Why Mariah Carey Matters
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- $449.00
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- $449.00
Publisher Description
The first book to critically examine the legacy of pop superstar Mariah Carey.
When it comes to Mariah Carey, star power is never in doubt. She has sold hundreds of millions of albums and cut more chart-topping hits than any other solo artist—ever. And she has that extraordinary five-octave vocal range. But there is more to her legacy than eye-popping numbers.
Why Mariah Carey Matters examines the creative evolution and complicated biography of a true diva, making the case that, despite her celebrity, Carey’s musicianship and influence are insufficiently appreciated. A pioneering songwriter and producer, Carey pairs her vocal gifts with intimate lyrics and richly layered sonic details. In the mid-1990s, she perfected a blend of pop, hip-hop, and R&B with songs such as “Fantasy” and “Honey” and drew from her turbulent life to create the introspective masterpiece Butterfly. Andrew Chan looks beyond Carey’s glamorous persona to explore her experience as a mixed-race woman in show business, her adventurous forays into house music and gospel, and her appeal to multiple generations of queer audiences. He also reckons with the transcendent ideal of the voice that Carey represents, showing how this international icon taught artists around the world to sing with soul-shaking intensity and a spirit of innovation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Chan's reverential debut traces the shape-shifting career of "one of the most complicated characters in modern pop." From the moment Mariah Carey was discovered by Sony Music CEO (and future husband) Tommy Mottola in the late 1980s, she refused to restrict herself to one musical style: the first tape she gave to Mottola was layered with gospel and R&B undertones. Despite Columbia Records' efforts in the 1990s to market Carey as a ballad-blasting pop singer to white audiences, she continued to make forays into various genres; for example, she was one of the only '90s pop stars to rerecord her hits for house remixes, which were popular among Black and queer dance club audiences (with whom the biracial singer shared "an experience of outsideness," Chan writes). Later albums showcased "how sharply attuned Mariah was to R&B's past and future," including her 1995 Daydream and its standout "Underneath the Stars," an "ode to young love... like a secret whispered in the dark by one R&B fan to another." In expansive prose that occasionally goes overboard ("I like to picture her voice as a kind of cosmic seeker, stretching its tentacles into weird little pockets of sound"), Chan proves that despite a smooth-edged commercial exterior, Carey's style "foregrounds the ways singing can activate something irrational and untamed within us." It's a satisfying tribute to a dynamic and influential singer.
