?



The answer is ... pretty much. While her voice has acquired a not unappealing rasp at times, and her confidence in scaling those musical heights no longer seems unassailable (she’s particularly cautious during her Jackson Five cover, I’ll Be There), there are no disasters, and when she attains her famous dog-whistle pitch in Love Takes Time, the second song, the tension in the audience dissipates. Carey (whose speaking voice is surprisingly deep) also has a good line in camp audience banter, addressing everyone as “darling” and daffily (if inaccurately) saying that the audience weren’t born when her earliest hits were written. “I wasn’t even born when I wrote them – they were a miracle,” she adds. Come again?

Hearing Carey reel out her No 1s is a salutary reminder that the 90s weren’t all Oasis and Nirvana, despite what music journalists would have you believe. The onslaught of syrupy ballads is quite hard going for non-believers though, all decorated with the famous melisma that turns one syllable into five. But just as the show seems headed for snoozeville, with her band (all playing white-painted instruments) doing little to alleviate the supper-club vibe, she hits her late-90s run of hits, when she started collaborating with rappers and producers like Puff Daddy on bangers like Honey, Fantasy and the triumphant Always Be My Baby. Their lavish videos are screened at the back of the stage, the kind of extravaganzas that no one can afford to make now. It’s an enjoyable wallow in a bygone era.

Carey’s hip-hop flirtation led to diminishing commercial returns, so it’s back to the ballads for the show’s final stretch, with We Belong Together introduced as “the song that saved my life”. Touch My Body sees a man from the audience invited to climb onto a giant bed and blindfolded while Mariah waves a feather in his general direction to somewhat toe-curling effect. Yet while Infinity seems unlikely to restore her to pop’s cutting edge – or anywhere approaching it – she seems at ease with her past, and proud of the effect her songs have had on such huge numbers of people. “I’m doing my best to be a diva,” she declares. But like the audience, she’s having too much fun.