music
1990–1992: Early commercial success
Carey co-wrote the tracks on her 1990 debut album Mariah Carey, and she has continued to co-write the majority of her material since. During the recording, she expressed dissatisfaction with the contributions of producers such as Ric Wake and Rhett Lawrence, whom the executives at Columbia had enlisted to help make the album more commercially viable.Backed by a substantial promotional budget, the album reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, where it remained for several weeks. It yielded four number-one singles, and made Carey a star in the United States, but was less successful in other countries. Critics rated the album highly, and Carey won Grammys for Best New Artist, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance—for her debut single, “Vision of Love”.
Carey’s 1992 MTV Unplugged concert showed her ability to produce her vocal style outside a studio setting. Audio sample of “Emotions”
Carey conceived Emotions, her second album, as a homage to Motown soul music (see Motown Sound), and she worked with Walter Afanasieff and Clivillés & Cole (from the dance group C&C Music Factory) on the record. It was released soon after her debut album—in late 1991—but was neither critically nor commercially as successful; Rolling Stone described it as “more of the same, with less interesting material […] pop-psych love songs played with airless, intimidating expertise”. The title track “Emotions” made Carey the only recording act to have their first five singles reach number one on the U.S. Hot 100 chart, though the album’s follow-up singles failed to match this feat. Carey had been lobbying to produce her own songs, and beginning with Emotions, she has co-produced most of her material. “I didn’t want [Emotions] to be somebody else’s vision of me”, she said. “There’s more of me on this album”.
Although Carey performed live occasionally, stage fright prevented her from embarking on a major tour. Her first widely seen appearance was featured on the television show MTV Unplugged in 1992, and she remarked that she felt her performance that night proved her vocal abilities were not, as some had previously speculated, simulated with studio equipment. Alongside acoustic versions of some of her earlier songs, Carey premiered a cover of The Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” with her back-up singer Trey Lorenz. The duet was released as a single, reached number one in the U.S., and led to a record deal for Lorenz, whose debut album Carey later co-produced. Because of high ratings for the Unplugged television special, the concert’s set list was released on the EP MTV Unplugged, which Entertainment Weekly called “the strongest, most genuinely musical record she has ever made […] Did this live performance help her take her first steps toward growing up?”.
1993–1996: Worldwide popularity
Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds consulted on the album Music Box, which was released later that year and became Carey’s most successful worldwide. It yielded her first UK Singles Chart number-one, a cover of Badfinger’s “Without You”, and the U.S. number-ones “Dreamlover” and “Hero”. Billboard magazine proclaimed it “heart-piercing […] easily the most elemental of Carey’s releases, her vocal eurythmics in natural sync with the songs”, but TIME magazine lamented Carey’s attempt at a mellower work, “[Music Box] seems perfunctory and almost passionless […] Carey could be a pop-soul great; instead she has once again settled for Salieri-like mediocrity.” In response to such comments, Carey said, “As soon as you have a big success, a lot of people don’t like that. There’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is make music I believe in.”Most critics slighted the opening of her subsequent U.S. Music Box Tour.
In late 1994, after her duet with Luther Vandross on a cover of Lionel Richie and Diana Ross’s “Endless Love” became a hit, Carey released the holiday album Merry Christmas. It contained cover material and original compositions such as “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, which became Carey’s biggest single in Japan, and, in subsequent years, emerged as one of her most perennially popular songs on U.S. radio.Critical reception of Merry Christmas was mixed, with All Music Guide calling it an “otherwise vanilla set […] pretensions to high opera on ‘O Holy Night’ and a horrid danceclub take on ‘Joy to the World’”. It became the most successful Christmas album of all time.
In 1995, Columbia released Carey’s fifth album, Daydream, which combined the pop sensibilities of Music Box with downbeat R&B and hip hop influences. A remix of “Fantasy”, its first single, featured rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Carey said that Columbia reacted negatively to her intentions for the album: “Everybody was like ‘What, are you crazy?’. They’re very nervous about breaking the formula.”It became her biggest-selling album in the U.S., and its singles achieved similar success—”Fantasy” became the second single to debut at number one in the U.S. and topped the Canadian Singles Chart for twelve weeks, “One Sweet Day” (a duet with Boyz II Men) spent a record-holding sixteen weeks at number one in the U.S., and “Always Be My Baby” (co-produced by Jermaine Dupri) was the most successful on U.S. radio in 1996, according to Billboard magazine. Daydream generated career-best reviews for Carey, and publications such as The New York Times named it one of 1995’s best albums; the Times wrote that its “best cuts bring pop candy-making to a new peak of textural refinement […] Carey’s songwriting has taken a leap forward, becoming more relaxed, sexier and less reliant on thudding clichés”. The short but profitable Daydream World Tour augmented sales of the album, which received six Grammy Award nominations.
1997–2000: New image and independence
Carey’s next album, Butterfly (1997), yielded the number-one single “Honey”, the lyrics and music video for which presented a more overtly sexual image of her than had been previously seen. She stated that Butterfly marked the point that she attained full creative control over her music. However, she added: “I don’t think it’s that much of a departure from what I’ve done in the past […] It’s not like I went psycho and thought I was going to be a rapper. Personally, this album is about doing whatever the hell I wanted to do.”Reviews were generally positive: LAUNCHcast said Butterfly “pushes the envelope”, a move its critic thought “may prove disconcerting to more conservative fans” but praised as “a welcome change”. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “[Butterfly] is easily the most personal, confessional-sounding record she’s ever done […] Carey-bashing just might become a thing of the past.”The album was a commercial success—though not to the degree of her previous three albums—and “My All” (her thirteenth Hot 100 number-one) gave her the record for the most U.S. number-ones by a female artist.[citation needed]
Towards the turn of the millennium, Carey was developing the film project Glitter, and wrote songs for the films Men in Black (1997), and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000).[citation needed] During the production of Butterfly, Carey became romantically involved with New York Yankees baseball star Derek Jeter. Their relationship ended in 1998, with both parties citing media interference as the main reason for the split. The same year, Columbia released the album #1’s, a collection of Carey’s U.S. number-one singles alongside new material, which she said was a way of rewarding her fans.The song “When You Believe”, a duet with Whitney Houston, was recorded for the soundtrack of The Prince of Egypt (1998) and won an Academy Award. #1’s sold above expectations, but a review in NME labeled Carey “a purveyor of saccharine bilge like ‘Hero’, whose message seems wholesome enough: that if you vacate your mind of all intelligent thought, flutter your eyelashes and wish hard, sweet babies and honey will follow”.[43] Also that year, she appeared on the first televised VH1 Divas benefit concert program, though her alleged prima donna behavior had already led many to consider her a diva. By the following year, she had entered a relationship with singer Luis Miguel.
Rainbow, Carey’s seventh studio album, was released in 1999 and comprised more R&B/hip hop-oriented songs, many of them co-created with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. “Heartbreaker” and “Thank God I Found You” (the former featuring Jay-Z, the latter featuring Joe and boy band 98 Degrees) reached number one in the U.S., and the success of the former made Carey the only act to have a number-one single in each year of the 1990s. A cover of Phil Collins’s “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” went to number one in the UK after Carey re-recorded it with boy band Westlife. Media reception of Rainbow was generally enthusiastic, with the Sunday Herald saying the album “sees her impressively tottering between soul ballads and collaborations with R&B heavyweights like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Usher […] It’s a polished collection of pop-soul”. VIBE magazine expressed similar sentiments, writing, “She pulls out all stops […] Rainbow will garner even more adoration”,[47] but it became Carey’s lowest selling album up to that point, and there was a recurring criticism that the tracks were too alike. When the double A-side “Crybaby” (featuring Snoop Dogg)/”Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme)” became her first single to peak outside the U.S. top twenty, Carey accused Sony of under promoting it: “The political situation in my professional career is not positive […] I’m getting a lot of negative feedback from certain corporate people”, she wrote on her official website.
2001–2004: Personal and professional struggles
Columbia released the low-charting compilation album Greatest Hits shortly after the failure of Glitter, and in early 2002, Virgin bought out Carey’s contract for $28 million, creating further negative publicity. Carey later said her time at Virgin was “a complete and total stress-fest […] I made a total snap decision which was based on money, and I never make decisions based on money. I learned a big lesson from that.”Later that year, she signed a $20 million contract with Island Records, and launched the record label MonarC. To add further to Carey’s emotional burdens, her father, with whom she had little contact between childhood and that year, died of cancer.
Following a well-received supporting role in the 2002 film WiseGirls, Carey released the album Charmbracelet, which she said marked “a new lease on life” for her. Sales of Charmbracelet were moderate, and the quality of Carey’s vocals came under severe criticism. The Boston Globe declared the album “the worst of her career, revealing a voice no longer capable of either gravity-defying gymnastics or soft coos”, and Rolling Stone commented, “Carey needs bold songs that help her use the power and range for which she is famous. Charmbracelet is like a stream of watercolors that bleed into a puddle of brown.”The album’s only charting single in America, “Through the Rain”, was a failure on pop radio, which had become less open to maturing “diva” stylists such as Celine Dion, or Carey herself in favor of younger singers such as Kelly Clarkson or Christina Aguilera, who had vocal styles very similar to Carey’s.
“I Know What You Want”, a 2003 Busta Rhymes single on which Carey guest starred, fared considerably better and reached the U.S. top five. Columbia later included it on the remix collection The Remixes, Carey’s first album not to receive an RIAA sales certification. That year, she embarked on the Charmbracelet World Tour and was awarded the Chopard Diamond award for selling over 100 million albums worldwide. She was featured on rapper Jadakiss’s 2004 single “U Make Me Wanna”, which reached the top ten on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart.
2005–Present: Return to prominence
Carey’s tenth studio album, The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), contained contributions from producers such as The Neptunes, Kanye West and Carey’s longtime collaborator, Jermaine Dupri. Carey said it was “very much like a party record […] the process of putting on makeup and getting ready to go out […] I wanted to make a record that was reflective of that.”The Emancipation of Mimi became 2005’s best-selling album in the U.S., and The Guardian reviewer defined it as “cool, focused and urban [… some of] the first Mariah Carey tunes in years I wouldn’t have to be paid to listen to again”. The album earned Carey a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Album, and the single “We Belong Together” won Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song. “We Belong Together” held the Hot 100’s number-one position for fourteen weeks (Carey’s longest run at the top as a solo lead artist), and “Shake It Off” made Carey the only solo female artist to occupy the Hot 100’s top two positions simultaneously.
Carey began a concert tour in mid-2006, called The Adventures of Mimi Tour, which was the most successful tour of her career, although some dates had to be canceled. She appeared on the cover of the March 2007 edition of Playboy magazine on a non-nude photo session.In early 2007, she was featured with Bow Wow on the Bone Thugs-n-Harmony single “Lil’ L.O.V.E.”. Later in the year, Carey received a “recording star” on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and she has been inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame on October 21, 2007.
In spring 2007, she had begun working on her eleventh studio album. E=MC². Two weeks before the album’s release, on April 2, 2008, “Touch My Body” became Carey’s eighteenth number-one single on the Hot 100, pushing her past Elvis Presley into second place for the most number-one singles among all artists in the rock era, according to Billboard magazine’s revised methodology (however, their statistician Joel Whitburn still credits Presley with an eighteenth). Carey is now second only to The Beatles who have twenty number-one singles.
