A Celebration of Mariah Carey

Stream Glitter!

I believe Mariah Carey to be one of the most misunderstood geniuses of our time.

(Pictured Above: MARIAH CAREY!!! Photo Creds: Grammy.com, Robyn Beck/Getty Images)

Allow me to explain, that may be seen as a crazy claim. Of course, Mariah Carey is not just a LEGEND, but THEE legend of all time. One of the highest selling artists in history; she has held, and still actively holds, countless records - some of which I don’t believe will be toppled anytime soon. If you look at her stats, her achievements are incomparable. 19 number one hits, the most of any solo artist - ranging from 1990 to 2019. That is just the numbers, I believe her impact is far more rich and powerful than what can be quantified. Which is why I say, for so much of her career it feels as though the general public has tried to put her into boxes, rather than celebrate her for all she has done with her legacy.

Mariah was the head writer of almost every song she has put out (aside from a handful of covers) and achieved astronomical success in this process… still, though, it feels as many people are only interested in her as a spectacle. Only focusing on the drama she has been involved with, her “diva” image, or even just the Christmas of it all - not as much the artistry. To be clear, that’s quite the generalization, and not entirely a fair one. Mariah Carey has a passionate and devoted following. She is one of the most famous people of all time, largely beloved at that. I know people who have named their children “Mariah” and “Carey” for her. She is one of the usherers of the modern “stan” culture era. This Queen of Christmas fixation (which she has leaned into) is very new gen, particularly after All I Want for Christmas is You hit #1 in 2019. On top of her last (non-compilation) album being released in 2018, naturally the conversations around her aren’t the same as they were in the 90s when she was at the peak of her game. It could be seen as very backhanded to me to imply that she is “misunderstood” because what she has created is so vast and iconic. Nobody can take that away from the empire she has built, and I don’t mean to imply anything else… though, I still want to highlight just how major her impact is on pop culture, because the conversations aren’t being had as often anymore.

Being said, this will not be a career breakdown. I wouldn’t even call it a retrospective. Her career is so vast, if I attempted to break everything down, I’d be far past the Substack character count limit before even getting around to Glitter. Consider this just a celebration of Mariah Carey. Aptly titled for her Celebration of Mimi residency, I know!

Growing up, Mariah Carey was a force in my life. I would just play (almost) all of her music on shuffle. Songs like Vision of Love (the most insane debut single of all time, really) and Honey have ranked amongst my favorite songs of all time for as long as I can remember. I own her brilliant memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, which recontextualizes a lot of her discography; I highly recommend getting your hands on that if you have not. Yet still, I had never actually gone back and completed her full discography until this past month. I thought I had, just because of how much of her music has been spun around my house… I was quite mistaken! I think everybody should sit down and go through her discography from front to back at some point in their lives. There’s just so much there, so vast and iconic. There were entire albums worth of material I just had never heard. That’s kind of embarrassing for me, because I had always felt as though I was an expert, but… I’ve been humbled in this process!

There are aspects to her image and artistry that I see in so much of our new generation of pop stars. Ariana Grande has gone on record countless times naming Mariah as an influence, she’s probably the most famous example of the Mariah print in music. She said she would study Mariah Carey growing up when learning how to sing, she would post covers of songs such as Emotions to her YouTube channel before Yours Truly even came out. It’s more than just her, though, I believe there’s a Mariah print in how people navigate songwriting as well. Sabrina Carpenter is a decent example of this with how she leans into unserious wordplay and innuendos. I find this quite reminiscent of early to mid 2000s era Mariah specifically. Think E=MC² era, and also don’t really ask questions because I’m not going to expand on this too much.

Mariah’s pen seemingly had no limit throughout her entire career. Pop hits, power ballads, anthems, Christmas music. Everything she did had such a lasting power, which is part of why she’s so prolific and unparalleled to this day. The lyrics to Petals have always been some of my favorites. This is a song about her estrange relationship with her sister, and they’re so personal and tragic, yet able to resonate so widely as well. A universality in emotion, that translated so tragically in its writing:

“And I miss you dandelion and even love you; And I wish there was a way for me to trust you. But it hurts me every time I try to touch you.”

“So many I considered closest to me, turned on a dime and sold me out dutifully. Although that knife was chipping away at me, they turned their eyes away and went home to sleep.”

“And I missed a lot of life, but I'll recover. Though I know you really like to see me suffer. Still, I wish that you and I'd forgive each other.”

As I mentioned before, she has a way with clever wordplay in her lyricism as well, famously in Touch My Body:

“'Cause if you run your mouth and brag about this secret rendezvous, I will hunt you down; 'Cause they be all up in my business like a Wendy interview.”

Or Up Out My Face:

“If we were two Lego blocks, even the Harvard University graduating class of 2010, couldn't put us back together again.”

These are all more famous examples of her wordplay and lyricism, but something about her brain is just on another level. How she makes these lyrics work so well in the music, she has a great sense of what works and what doesn’t. What collaborators she needs to fulfill her vision, what a song has to sound like… that sense of taste clearly takes you a long way.

Something I admire about Mariah is how she celebrates her own work. If there is an anniversary for any project, she WILL be celebrating it - whether it be with a re-release, or just posting about its importance. One thing about her, she respects her past and is proud of her work. As she should be! Most recently seen with her
celebrating the 25th anniversary of her 7th album, Rainbow, with an expanded re-release. She specifically also did a celebratory re-release for Music Box.

To complete this issue, I’m going to take you on a journey of each of her albums and give some light commentary. I wanted to create a playlist solely for this issue. That, however, became such a struggle because by and large I do enjoy every song she has recorded. Link here, perhaps? But don’t take it too seriously if I didn’t include your favorite songs. It isn’t definitive. It’s just a playlist. Thank you.

Her early albums were so essential to the foundation of her career Her self-titled debut and Emotions don’t only just feature several of her culture-shifting hits, but also helped cultivate her image as an artist. They weren’t all ballads, though she created a signature for herself with her VERY FIRST song Visions of Love alone. The music on her original few albums create a vibe that is so particularly nostalgic and representative of that era of music as we look back on it now. Every track feels so quintessential to 90s culture (I was not alive to witness said culture, but the feeling remains). Only a true artist can stand the test of time the way she has, while still having quality work that holds up decades later.

Music Box and Daydream mark two of her peak eras of early success. Music Box being record breaking in sale numbers, and Daydream famously being considered one of the best albums of the decade, while also smashing in album sales. Both of these albums are also noted as an official ushering in of a new era of Mariah’s career. Though she never fully abandons her signature tone, these albums are when she starts embracing the pop/R&B stylings for her music, which are equally signature to her brand.

In my opinion, the Magnum Opus of her 90s works is Butterfly, though. Mariah, too, has called it her favorite on an occasion, so this isn’t some hot take, try as I might to sound different. I believe Butterfly to be a flawless album from front to back. This is the album that encapsulates the style of all her 90s music in such a magnificent way. A culmination of her entire career up until this point in her discography. As soon as you hear the piano on Honey, how can you not levitate? The era of my life I’m in right now has elevated this album to become one of my favorite albums of all time, really.

Onto the birthday girl! Rainbow, although critically met with some mixed reception, has such a true iconography to it. The cover, the Heartbreaker music video where she plays dual roles who are fighting one another in the bathroom stall. Now’s as good of a time to point out how Mariah is an artist accredited to popularizing remixes and collaborating with rappers on her pop songs, Rainbow era is the prime example of that.

9/11 aside, Glitter was already set up for failure. Mariah talks about as such in her memoir, here’s a link to an article that breaks down a lot of the context of its production and rollout, but I do recommend reading the entire memoir. All things considered, though, I believe Glitter actually aged… relatively well. The films itself never really stood a chance to be great - they legitimately sabotaged her. But I believe it created a formula that is ahead of its time, in a real sense. The story holds up, 80s nostalgia years before everything became 80s nostalgia, the soundtrack legitimately had a renaissance nearly two decades later. #JusticeForGlitter, you had to be there. The music hits!

Soon after Glitter, Charmbracelet as an era largely underperformed and was met with some mixed at best reviews. The early 2000s seemed like an end of an era… until she came back harder than ever with a rebirth of an album, The Emancipation of Mimi. One of my favorite albums of all time. The one album that I knew from front to back long before I started working on this issue. This album is the true marking for modern Mariah. True freedom and liberation in her musical expression. Everything about this album feels the truest to Mariah, which is an infectious energy to listen to! This was a shift. One of the best-selling albums of the 21st century, one of her most critically successful as well, getting nominated for Album of the Year. This secured her legacy for the modern era. She outdid herself. A true moment. I couldn’t oversell it enough, but I’m also very biased towards it so if you asked me to, I could try to.

I can’t articulate why, but E=MC² and Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel were the most shockingly brilliant albums I listened to. Perhaps I assumed just based on the songs I knew that her older albums would be the ones I gravitate towards, but outside of Butterfly, the run from Emancipation to E=MC² to Memoirs became my favorite album streak on this listen-through. I also believe the lyricism on these albums has influenced the modern generation of songwriters. I mentioned earlier I believe Sabrina Carpenter’s wordplay is reminiscent of Touch My Body and songs of that tone, but Obsessed alone has become a reference that everybody recognizes - mind you it didn’t even go #1. Possibly the most retrospectively iconic era of her career.

I consider Me. I Am Mariah. The Elusive Chanteuse and Caution to be the modern Mariah albums, and both also hold up better than I was anticipating going in. Caution particularly shocked me with just how fresh it sounded. The pen was penning just as strong as ever. I don’t know why I expected any different, maybe just because her earlier works set the bar so high, but she constantly lived up to the bar, if not raised it. Caution, released in 2018, is her latest technical studio album. Not a compilation, live, or Christmas special album, and it honestly served as a perfect conclusion to the Mariah binge-listen. Not to quote Pitchfork ever, but a quote from their review says, Mariah “celebrates her ultimate-diva status by sticking to her core pop-soul aesthetic,” which I don’t think is an off-observation. Caution may be her latest effort, and it might not be her most commercially successful, either, but it also feels so deeply true to Mariah. She never lost her sense of individuality. She’s a singular presence. What a note to end the 2010s era on.

The Rarities doesn’t “technically” count as a Mariah album, but I do want to give it a shoutout as well. If we consider the run we just covered as Mariah’s discography, (barring the Christmas albums, which I just didn’t want to count given I am writing this in June) I consider The Rarities to be an epilogue. It’s made up of so much unreleased material, she put it out coinciding with her memoir. It feels so hyper-personal, and it all sounds soooooooo good. I’d actually encourage listening to it before getting into her music, it can be seen as a prologue just as well. I wanted to give it a little shoutout before moving on.

In recent years, she leaned into the Queen of Christmas image. She had an iconic Christmas special which brought out Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson to collaborate on a remix of Oh, Santa!

Again, I don’t want to harp on the Christmas of it all for too long, because… ‘tis just not the season… but I do watch that special every year.

Most recently, she collaborated with Ariana Grande once again for the Yes, And? remix, and while I don’t like it very much…. I do find it so suitable that Mariah has embraced Ariana Grande as a multiple times collaborator considering Ariana Grande is undeniably the most popular artist who has been so heavily and unapologetically inspired by Mariah. Considering Mariah very much popularized the modern remix, it also is equally fit that their collaboration be in the form of a remix, kind of!

Public image and support for Mariah Carey has fluctuated so greatly through the years. She has highs nobody else will ever be able to replicate, as well as lows that she could never have been able to prevent. Through it all, though, she has carried herself in such a way to be secured as one of the greatest musical legends of all time. There will never be another Mariah, though her impact remains all too present through all corners of music.