Tag: Mariah Carey

12 Essential Mariah Carey Cuts That Prove She’s Queen of the Remix

~ Princess Gabbara ~ Leave a comment

As her “Caution” tour kicks off, we look back at her best reworks.

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Kevin Winter/Getty Images for dcp

In addition to being the queen of Christmas, vocals, and an extensive vocabulary, Mariah Carey is notably also the queen of remixes, dahling. It’s no secret that the diva goes to great lengths to deliver a spectacular remix, often re-recording vocals, penning new lyrics, shooting new music videos, and recording different versions to satisfy pop, R&B, hip-hop, and EDM audiences.

The veteran artist even put out an entire album dedicated to some of her most memorable reworks, 2003’s The Remixes. Selling over 40,000 copies in its first week, the double-disc album spent 10 consecutive weeks atop the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. For Mariah, the art of the remix has always been an opportunity for her to flex her own creative muscles and reinvent herself as she glides through the decades.

Take the So So Def remix of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” for instance. Layering the holiday standard over an urban beat with elements from Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force’s “Planet Rock” speaks to Mariah’s willingness to take musical risks, like on the under-appreciated Glitter soundtrack (#JusticeForGlitter). And 2009’s “H.A.T.E.U.” was the gift that kept on giving, using a nostalgic sample of the Ghost Town DJ’s song “My Boo” to further solidify Mariah’s talent for bringing her most heart-wrenching ballads to life through remixes.

Following the release of her most recent studio album, Caution, in November, Carey revealed to Andy Cohen that a collaboration with Lil’ Kim and Cardi B — potentially even a remix of “A No No” — could be in the works. Carey’s longtime collaborator Jermaine Dupri, who produced the song, even hinted that Lil’ Kim and Missy Elliott could appear on the track.

Unfortunately, this star-studded union still remains theoretical, but with Mariah’s Caution World Tour kicking off tonight (February 27), there’s no better time to highlight the 12 songs that prove MC is the queen of the remix.

Read my latest story for MTV News [here].

5 Things We Want From Mariah Carey’s ‘Caution’ Album

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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].

All the Tracks on Mariah Carey’s ‘Music Box,’ Ranked

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Kevin Mazur Archive/WireImage

By the summer of 1993, the public had come to know Mariah Carey as the most successful new diva in the pop world. The brown-eyed, curly-haired singer’s glass-shattering voice and talent for writing hit songs was quickly setting the standard for ‘90s pop superstardom.

With two multi-Platinum albums already behind her, fans and music critics eagerly awaited the arrival of Carey’s third studio album, Music Box. While Carey’s previous studio effort, 1991’s Emotions, leaned on R&B, soul and gospel influences for inspiration, Music Box took a slightly different approach, focusing its attention toward more pop, radio-friendly confections. Lyrically, many of the songs depict Mariah as a hopeless romantic, while others (e.g. “Hero”) preach self-sufficiency.

Despite receiving some harsh reviews from music critics, who claimed that Music Box lacked emotion and substantial writing, the 10-track LP became Carey’s first to be certified Diamond by the RIAA, selling over 10 million copies in the U.S. alone, and spawned two No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, “Dreamlover” and “Hero.” The diva’s fifth studio project, Daydream, would mostly follow in the Music Boxmold, to even greater success and favorable reviews praising Carey’s songwriting skill. Mimi would eventually return to her R&B roots with 1997’s Butterfly, but the blockbuster success of Music Box and Daydream ultimately helped the Long Island native become the top-selling artist of the ‘90s.

To celebrate Music Box’s 25th anniversary this Friday (Aug. 31), we ranked all the tracks on the now-iconic LP.

Read my latest story for Billboard [here].

10 Years Later: Mariah Carey’s ‘E=MC²’ Tracklist, Ranked

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Credit: Apple Music

Following a massively successful album would be a daunting task for most artists. But in 2008, musical icon Mariah Carey eagerly accepted the challenge when she released the long-awaited E=MC².

The 14-track LP felt like a continuation of The Emancipation of Mimi, which was dubbed as Carey’s comeback album. Earning a whopping 10 Grammy Award nominations, TEOMwas a pivotal career moment, and it went on to produce the smash hits, “We Belong Together” and “Don’t Forget About Us.” Selling an upwards of 10 million copies worldwide, MC silenced naysayers and proved that she was capable of achieving commercial success after experiencing a mini career slump in the early 2000s.

As acts like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift started to hit their prime respectively, critics foolishly pondered Carey’s lasting power when E=MC² arrived on this day in 2008, claiming that it offered no new feels from its predecessor. During that time, R&B became stagnant and was experiencing somewhat of an identity crisis, but Carey working with people like The-Dream helped keep the genre fresh. The album was also another step in her journey to creative freedom.

“Basically, I’m freer on this album than I’ve ever been. Some of the songs on the last album were cool but maybe not quite as neat as this album,” Carey told The Sun’s “Something for the Weekend,” explaining the album’s physics-inspired title, which can also be seen as a not-so-subtle nod to the singer-songwriter’s musical genius. In a separate interview, she said, “This album is so much about fun and freedom and just the continuation of me feeling emancipated … people ask me all the time, ‘How do you stay relevant? How do you stay current? How do you make music that people continue to respond to?’ You just keep being real, keep being you, stay true to who you were from the beginning.”

Read my latest piece for VIBE [here].