It’s been over four years since Mariah Carey released a full-length album.
Since dropping 2014’s Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse, the singer-songwriter kicked off her #1 to Infinity and The Butterfly Returns Vegas residency shows, filmed an E! docuseries known as Mariah’s World, made her directorial debut with Hallmark Channel’s A Christmas Melody, and received her first Golden Globe nomination for “The Star,” from the animated film of the same name.
So when the pop great teased new music back in March during an exclusive sit-down with V magazine, the lambs were beyond ecstatic. Then, with little warning, Carey dropped the sultry, meme-worthy track “GTFO” in September before whetting fans’ appetite again with the Oct. 4 premiere of “With You,” the romantic lead single off her forthcoming aptly titled LP, Caution, which she performed for the first time at the 2018 American Music Awards.
Mimi announced her long-awaited album and its Nov. 16 release date earlier this month on social media. “I’ve been working on my new album for a while. This is a labor of love and I’m really excited,” Carey told People earlier in August. “This is me at this moment in my life being able to express myself as a writer and a singer. I’m just really in a good place.”
With incredible staying power and a vocal range that most singers can only dream of, it’ll be exciting to see what the next phase of the legendary diva’s illustrious career will look and sound like when Caution finally drops. Here are five things we hope to hear from Mariah Carey’s 15th studio LP.
More candid storytelling
From day one, Mariah’s flair for penning her own lyrics and conceiving her own melodies set her apart from other successful divas. Between 1990 and 1999, the “eternally 12” songstress amassed 19 Hot 100 top 10 hits, from “Vision of Love” to “Heartbreaker” — and all but four tracks were self-penned. Well-known hits, including “Hero” and “One Sweet Day,” remain crowd-pleasers to this day in large part due to their universal messages, but the lambs appreciate and tend to gravitate toward the lesser-known cuts (like “Outside,” from 1997’s Butterfly) because they chronicle some of Mariah’s personal struggles.
Read my latest story for Billboard [here].
A Royal Point of View 