Daydream 25th Anniversary (Throwback Essay)
I originally wrote this essay in 2020, which was the 25th anniversary of Mariah Carey’s Daydream album. She’s my all-time favorite artist, plus I’m proud of this essay, so I’m posting it here!
October 3, 2020 will mark the 25th anniversary of Mariah Carey’s 5th studio album (and 4th non-holiday album) Daydream. This is a landmark album for many reasons: 1.) Daydream was a great album to further entrench her music into contemporary r&b sounds than her previous albums; 2.) Furthered the popularity of fusing pop and hip hop and r&b and hip hop; 3.) One Sweet Day, the album’s 2nd single, a duet with Boys II Men, spent 16 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, the longest run ever until 2019, when Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road beat the record; and 4.) Daydream was the first album where Mariah started including house/dance music interludes, which would become a staple of later albums Butterfly and Rainbow.
After the smash pop success of Mariah’s 3rd studio album, Music Box, which sold 28 million copies, and the release of her first Christmas album, Merry Christmas, she wanted more creative control over her music, and to incorporate the popular R&B and hip hop sounds of the era. From an interview with the Baltimore Sun right before the release of Daydream:
"There's a very fine line for me between changing and maintaining what people have latched onto about me," she says. "I enjoy working with different producers, some of the more street-influenced producers, because it does add a different element to my sound. And I don't think that I've gotten lost in those tracks; I think we really came together and created something that was just my sound with more of an edge -- you know, an updated version of where I kind of went with 'Dream Lover.' "But on that album ['Music Box'], that was the only song like that; the difference on this album is that there are more songs in that vein. And that's really the music that I like to listen to.”
Although Music Box was a commercial success, it received very mixed reviews from critics. In Rolling Stone, Stephen Holden said the lyrics were "made up entirely of pop and soul clichés" on an album "so precisely calculated to be a blockbuster that its impact is ultimately a little unnerving".
What Makes Daydream Special
Daydream Achievements:
Fantasy became the first single by a female artist to debut at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100
Second best-selling single of 1995
Nominated for six Grammy awards, but didn’t win any (a travesty!)
With the 12 track Daydream album, Mariah achieved her goal of creating a classic R&B album that fit perfectly within the contemporary R&B landscape of the mid-90s. Utilizing producers and writers such as Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Jermaine Dupri, Puff Daddy, and Walter Afanasieff, and with amazing background vocalists Kelly Price, Shanrae Price, and Melanie Daniels, she crafted an album that appealed to lovers of soaring pop ballads, uptempo songs, R&B slow jams, and hip hop soul. 1995 saw the release of many amazing R&B albums, including Miss Thang by Monica, Brown Sugar by D’Angelo, Off the Hook by Xscape, Faith by Faith Evans, the Waiting to Exhale Soundtrack conceptualized, written, and produced by Babyface, Bonafide by Jon B. and I Remember You by Brian McKnight, just to name a few. As we all know, the 90’s were a great time for R&B music, and Daydream was a part of that time period where R&B, while still rooted in soul, embraced hip hop sounds, striking the perfect balance.
Long Ago and Melt Away would have fit perfectly on the radio next to You Used to Love Me (Faith Evans), Pretty Girl (Jon B.) and Grapevine (Brownstone). Underneath the Stars is a gorgeous slow jam that has a nostalgic 1970s soul feel that reminds you of Minnie Riperton’s Memory Lane, which is exactly what Mariah was going for (the long lost music video was unearthed by Mariah uploaded to YouTube in 2021. Watch it here!). From a September 1995 Billboard Magazine article, “[Underneath the Stars] has a real '70s vibe, we even put those scratches you hear on old records to give it that kind of flavor. [It] was a good place to start, because it got me into the head of making an album that was more R&B-more in the vibe of the Minnie Riperton era, which has always been an inspiration to me.”
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Lamb favorite (well it’s mine at least), Slipping Away, which was left off the album (allegedly due to the song being too “urban” and also very transparently about her relationship with her then-husband, Columbia Records President Tommy Mottola) but surfaced on the internet years later. In 2020, accompanying the release of her memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey (a must-read!), Mariah Carey released The Rarities, a 32-track album of previously unreleased songs and the entire 1996 Tokyo Dome concert. Slipping Away is included! Listen to the song on your preferred streaming service; it’s Mariah at her best. She’s singing with the passion, pain and sadness that is reminiscent of Mary J. Blige’s My Life album, about the crumbling of a relationship: “I keep on reaching and I keep on trying, but you never even hold me and it seems like you don't know me, baby I keep on yearning and I, I guess I'm learning that it's just a losing fight cause there's no passion in your eyes”
R&B, Pop and Hip Hop Fusion
It’s well documented how important the Fantasy Remix with Wu-tang member Ol’ Dirty Bastard, a.k.a., O.D.B. was to furthering the fusion of Hip Hop with R&B and pop music. From Entertainment Tonight’s 20-year commemoration of the song: “The 'Fantasy' remix set the template for what pop has become, Norris says. "It's almost a given now that pop songs will have a hip-hop element to them. Those two elements are almost a requirement to get on pop radio today.” Read this retelling by producer Corey Rooney of the crazy story of filming the Fantasy Remix music video with ODB, it’s hilarious! It wasn’t the first time that Mariah had incorporated hip hop into her music. On the single Dreamlover from the Music Box album, the song sampled Big Daddy Kane’s classic, Ain’t No Half-Steppin. A genuine lover of hip hop, Mariah also collaborated with SoSo Def rapper Da Brat for the Always Be My Baby remix. Sampling the SOS Band’s Tell Me if You Still Care, and with background vocals by the R&B group Xscape, I think this remix should get a lot more love. It’s one of my favorites of her’s; it’s just so perfect, everything from the sample, to the vocals, Da Brat’s rap and the video.
Club Music Interludes
Daydream Interlude (Fantasy Sweet Dub Mix) is the first appearance of the club music interlude that Mariah would include on subsequent albums Butterfly and Rainbow. Mariah’s love for club music shines on this record, a remix of Fantasy produced with David Morales, a legendary dance music DJ. In music journalist Craig Seymour’s Medium.com article on the top 10 most important Mariah remixes, he quotes from her memoir: “David would come to the studio, and I’d tell him he could do whatever he wanted with the song. I’d have a couple splashes of wine, and we would just go wherever the spirit took us — which were almost always high-energy dance tracks with big, brand-new vocals.”
This wasn’t Mariah’s first foray into club remixes though; there’s a classic club remix of Emotions (which was recently sampled by rapper Drake on his 2018 album Scorpian). According to MTV.com: “...features production credits from C+C Music Factory’s Robert Clivillés and the late David Cole, and was Mariah’s first collaboration with a notable dance producer to create a club remix.” Her first collaboration with David Morales was for the Def Club remix of Dreamlover, which according to Cliff Joannou in this comprehensive Rolling Stone article commemorating the song’s 30th anniversary, changed the landscape for pop-dance remixes. David and Mariah worked in the studio together to remix the song, with Mariah re-singing the entire song, her first in a long line of resung remixes. From the Rolling Stone article: “The remix was less a conventional interpolation and more an outright reworking of a radio-friendly pop song. It dared to be dangerous;” and “ For years after its release, the “Dreamlover (Def Jam mix)” would rank in the annual Top 100 lists of DJ Mag and altered the perception that a pop song could also become a credible club smash.”
As the article goes on to describe, it’s on her dance remixes where you first hear Mariah’s gospel influences, an example of the connections between gospel/spiritual music and club music. My favorite dance remix of Mariah’s is Anytime You Need a Friend (C+C Club Version); it’s a gospel club song reminiscent of soulful gospel-inspired dance records from the 70s such as Tata Vega’s Jesus Takes Me Higher.
Daydream’s Legacy
With the perfect mix of pop, R&B, and hip hop with a touch of club music, Mariah Carey’s Daydream is a classic album from start to finish that set the stage for her full R&B and hip hop immersion with her magnum opus, Butterfly, released in 1997. It was her first collaboration with Jermaine Dupri, and they would go on to create many more classic songs together, including the song of the decade, We Belong Together. Mariah would also go on to work with other future rap legends, including Nas, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, and Missy Elliot. Pop, R&B, and Hip Hop are now inseparable, and rappers appearing on songs by mainstream pop artists is now the norm. Mariah Carey is more than just the “queen of Christmas”, she is a top-tier songwriter and vocalist who has influenced generations of artists and changed the landscape of music, period.