Pop, in the American sense, is democracy in melody, consensus in chorus. And Mariah Carey, having written or co-written 18 of her 19 No. 1 singles, stands at its summit, right up there with the Beatles (with 20 No. 1s), translating feeling into something lushly intimate and vast.
In 1990, she steps into a crowded field — Janet Jackson, Madonna, En Vogue, Taylor Dayne — with “Vision of Love,” threading gospel sinew through R&B muscle. By the time she reaches the effervescence of “Dreamlover” (1993) and “Always Be My Baby” (1995), she’s refining a lexicon of longing: the phrasing, the internal rhymes, the way sleek aria deftly delivers desire.
Then comes the stroke of authorship as cultural force. With the 1995 “Fantasy” remix featuring Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Carey institutionalizes hip-hop’s marriage to pop soul. Without that instinct and that push through the closed-mindedness of the era, there is no modern hybrid of rap and pop as we know it today. “Honey,” “Heartbreaker” and the sublime “We Belong Together” — they all carry that hybrid DNA from a songwriter thinking in moods and collisions: “Bobby Womack’s on the radio / Saying to me, ‘If you think you’re lonely now’ / Wait a minute this is too deep (too deep) / I gotta change the station / So I turn the dial trying to catch a break / And then I hear Babyface: / I only think of you.” Carey claims everything. Her pen moves with the same agility as her voice.
And yet, the messy mythology of the “diva” has done its damage. The word — so often a diabolical four-letter dismissal — recasts precision as excess, ambition as ego, obsession as spectacle. But the truth about Carey is that beyond songwriting, she functions as architect of her vocal universe, constructing chords, layering note upon note for a precise emotional result. This gives her work irresistible momentum. That rich compositional energy emerges even now in beloved memes of goofy, ecstatic love and in the work of songwriters like Olivia Dean, Muni Long and Victoria Monét.
If a man had created and curated culture from the center of nearly every cool 1990s party, every all-night session and every aesthetic shift — fashion, club sound, radio, film, tabloid — he’d be canonized as a visionary. Carey already is one. — Danyel Smith
Source – Nytimes.com