Daydream
Mariah Carey
1995
I am fascinated with the idea of a successful musical artist not feeling like they have enough room to explore their true musical selves. I was thinking about this idea a lot, this idea that pop stars are placed in boxes and occasionally kept there by the men holding the bag, as I listened to the myriad of ballads found on Mariah Carey's Daydream.
The ballads showcase Carey's immense talent, but are pretty boring. They were obviously successful, but they are never fun. There is evidence both within the album and outside the album that Mariah Carey wanted to do something more than hit 47 different notes with her voice over a somber piano. The "outside the album" evidence is more fascinating, so we can start with that.
In the mid-'90s, at the same exact time she was laying down tracks for this album, Mariah Carey was also putting together a grunge album. This secret wasn't revealed until she wrote about it in her memoir in 2020! It's called Someone's Ugly Daughter under the moniker Chick. I haven't listened to it (yet), but it's absolutely wild to me that the music execs told her that she could not, under any circumstance, released an alt-rock album using her own name. This is me talking with my skewed, 2020s, monoculture-eschewing perspective, I know. But it's like, can you fucking imagine the coup releasing a pop album of this magnitude and a grunge album in the same fucking year would have been?
The ballads showcase Carey's immense talent, but are pretty boring. They were obviously successful, but they are never fun. There is evidence both within the album and outside the album that Mariah Carey wanted to do something more than hit 47 different notes with her voice over a somber piano. The "outside the album" evidence is more fascinating, so we can start with that.
In the mid-'90s, at the same exact time she was laying down tracks for this album, Mariah Carey was also putting together a grunge album. This secret wasn't revealed until she wrote about it in her memoir in 2020! It's called Someone's Ugly Daughter under the moniker Chick. I haven't listened to it (yet), but it's absolutely wild to me that the music execs told her that she could not, under any circumstance, released an alt-rock album using her own name. This is me talking with my skewed, 2020s, monoculture-eschewing perspective, I know. But it's like, can you fucking imagine the coup releasing a pop album of this magnitude and a grunge album in the same fucking year would have been?
But she was told not to, probably because what had been already working for Mariah Carey was really working. Take the massive #1 single "One Sweet Day," a collab with Boyz II Men. You know this song, even if you weren't alive when it came out (can't imagine anyone is reading these words right now, let alone someone born after 1995, but ya never know!). Until Lil Nas X came along, this song held the record for the most weeks spent at #1 in a row. So: successful. But also: boring as fuck. Maybe this is a flaw on my part, but I think there needs to be something in one's music than just an incredible voice. I've been pretty clear about this opinion in the past (see: everything I've ever written about Adele), and it applies here. I think Mariah Carey is one of the most talented singers of her generation. I also think that not even Mariah Carey can make me feel anything but abject boredom while listening to "I Am Free" or "Melt Away."
The thing is, Daydream does not consist entirely of slow, boring ballads. It probably has a worse ratio than Whitney Houston's Whitney (for which I drew a similar line between boring and exciting), but the high points are a lot higher on this one. There are a handful of songs that put Carey's voice to great use, and to me, these songs read like this is what Carey wants to be doing. The ballads are bread and butter, but the non-ballads are the spice that make you enjoy the meal.
I'm talking about the hits, yes, but also a couple of other ones. I'm talking about "Fantasy," the best Mariah Carey song because it has the best sample ("Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club, and "Fantasy" was already discussed from Tom Tom Club's POV when their self-titled showed up in this column). It's so fucking fun. There's also "Always Be My Baby," which is probably as slow, tempo-wise, as some of the R&B ballads on here, but it's got a stealthy, slinky movement and sharpness to it that's always stood out to me. Those are great songs because of the nostalgia factor, of course, but also please consider the fact that they are good songs because they don't sound like a type of ballad that you'd think Mariah Carey would singing to the grave.
A couple deep cuts impressed me in how much they made it clear that Mariah Carey wanted to do everything. The most obvious example is "Daydream Interlude," which exists in "remix" form on the album. It's a dance club track that feels more like Donna Summer than any of the dreck that fills the rest of the margins on Daydreams. A less obvious example of what I'm talking about is "Long Ago," which features production that wouldn't be out of place on a hip-hop song. This feels like conscious bridge-building between rap and R&B (almost in the same way that Erykah Badu was a couple weeks ago). I mean, Mariah Carey wasn't shy about wanting to put hip-hop elements into her sound. The remix version of "Fantasy" (not included on this album, but the version that became the #1 hit) featured Ol' Dirty Bastard, with Puff Daddy on backing vocals.
I guess I'm saying that Mariah Carey seems to both have agency and lack agency when it came to her music. She clearly pushed her music as far as she could (agency), but eventually hit a wall (no agency). Too many hands in the pot, too much money being made, no room for any curveballs like a grunge album. Which is a shame. And who knows! Maybe that Chick album isn't even any good! Look what happened Demi Lovato felt free enough to make the rock album that she wanted to make—average and occasionally awkward results! Who the fuck am I to say that Mariah Carey would have done better to follow her muse to its fullest extent!
I'm just speculating that Daydream, while an immensely successful pop album, perhaps also wasn't completely the album that Mariah Carey wanted to make. That's interesting to me. It's especially interesting to me to think about the album this way, in the context of Mariah Carey's current reign as "Queen of Christmas Music" or whatever such bullshit as that. Her mega-popular Christmas song is boring, and a lot of her music otherwise, both on this album and on her other albums, is also boring, and yet... what if she was better than this? And knew it? But couldn't prove it?
Ah well. Who cares. Hit play on "Fantasy" again, please.
The thing is, Daydream does not consist entirely of slow, boring ballads. It probably has a worse ratio than Whitney Houston's Whitney (for which I drew a similar line between boring and exciting), but the high points are a lot higher on this one. There are a handful of songs that put Carey's voice to great use, and to me, these songs read like this is what Carey wants to be doing. The ballads are bread and butter, but the non-ballads are the spice that make you enjoy the meal.
I'm talking about the hits, yes, but also a couple of other ones. I'm talking about "Fantasy," the best Mariah Carey song because it has the best sample ("Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club, and "Fantasy" was already discussed from Tom Tom Club's POV when their self-titled showed up in this column). It's so fucking fun. There's also "Always Be My Baby," which is probably as slow, tempo-wise, as some of the R&B ballads on here, but it's got a stealthy, slinky movement and sharpness to it that's always stood out to me. Those are great songs because of the nostalgia factor, of course, but also please consider the fact that they are good songs because they don't sound like a type of ballad that you'd think Mariah Carey would singing to the grave.
A couple deep cuts impressed me in how much they made it clear that Mariah Carey wanted to do everything. The most obvious example is "Daydream Interlude," which exists in "remix" form on the album. It's a dance club track that feels more like Donna Summer than any of the dreck that fills the rest of the margins on Daydreams. A less obvious example of what I'm talking about is "Long Ago," which features production that wouldn't be out of place on a hip-hop song. This feels like conscious bridge-building between rap and R&B (almost in the same way that Erykah Badu was a couple weeks ago). I mean, Mariah Carey wasn't shy about wanting to put hip-hop elements into her sound. The remix version of "Fantasy" (not included on this album, but the version that became the #1 hit) featured Ol' Dirty Bastard, with Puff Daddy on backing vocals.
I guess I'm saying that Mariah Carey seems to both have agency and lack agency when it came to her music. She clearly pushed her music as far as she could (agency), but eventually hit a wall (no agency). Too many hands in the pot, too much money being made, no room for any curveballs like a grunge album. Which is a shame. And who knows! Maybe that Chick album isn't even any good! Look what happened Demi Lovato felt free enough to make the rock album that she wanted to make—average and occasionally awkward results! Who the fuck am I to say that Mariah Carey would have done better to follow her muse to its fullest extent!
I'm just speculating that Daydream, while an immensely successful pop album, perhaps also wasn't completely the album that Mariah Carey wanted to make. That's interesting to me. It's especially interesting to me to think about the album this way, in the context of Mariah Carey's current reign as "Queen of Christmas Music" or whatever such bullshit as that. Her mega-popular Christmas song is boring, and a lot of her music otherwise, both on this album and on her other albums, is also boring, and yet... what if she was better than this? And knew it? But couldn't prove it?
Ah well. Who cares. Hit play on "Fantasy" again, please.
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