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Why Mariah Carey matters / Andrew Chan.

by Chan, Andrew, 1986- author.

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Austin : University of Texas Press, 2023.

Carey, Mariah -- Criticism and interpretation.

Women singers -- United States -- Biography.

Women lyricists -- United States -- Biography.

Popular music -- United States -- History and criticism.

Music and race -- United States -- History.

9781477325070 (hardcover : alk. paper) :

1477325077 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Music matters ; 013.

145 pages; 22 cm.

A call to worship -- What a voice means -- Other sounds, other realms -- Out of the chrysalis -- Between laughter and lament -- Back at number one -- A timeless diva through time.

"Mariah Carey is immediately known for two things: a stratospheric, five-octave vocal range and massive success on the charts (she has more Billboard no. 1 singles than any other solo artist). As Andrew Chan points out in this book, that fed easily into the narrative around an artist who came of age in the excess-riddled 1990s-and was married to Sony CEO Tommy Mottola. Chan, though, is digging deeper into her catalog and her biography to argue that it is actually Carey's songwriting, studio instincts, artistic evolution, and the nuances--rather than the extremes--of her voice that separate her from other successful artists of her generation. And, stepping beyond the music, Carey's story as a biracial woman, as well as her "large and loyal LGTBQ fanbase," further distinguish her from her peers. The book unfolds in a mostly chronological manner. Chan's second chapter discusses the in-between nature of Carey's work, contrasting the label's early attempts to package her as a "white" artist with less-discussed examples of her hip-hop-inflected remixes and her gospel-tinged Christmas album. By the mid 1990s, she was working with hip-hop producers such as Missy Elliott. Chan also identifies the mid 90s as important for the emergence of her penchant for humor and her contrasting self-pity-"emo Mariah and class-clown Mariah," as he puts it. Carey's personal and professional struggles in the early 2000s lend poignancy to her ballads from this period, when her voice was no longer the singular force it was a decade earlier. The decline in her voice presents a particular problem for the "nostalgia" aspect of her career, something that she has countered, to a degree (she can still sing with the best), through nonmusical ventures as well as more eccentric and experimental choices in her latest work. At the close of the book, Chan reflects on diva worship, especially as a queer listener, and the ways in which Mariah has aligned herself with her queer audience"--

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