I became a Mariah Carey fan around the time of 1995's
Daydream (specifically, with the first single, "Fantasy"). I followed her during the following years, even buying
Rainbow when it came out during my mission (the mission rule was very vaguely that we were only to listen to music that uplifted us... isn't Mariah uplifiting?), but the disastrous
Glitter and then the mediocre
Charmbracelet happened to correspond with my conversion into a musical snob, at which time I decided I was too cool for popular artists like Mariah Carey. So until recently, I owned only her middle five albums. But then this past week, a few stars and planets aligned: (1) I had a few weeks' worth of Amazon.com gift certificates from work accrued, waiting for me to use them; (2) perhaps because I spent all week listening to Michael Jackson songs and tributes, I decided that I'm no longer too cool to enjoy pop music; and (3) I realized that there were several Mariah Carey songs I liked but didn't own. So I fixed that. First I bought her first three albums and MTV Unplugged EP, and then I figured what the hey, and bought the two most recent ones as well.
Having completed several hours of research now, I will share my findings with you.
As you can see, Mariah is on a relative upswing. We'll see if she keeps that up with her new album coming out this summer. Stay tuned in, and on the edge of your seats.
