Why Mariah Carey Matters

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. (Sept.)