Happy 30th Anniversary to Mariah Carey’s eponymous debut album Mariah Carey, originally released June 12, 1990.
With her keen, comedic wit, superb navigation of social media, and her beloved role as the self-styled “Queen of Christmas,” Mariah Carey stands as one of the most colorful personalities in popular culture today.
This omnipresence does have its drawbacks without context though; for the under twenty-five crowd, the scope of Carey’s legacy as a recording artist is usually lost amid all of the other superfluous effects of her celebrity. A casual internet search will unspool a gaggle of statistics evincing Carey’s might, but to confine her to a cold recitation of chart factoids does not do Carey justice.
Consider her debut album Mariah Carey, which set the charts alight three decades ago sans streaming services. But to get the full picture of how Carey arrived at that early milestone, one must understand how Carey’s dedication and love of music sat at the core of who she was as a child.
She was born in Huntington, New York on March 27, 1970 as the youngest of three children to Alfred Roy and Patricia Carey. As Carey has admitted, her childhood had more than its fair share of bumps due to her parents eventual split and her biracial heritage—her father was of African-American-Venezuelan descent and her mother was Caucasian. Music became a means of escape and catharsis for Carey. She devoured a wealth of content from the likes of Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin, which helped to form the bedrock of her influences.
In her teens, Carey’s interest in songwriting picked up steam and with foundational vocal training courtesy of her mother—a classically trained singer in her own right—she began walking the path that led toward her inevitable destiny as a professional vocalist. Soon after finishing high school, Carey departed Long Island for New York City proper in the late 1980s. Determined, but pragmatic, she studied cosmetology while doubling as a backing singer for Brenda K. Starr—a brief, but notable darling of the urban and pop radio formats of the day.
What happened next has since gone on to become a cornerstone of Carey’s lore.
In December 1988, the aspiring singer appeared at the same industry gathering as Tommy Mottola, a venerated figure in the music business stationed as the chief of Columbia Records; he would later ascend to the head post of Sony Music Entertainment. A friendly conversation between the two ensued before Carey provided Mottola with a demo tape of her composition “Vision of Love.” Soon enough, Mottola aided the seventeen-year old Carey in procuring a deal with Columbia at the top of 1989. Work began in earnest on her self-titled set thereafter.
Upon the clearance of the first ten years of her vocation—and freed of Mottola’s interference—Carey spoke candidly about the creative concessions she had to accept to lock in the opportunity to draft Mariah Carey and the rest of her pre-Butterfly (1997) output. However, one thing she did not relinquish was her songwriting control.
Now, this isn’t to suggest that Carey didn’t have any help on her eponymous collection. Ben Margulies, Rhett Lawrence, Ric Wake, Walter Afanasieff, Narada Michael Walden—a decorated cast of writers, musicians, and producers—all rallied in support of the fledgling artist. Yet, it was Carey that somehow rose to the challenge of penning material that was not only commercially accessible, but in her own artistic voice. She also logged a production credit on “Vanishing,” one of the album’s peaks.
In the years since its issuance, critics have negligently tried to consign Mariah Carey to an adult contemporary pop box and leave it there. It isn’t that the sound is uncommon on the LP—far from it; both “I Don’t Wanna Cry” and “Love Takes Time” evince that Carey could deliver the “crossover goods” to the predominantly white listener-consumer base for the pop genre.
However, the continued dismissal of the classic soul and modern black pop sonics also in attendance on Mariah Carey diminishes the record’s stylistic reach. Doo-wop pastiche (“Vision of Love”), new jack swing cool (“Someday”), mellifluous gospel (“Vanishing”) and just a touch of vintage ‘70’s R&B magic (“Sent From Up Above”) are all as prominently featured as any of the pop elements here.
In short, Mariah Carey was an R&B album with pop underpinnings in the vein of efforts from her foremother Whitney Houston. Expertly smithed and played by Carey’s collaborative network and a supporting cast of the best session musicians, all eleven tracks on Mariah Carey are vibrant, crisp, and varied in tempo.
Topically, Carey kept her pen trained on tales of love and its complexities; only the rousing social commentary barnstormer “There’s Got to Be a Way” parts itself from the other ten selections regarding its subject matter. One of the criticisms Carey faced at the outset of her career was her “tendency” to lean into schmaltz and high drama as a writer. From that jaundiced perspective one could come to that conclusion when encountering “Alone in Love” or “You Need Me,” but the songcraft on these pieces (and the entirety of Mariah Carey) is too accomplished to disparage in that way.
Further, when Carey pairs her words with her vocal instrument, it is impossible to not be moved by the sheer conviction in any of the performances contained on the record. Possessed of an incredible five octave range, Carey’s voice is clear and strong throughout the album’s run time. Whether belting with full chested intensity as she does on “Prisoner” or sketching with her whistle register for a dab of aural texture on “All in Your Mind,” Carey does not shirk on feeling or technique.
Columbia Records mounted an exhaustive promotional and marketing push for Mariah Carey to ensure its commercial triumph. The blockbuster that the project eventually transformed into caught everyone by surprise—including Carey.
Released on June 12, 1990, the long player produced five singles in all: “Vision of Love,” “Love Takes Time,” “Someday,” “I Don’t Wanna Cry,” and “There’s Got to Be a Way.” Four of those singles became sequential number-one smashes for Carey in the United States that crisscrossed the pop, R&B and adult contemporary charts in a nine-month span. They would also find additional affection in a host of international markets too.
As for the album itself, in America alone it struck the platinum mark nine times. By the time Carey had entered the studio to begin work on Emotions (1991), her highly anticipated follow-up, Mariah Carey had been lauded with several prestigious industry awards.
Thirty years later, Carey’s star continues to streak our skies, but because we have grown so accustomed to its illumination, we tend to take it for granted and misunderstand the source of its endurance.
It’s tempting to assume that Carey’s power as a public figure is the sole reason for her permanence today—not so. It comes down to the musical contributions she had made over time. And while many records have come since Mariah Carey, it was that first album that served as an elegant staging ground for all the skills Carey employed to build her legend from the ground up.
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