Raiff Celebrates Mariah's 20 Years in Music: 1995

Posted by Raiff on Thursday, 20-May-2010, 12:01PM EDT

After another whirlwind year, with the back-to-back promotion of the Music Box and Merry Christmas albums, there was no doubt that Mariah would see continued success.

In January 1995, Mariah appeared via satellite on the World Music Awards to accept three awards: Best Selling American Recording Artist, Best Selling World Recording Artist and Best Selling Pop Artist. During her appearance, she again mentioned that she was working on a new album and revealed an anticipated world tour to promote it.

With just five years in the music business, Mariah had racked up 8 #1 singles and sold more than 26 million albums in the US and close to 60 million worldwide. With such commercial success you'd wonder: can she get any bigger? Mariah answered that question with a resounding 'Yes' with Daydream, an album which most artists could only "daydream" about commercially.

In August, the first single hit the airwaves. "Fantasy" was an uptempo pop song that sampled the Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love." "I had the melody and the background vocal parts and then I decided to put them together with the Tom Tom Club song, and work on top of that," Mariah told Spin Magazine. "'Genius Of Love' was, to me, one of the best tracks ever made. It evokes this really happy feeling, and reminds me of growing up."


When it came time to do remixes, Mariah again called upon David Morales, with whom she created a dance mix and an interlude that would appear on the album.

In a move that would prove to be monumental, she worked with a couple of folks that many people would not have expected Mariah Carey to produce a record with at that time: Sean "Puffy" Combs and the Wu Tang Clan's Ol' Dirty Bastard. "I've been a fan of his style since Wu Tang first came out," she explained. "I just think it's kind of unique about how he raps and kind of sings, too. I thought that because we were using the Tom Tom Club track that his voice was perfectly suited for it."

The urban remix of "Fantasy" was a milestone in Mariah's career. The pairing of a "pop-princess" with a hardcore rapper came as a surprise to fans and naysayers alike, but the fact that the collaboration was so successful opened the road for other acts to follow suit.

A 1998 Trace article talks about how, "Back then hardcore devotees would never have thought that it would work. After all hip hop was inviolable." Even current friend and frequent co-producer Jermaine Dupri was skeptical when he first worked with Mariah. He told Essence magazine that he didn't realize she was mixed at first and thought, "This white girl is crazy!" Before "Fantasy" and Daydream, Mariah had been marketed as a ballad queen. Puffy Daddy was even reluctant to work with Mariah on the "Fantasy" remix because he didn't "know about messing with that pop stuff." It can't be stressed enough that it was the pairing of a "girl next door" with a truly hardcore rapper that made waves in the music world. The New Yorker noted that "It became standard for R&B stars, like Missy Eliott and Beyonce, to combine melodies with rapped verses." John Norris of MTV News has stated that the remix was "responsible for, I would argue, an entire wave of music that we've seen since, and that is the pop-hip-hop collaboration. You could argue that the 'Fantasy' remix was the single most important recording she's ever made." Norris echoed the sentiments of TLC's Lisa Lopes, who told MTV that it's because of Mariah that we have "hip-pop."

Another first for Mariah with this single was her role as video director. Mariah appeared both on camera and behind the lens when she shot the video at New York's Rye Playland. The clip featured her roller-blading and singing on a rollercoaster ride. As she explained to MTV's Tabitha Soren, "I just wanted to do it because... it's my song and I really want it to come out the way I want it to be."

"Fantasy" is arguably one of Mariah's biggest hits worldwide. In the US, it sold over 200,000 copies in its first week and debuted at #1 (making her the first female artist to achieve that feat). It spent 8 weeks at #1 and became her first multi-platinum single. In Canada, "Fantasy" spent 12 weeks at #1, it is still her biggest hit there to date. In Asia, "Fantasy" went #1 everywhere (according to a press release in 1995) and is one of her signature hits there (see the movie "Rush Hour" where a girl that immigrated from Hong Kong is singing every word to the song). In Australia, it became Mariah's first #1 single and is her biggest hit there to date (even though "We Belong Together" spent two weeks at #1). "Fantasy" also reached #1 in New Zealand and the top 10 in France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Ireland and Switzerland.

On October 3, Daydream," Mariah's fifth studio album, was released. With "Fantasy" still at #1 and the second single already released to radio, Mariah-mania was once again in effect. Daydream debuted at #1 in the three biggest markets in the world: the US, Japan and the UK (it was her first and only album to debut at #1 in all three markets) and sold more than 800,000 copies in the first week, collectively. The album had similar showings around the world, debuting at #1 or in the Top 10 in every major market.


Several familiar faces returned to write and produce with Mariah for Daydream: Jermaine Dupri ("Always Be My Baby," "Long Ago"), Babyface ("Melt Away") and Walter Affanasieff, who co-produced seven of the album's twelve tracks. One of those cuts was "Looking In," one of Mariah's most personal songs. "It is a very personal song, but it is more about a mood," Mariah explained, "We all go through different moods, you can't always feel happy - it's showing a different side.

With just one single release, Mariah had collaborated with her first rapper, directed her first video, and debuted at number one. Many artists would have had a hard time following that up, but Mariah had just the answer. In November, "One Sweet Day," a duet with Boyz II Men, was issued as the second single from Daydream. "It was really the ultimate for me to be able to get (Boyz II Men) to come and sing with me on that song, because it just seemed like the chorus was crying out for their vocals," Mariah told VH1. "We had never met before, and they came to the studio, and I sang them the idea, and it was really ironic that Nate had written a song that was basically so similar to my song, that you could sing it over my track, and the lyric and the theme were almost identical, as well. So we put the two songs together and we ended up with 'One Sweet Day.'"

A duet with two recording artists at the heights of their careers couldn't go wrong. "One Sweet Day" debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and stayed there for a record-breaking 16 weeks. It outsold "Fantasy" by a significant margin giving Mariah her biggest selling (physical or digital) single in the US to date. "One Sweet Day" also made her the only female artist to have two consecutive multi-platinum physical singles and the owner of the longest running #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 in the history of Billboard.

In November, Mariah's second television special aired on the FOX network. "Fantasy: Mariah Carey at Madison Square Garden" featured Mariah singing to a sold-out crowd at the legendary New York arena. She performed a handful of new songs, including "Open Arms" and "Always Be My Baby," as well several of her hits. Boyz II Men were on hand to perform "One Sweet Day" and Wanya Morris joined her on "I'll Be There." The special would later be released to home video.

In the last two weeks of 1995, Daydream went back to #1 on the Billboard 200, selling 486,000 and 760,000 copies in those last two weeks, respectively. The latter was the biggest selling one-week sales for a female studio album in the Soundscan era until Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again" in 2000. In just 12 chart weeks, Daydream managed to reach #4 on the 1995 year-end album sales chart with sales of 3.9 million copies. Given that the record had only been out for three months, the albums above it all had more than twice as long to reach their positions. Worldwide, Daydream sold 12 million copies and pushed Mariah's career sales to 70 million worldwide (per Billboard).

Just as she had with "Hero" at the end of 1993, Mariah ended this year and started the next at the top of the charts.


MARIAH QUOTES

"I can actually sing the song and perform it on the roller coaster because I'm not scared being on the roller coaster. It's like kid's stuff for me. I'm a big roller coaster queen." Entertainment Tonight "What I try to do is never to fall back on, 'well, I've had all this success, whatever I do, people are gonna like it', because it's totally not true. And in the past, when I've been a really big fan of certain people, and then, it seemed like the quality level went down a lot when they became really big, it's like they didn't care anymore. They thought that their names would carry them. I never count on that. I feel like I have to always try to go to the next level." Snap, Cackle & Pop I'm the kind of person where if someone starts playing something on the piano I can write a melody on top. It's one of my favorite things to do." Blues & Soul "I don't like people around me in the studio. I feel more freedom that way. I just don't like having a producer in the studio when I sing. Some people I don't mind, but generally I'd just rather do it by myself" Blues & Soul "When I first started doing interviews and things everybody made me so paranoid. I was a really scared kid that just got thrown into this thing so quickly. When I look back on it now I realise that I was doing this stuff when my friends were freshmen in colleges and that was when I was putting out my album and it's crazy thing when you think of it like that. I was just a nervous person. I didn't want to be perceived in the wrong way. Back then I didn't know I could say, 'No, I don't wanna do that. I don't feel comfortable.' I didn't know I could relax and be myself." - Blues & Soul "I don't think that I should really need [high chart debuts] to validate me as an artist, and I don't think that that should be my focal point, you know? Because what if you do something that you're just feeling as an artist, and wanting to express yourself and do a totally different style of music, and it debuted at number 98? Does that mean that it's not good? No. It just means that that's not the popular thing of the moment." VH1 To One "Some criticisms have helped me a lot, and some I think are people's opinions who would never like the type of music that I do, and who just are completely into alternative, or completely into a totally different style of music and shouldn't be reviewing what I do anyway." VH1 To One "I think I was more calm when I made [Daydream] I just got to a place where it wasn't so much about nitpicking everything. It was more, going into the studio and just having the right mood and just being relaxed and creating the music." Good Morning America "No matter who you're married to–it doesn't matter–they can't make large amounts of people go in and buy your album. And they can't make people put it on the radio. People think, 'Oh well she just gets everything because of her husband and you know, he's in control and of course she has this success.' But it's like, maybe a long time ago that would have been true, but at this point, the business is not about hype anymore." Good Morning America "I'm just trying to enjoy what's going on right now, and feeling very grateful for everything that's happened so far. And I just have to be happy with what I have, and be grateful to the fans for getting me here." Good Morning America

TV APPEARANCES

Acceptance Speech - World Music Awards, 1995


Mariah on Good Morning America, 1995


Mariah Interview - VH1 To One, 1995: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3


Mariah Rockumentary - MTV, 1995: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3


"Fantasy" Interview - VH1, 1995


"One Sweet Day" Interview - VH1, 1995


"Fantasy" - Top Of The Pops UK, 1995


Fantasy at MSG 1995 Taping: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3


"Fantasy" - Madison Square Garden NY, 1995


"Open Arms" - Madison Square Garden NY, 1995


"One Sweet Day" - MSG NY, 1995


"Always Be My Baby" - Madison Square Garden NY, 1995


"Forever" - Madison Square Garden NY, 1995


"Fantasy" Remix Music Video


"Fantasy" Video Behind-The-Scenes - ET, 1995


"One Sweet Day" Music Video