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Mariah Carey’s Debut Album: Every Track Ranked (Staff Picks)
Mariah Carey's debut album is turning 35. Here's every song ranked to celebrate the anniversary.
This impressive chart stat is arguably more interesting than the song itself, a generic Latin-tinged heartbreak ballad which justified the singer’s concerns that working with Narada Michael Walden would make her music “too schmaltzy.” Indeed, despite its record-equaling success and the fact it boasts one of her finest early powerhouse performances, Carey pretty much ignored the track on the live stage for a good two decades. By far and away the album’s most optimistic love song, “Sent From Up Above” finds Carey waxing lyrical about a relationship so impossibly perfect that it “even surpasses paradise.” Perhaps surprisingly, she envelops all the unashamed gushing not in slushy synths and slow dance-friendly beats, but a subtle blend of sensual grooves, R&B melodies, and the kind of electric sitars that defined the lush ‘70s soul of The Stylistics. The well-meaning call for change is also a vibrant one, combining blue-eyed soul, pop, and uplifting gospel harmonies (there are definite traces of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” in the rousing outro) alongside the record’s most piercing high note.
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