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Mariah's Up, So Where's Tommy? FoxNews - January 4, 2006
Is the infamous, legendary, reviled, beloved, scorned and sometimes scary Tommy Mottola officially retired from the music business? Maybe not yet, but consider all of this: His celebrated ex-wife, Mariah Carey, is in the middle of her biggest success.
Her “Emancipation of Mimi” album has eight Grammy nominations and is just about to cross the 5 million copy mark. It’s also yielded two huge hits, “We Belong Together” and “Don’t Forget About Us,” and propelled Carey back to superstar status, from which she will not likely fall again. All of this makes us wonder: What the heck ever happened to Mariah’s ex, her guru, the man who thinks he discovered her and made her a star?
Recently, recording artist Marc Anthony —whom Mottola picked up as a management client with the hope of getting Mrs. Anthony, aka J-Lo — quit and returned to work with his brother. Earlier, Usher did the same thing, giving up Mottola for his mother (I wonder whom he blames for putting him in the awful movie “In the Mix,” but that’s another story).
You do recall Mottola getting the heave-ho from Sony Music exactly two years ago this week, after 14 years of ruthless behavior re-creating and then running an empire. He got a major gig with Universal Music six months later, in July 2003. That job was reviving the late Neil Bogart’s famed Casablanca Records, once home to acts such as Donna Summer and KISS.
Someone — I’m not sayin’ who — put out gossip that Universal’s Doug Morris was putting $50 million into the operation. According to a press release issued in Billboard on July 8, 2003, “Signings will be announced in the next three to four weeks with the first singles to be out before September. As many as six albums are expected to be released under the Casablanca name within the next year.”
That was 30 months ago. And since then? Casablanca has released virtually nothing but two albums by teen pop star Lindsay Lohan. The first one sold a respectable 1.1 million, according to Nielsen Sound Scan. But the second one has been a disaster: 202,000 copies. And that’s after Lindsay crashed her car a couple of times and got more publicity than 10 record acts.
If Mottola has other acts on Casablanca, he’s been keeping them a secret. The only singer besides Lohan who’s featured on the label’s Web site is a girl named Brie Larson. Her debut album, released a year ago, has sold 3,500 copies.
The single from the album did a little better, with 5,800 copies. Mottola may actually be at a disadvantage at Universal. It’s widely believed that Morris made the Casablanca deal with him out of friendship. At the same time, some insiders insist that Morris has actually blocked Mottola from having hits. One source told me yesterday: “They were always going to give Tommy a big three weeks when a record came out, then abandon him. And that’s what’s happened.”
Two years ago, a Mottola signee called MVP, considered a hot rap act, was on the verge of success. But then, says a source, “the word went out to kill the record. It went to No. 1 at dance radio in New York and Top 3 at pop stations. But Universal put nothing behind it.”
Mottola, according to friends, is spending most of his time now in Aspen with third wife, Thalia Sodi, long billed as a Mexican soap opera actress.
Thalia remains mostly unknown in the United States except for a clothing line at K-Mart. Despite efforts to turn her into an American celebrity, Mottola has only deepened her Latin American star status. At this point, it’s clear she will never be another Mariah, in any language. “It must be driving him crazy that Mariah’s having so much success,” says a source. “After all, in the past he tried to kill her albums.
But this one he couldn’t do anything about.” The album he had a hand in destroying was “Glitter,” which was released on EMI after Mottola allegedly pilfered music and ideas from it and gave them to Jennifer Lopez to release earlier.
But Mariah is now with Universal, which means that no matter how much Mottola would like to see her fail, undermining the album would have meant undercutting himself at the same time. Doug Morris, it’s pointed out, wouldn’t have liked that. And right now, Morris is Mottola’s last link to his beloved record business.
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Sujet: Re: Thalia exposed 
mais maintenanant apres la raclette.. ca doit etre vers 61 (j'ai peur de mesurer :s161: ). 
