ameraal's 90s mariah top 10

ameraal

la loi de murphy
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i grew up with mariah. the first cd i ever bought was her unplugged album and subsequently she became the first pop star whose (relatively recent but not in first-half-of-the-90s, early-teen-from-the-former-soviet-bloc-who'd-just-moved-to-a-country-where-they-had-cds years) back catalogue i ventured to explore. to this i day i blame her for my love life though maybe i was only so attracted to her in the first place because i was already a painfully romantic, sensitive kid who felt like an outsider. not only because i was in a foreign country living among other races but because i was coming to terms with my sexuality (i knew i was different at 11).

anyway, 90s mariah is the best mariah and i won't hear otherwise. i was just listening to the wonderful someday and then make it happen and now the glorious anytime you need a friend and i just have to do this list immediately.
 
Mariah-Carey-MT-Unplugged.png


what a nerd
but also an angel
 
Finally a music countdown I have an interest in!

I also blame Mariah for my ridiculously hopeless love life.
 
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anyway, please refrain from pearl-clutching at my selection. these are my favourite 90s mariah songs and mine alone!


10. the beautiful ones featuring dru hill

in modern-day r&b you're either a prince or an mj disciple. in the 90s mariah was both, first covering the jackson 5's i'll be there and then shattering world vocal acrobatics records with her take on this prince classic. she's used the cover version (and the sample, but more on that later) very shrewdly throughout her career, never afraid to fall back on a big ballad from yesteryear for an easy hit. this is perhaps the one time she did not do that. instead she chose a dark, bitter song and produced a 7-minute scream-a-thon in tandem with sisqo on loan from dru hill though not in name - apparently then 18-year-old sisqo could not be featured as a solo artist for legal reasons.

paperwork aside, this is a bit of a divisive track in her catalogue, i guess you either love the dragged out vocal deathmatch or you don't. for me it's an easy epic. her favourite prince song, she's done it justice with such an unformulaic rendition. but then so was the original. i've read the choice for it to be a duet with a man was so she wouldn't have to sing do you want her/or do you want me as it sounded desperate and that was not becoming of a lady like her.

whatever the reason behind the idea, it works like having another person in your head. and better than just a straight-up you-take-this-verse-i'll-take-the-next cover the battle begins from the get so as they bought singing from plinky prince start - sounding like ex-lovers, sounding like accomplices, sounding like friends - right until the sparring end. her choice in duet partner had never been as brave before and it has not been since.
 
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09. music box

every song on Music Box, an album dominated by huge soaring ballads, has been written and arranged as a potential home run, says rolling stone in its 3-star 1993 review of mariah's third studio album ultimately criticising her cliched lyrics and marketing calculation. perhaps they have a point. sparkling production, big yet superbly in control vocals, easy, perfect melodies across the board. but for two every song on the album could have easily been a single, just to hold you once again and i've been thinking about you's only sin is being a step beneath their peers. 26 years later a few of those that were released to promote the album like hero, without you and anytime you need a friend, are among her signatures.

the title track was not a single. rather it was a quiet and intimate number in the company of several 90s power ballads, a bit of new jack swing and an actual brush with house music - her previous albums had an uptempo or two, and, of course, for her singles she'd just started her legendary work with david morales who became her long-term go-to for a good house refix. but more on that later.

music box, the track, is quintessential young-and-financially-sorted mariah. a married-to-the-boss-whose-taken-her-under-his-wing mariah (which is actually a bit naughty at best cause she was 23 when she married sony boss tommy payo... sorry, mottola and he was 44 but that's another story). a childishly romantic and polished to squeakiness mariah. the mariah i fell for with her naive and saccharine fantasy of being understood, of belonging to someone without being his property, cherishing the idea of loving one man until the fairytale of life flickers out.

musically, it borrows unsubtly from the sounds of its namesake and runs for a generous 5 minutes without getting even close to boring, a male vocal teasing its way along the last stray few seconds (will downing, wasn't it - i don't remember if anyone was actually credited anywhere, the lambs might be able to help out here). the gorgeous man voice for dessert becoming a trick she uses another time on this album, to even more fantastic effect.
 
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08. underneath the stars

by the time daydream came out in 1995, mariah carey was a superstar. her fifth studio outing after the global success of what is to date still her best selling album (music box) and her most ubiquitous song these days, all i want for christmas is you, cemented her position. carey managed diamond album sales and massive singles including fantasy, the first song by a female artist to enter the billboard hot 100 straight at number one, and the boyz ii men duet one sweet day, the longest running number one single until this year (i.e. for over two decades).

carey had earned herself a little more freedom to choose the direction of the album and started making her first swerve into the more r&b sound and vocal style she would favour in her later music as in album cut long ago and her collaboration with odb on the fantasy remix. i often think of underneath the stars as an important stepping stone for her next album butterfly and an early blueprint for my favourite later day carey record the memoirs of an imperfect angel by which point she had however lost touch with the real world. it was in fact the first song written and recorded for the album and a tribute of sorts to her childhood favourite, maya rudolph's own high-octave mammy minnie ripperton.

carey doesn't get enough credit for it, not for her lack of trying to remind everyone, but she had her first production credit on a song on her debut and as early as her second album she was co-producing everything which was a big deal at the time. co-produced, written and arranged with my favourite carey collaborator walter affanasiev, it was something new for both of them - vintage effects and sensibilities, lots of vocal layering and an understated chorus flowing breezily, almost incognito in and out of the verses, more train of giddily-crushing-country-schoolgirl thought than showstopper.

receiving limited exposure outside of the album as the sixth and final promo-only single from its parent album, it's one of carey's self-professed favourites and can you blame her?
 
Omg this countdown is everything I need to get me through today :disco:

I adore Music Box. I totally agree about it representing the Mariah I fell in love with. The vocal on the track floors me.
 
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The Beautiful Ones is exquisite. I’m usually not a fan of shouty vocals but it all works so well here.

Music Box and Underneath the Stars are both very fine but there are several songs in Mariah’s back catalogue that have the same formula but more refined.
 
I don't think I can sleep until I know if my favourite non-single track from her debut album makes the top 10.
 
Oh Ameraal is definitely the dreamy type <3

Underneath the Stars is pure romance. The way her voice BONDS with the production is R&B heaven. She has indeed confirmed a number of times that it's her top personal choice.
 

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