1995: Mariah Carey, Daydream
By Nick Melloan-Ruiz
Up until the Daydream era I had only heard the first three Mariah Carey albums (Self-Titled, Emotions, Music Box) almost solely in the context of my next door neighbors’ living room. As soon as I heard the new jack swing intensity of “Someday” the fourth single off of Mariah Carey, a whole new world be broken open for me. Daydream was the first of her releases where I bought the physical singles every month for the subsequent year of the Daydream era. I was fully ready at nine years old to align myself unabashedly with a pop icon. 25 years later, I see a pivotal moment for both a fan and a performer where we each let our guard down in a way neither had before creating a world of our own making.
Tellingly we open with “Fantasy” written and produced by Mariah as the bulk of her catalog is save for covers, a fact that still goes largely unnoticed but especially did in 1995. The song is remembered for three things;
The Tom Tom Club sample “Genius of Love,” and the release of the remix featuring Ol Dirty Bastard. The third thing might not be as memorable but we can’t forget that Mariah directed the video for both mixes. So already from track one we have a performer who has lyrically has crafted a song that is at once full of joy and elation while at the same time recalling the particular turmoil of a lost or unrequited love. She is lost so deep in her daydream she knows its a sweet sweet fantasy to be in heaven with her boyfriend, in this moment we hear someone unable to cope with her present situation.
Daydream is also the moment where there is a split between one group who miss the “old Mariah”, the girl with the long hair, high gowns standing in front of an orchestra ready to sing the roof off. The other group welcomes a looser, more introspective Mariah who appears to have more fun, a heavier tone in her voice. I counter that there is no old or new Mariah, more a situation of feeling safe within proven success. It’s clear that Mariah was in the midst of a daydream creatively. Conversely, she is searching for something that she lost and can only recall in flashes.
“Underneath The Stars” can clearly be read as a woman remembering a sexual awakening that she relies on in moments of solitude.the track of opens with soft fuzzy record pops that would have been jarring to the typical midwestern disabled biracial queer 9 year old listening to his Discman in the back of their parents Volvo. We are deep within a memory, a summer night full of laughter, young love weak in the knees flush with the heat of desire” she wonderfully captures both the past and present impeccably. We are presented yet again with a woman reckoning with her past honestly and unguarded for the first time on record.
Enter Mariah and Boyz II Men coming together for “One Sweet Day.” both wrote songs to honor their time with collaborators and people in their inner circle. for Mariah it was David Cole of C&C Music Factory fame, an early collaborative partner who produced New Jack Swing gems on her first three albums and for Boyz II Men it was the death of a tour manager. Consider another angle, the moment you decide to release the space a person has been taking up in your mind or life and at least for the moment you let them fly away, while still acknowledging the place they will hold in your heart forever.
It’s almost as if Mariah had a label obligation to have at least seven ballads on a standard 12 track album up to this point in her career and even still she expertly chooses what and where the ballad will go on the album. And 1981 shows up once again. Mariah would be 11 or 12 depending on what article is your source, in a truly iconic move her birthdate or anniversary as she would say, is listed as March 27th 1969 or 1970 on Wikipedia, couple that with Mariah’s own often repeated phase “I am eternally 12” 1981 begins to hold more and more significance as a touchstone both personally and professionally.
The recollection continues at a break neck speed in one of the greatest sweetly Melancholy songs of all time. “Always Be My Baby.” Marking the first time she worked with Jermaine Dupri, the track has a carefree undertone echoed in the video; Mariah swaying over a lake on a tire swing and singing lit by a campfire, yet again one only has to look at the lyrics to see a woman struggling make peace with her former self and who she is now. Considered one of the greatest breakup songs of all time, Mariah could very well be speaking to her inner child, the person who didn’t get a chance to live once she signed a record contract at age 19. The girl that has been hinted at, trapped in a daydream takes a moment to take stock of how far she has come and the freedom she now processes.
The second to last song on the album, “Melt Away,” picks up the heroine of that dark and stormy night and gives her a safe and sensual space to rest her weary head. Produced by Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds by track 9 we have reached a sexual peak unheard of in Mariah’s music so clearly up to this point and certainly unheard of by that nine year old in the Volvo.
“You and me in a cloud of Reverie” would in that Volvo flown over the head and just been mindlessly hummed along with but now I know that reverie has an even deeper weight as it means, A state of being pleasantly lost in ones thoughts; a daydream!
The album closes with one of Mariah’s most personal songs, “Looking In”
Addressing her critics who “see the girl who lives inside the golden world who smiles through a thousand tears and harbors adolescent fears dreaming of all she could never be”
No words could have hit harder for a closeted biracial disabled 9 year old finally out of that Volvo and most likely sitting on his ninja turtle green carpet. While I may not have had as rough of an upbringing as Mariah. The themes that we do connect on: Biracial identity, searching for a peer group and understanding within it and the fear of the romantic unknown rang true even in that bedroom in 1996. For all of the safety and security I was afforded as a biracial kid in Indiana in the 1990s who could pass for white all of those false safe guards instantly went away as soon as I walked into a room.
Coupled with an emerging queer identity I had no choice but to retreat into my room. Surrounding myself with books, television, film, music and most of all Mariah Carey. I needed to feel some sense of control in a situation where I felt I was nothing more than a burden.
A world away someone else is struggling with her own limits — Karen Carpenter.
In 1979 The Darling of Downy California was ready for a change with her brother in rehab, Karen heads to New York to begin her solo work.The result is Karen Carpenter a fuzzy disco pop record dripping with sex.
she was 28, although most likely emotionally stunned to that of a 19 year old, as that is when she first signed her record contract coupled with the fact that a hallmark of anorexia is being resistant to change and seeking a method of control to cope with a chaotic environment.
Richard hated the end result calling it “too New York” and too urban aka too Black. You can almost be sure Richard owned a Disco Sucks T-shirt.
Much like Mariah Karen was desperately trying to break free of a mold she had been required to fit since the age of 20, She saw a way out to artistic freedom, something that would put her more in line with her friend and contemporary Olivia Newton John, only to be chastised and made to pay back her record company $400,000, shelving the record and told to go back into the studio to record her last non posthumous album as a duo. Made In America which came out in 1981, the hallmark year of change for Mariah Carey
For Karen the person who lorded over her wasn’t a lover, but a family member making the bond of trust and also obligation that much deeper. Watching interviews from the Made in America era, It had been four years since their last album of original material and both siblings look completely over it, in completely different ways.
The Merv Griffin Show appearance sticks out as particularly chaotic. Karen is tasked with being the charming talk show guest and she frantically tells a story about owning a yacht but not having anywhere to park it in Malibu. She starts and stops talking about her husband and “libby” her friend Olivia Newton John who just so happens to be further down on the couch to corroborate the story that yes they are friends and once had to stay in a roach invested roadside motel after they broke the aforementioned yacht.
For two people striving to uphold a wholesome, clean, Lilly white image. They failed spectacularly to portray an image that would be accessible to their target audience, the white middle class so why deny Karen the chance dance her cares away on Karen Carpenter?
it’s clear to me that in the case of both records Daydream and Karen Carpenter one of the major issues is that two men had to relinquish control to varying degrees of success awarded to both Mariah and Karen.
Even the posthumous release of Karen Carpenter dove tailed the release of If I were a Carpenter a tribute album with Gen X mainstays like Sonic Youth doing “Superstar” and beta riot grrrl group Babies In Toyland doing “Calling Occupants of interplanetary Craft”.
All calculated to fit into the larger nostalgia boom of the mid 1990s IE the other tribute albums that had also been successful Schoolhouse Rock ROCKS!- An updated take on the classic songs of the 1970s Saturday morning educational program. Even more on the nose of further dragging the well of 1970s ephemera, the release of Saturday Morning Cartoons Greatest Hits where people like Liz Phair and Juliana Hatfield sang cartoon theme songs. Now these all came out in a three year span
If I were a Carpenter (94) Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits (95) Schoolhouse Rocks ROCKS (96) Karen Carpenter (96)
What was once “too urban” “too Disco” and deemed unsafe for Karen’s audience could finally make Richard money.
In the case of Karen, Richard is the one gets to tell the stories now, both in the abstract and literally on record.
The looming question remains “what could have been?” With the endless cycle of an eating disorder ready and waiting to serve as an often heard answer to Karen’s struggles.
Richard gets to finish the story while Karen, the true voice of the Carpenters is no longer here to speak for herself.
Mariah Carey used Daydream as a way to exercise demons of the past in service to further creative and personal freedom. As seen in the following albums Butterfly and Rainbow and further still The Emancipation of Mimi. The question that remains with Mariah is what haven’t we seen? and Mariah is here to show us. Long before her estate is controlled by numerous and unseen hands. Where Karen was thwarted and stifled at every turn Mariah has fully embodied all parts of herself and is finally ready to show herself to the world once more 30 years into a career, unguarded and free.
Nick Melloan-Ruiz is a Chicano writer living in Bloomington Indiana focusing on HIV, Pop Culture and their dogs.