1995 Mariah Carey: Vintage Pop Stardom (with Chris Hine)

Hello and welcome to the final vintage pop start-up episode of 2025 on the greatest pop stars podcast. I'm Andrew Hunterberger and I'm very excited because today we are making history on this podcast with our very first two-time vintage pop star. That is of course a woman we're talking about and off a lot on Billboard this week. The one the only Maria Carey. We already went deep on her incredible 2005 or a few months ago. This week we're flashing back another decade to talk about her equally great equally historic 1995 to help do that. We got someone who I've known on the internet for a pretty long time now. I think due to our crossover in both the pop music and basketball worlds and I knew eventually we'd be together on this podcast talking about Maria Carey and that one sweet day has arrived. Chris, how are you doing today? I'm good. Andrew, yes it's nice to see your face too. This is a good actor for a number of years and if I like it to see each other via Zoom here so thank you for having me on and it is a historic week this week that we are that we are crossing paths. I don't remember how we initially met on Twitter. Chris, I assume it was probably basketball related because you're a your longtime writer for the Minnesota Star Tribune. You covered Minnesota Timberwolves and I don't know how much if at all I've actually talked about this on this podcast but you know Billboard obviously is my full-time job. I also do part-time writing about the Philadelphia 76ers and you know when I was on Twitter that was actually probably the thing that I was better known for or at least that I had the more followers for was my sixers writing but I think the most conversations that you and I have had over the years have actually been about pop music because you're you're also a big music guy and you've forgotten you you've actually written for us before you did a Grammy's piece for us a few years ago that turned out really well. I did yeah. And I would say that probably at least half the conversations we've had over the years have been about Mariah Carey in some way shape or form right like she's all my three. That's all my thoughts. For me it's Mariah Carey and Carol King are like tied for my number one number one and two I wouldn't say number two they're my two favorites of all time. One A and one B. One A and one B and it doesn't they're both one A so the song if it's the song if it's over which you know what I did early in her career holds a very special place in my heart I have the sheet music to it I play piano too and write a little bit I have the sheet music to if it's over my dream is to have them both autograph it like I would love to have both them autograph the sheet music but I don't know if that's ever going to happen. Well so can you talk a little bit about your history as as part of the Lambly like what when did you join what was kind of held her in that status for you all these years since? Yeah it's very fitting because 1995 was the year I really became a Mariah fan. I was like eight nine years old at the time and fantasy was my introduction kind of into the world of Mariah Carey. I had to then later backtrack on the first five years of her career and catch up but but seeing the fantasy video and then one sweet day coming a few months after it was was the time I became a huge fan of hers and very formative very formative time and it was also a time I became a fan of the Billboard charts as well because I remember growing up and if you remember VH1 used to have this show called number ones I was like every Saturday morning or something like that and they'd play what was number one on various charts right and so that was my entryway into Billboard fandom and my dad had like the books and the Joel Whippern books and everything and he was big into it so he passed all that down to me and now I've obviously as a fan of Mariah as many lambs are very chart obsessive. Yeah and this was a good time to be interested in Mariah and interested in the Billboard charts at the same time because they were crossing past early and often I would say so what is it about this period of Mariah that was so magnetic to you as young eight nine-year-old Chris what was it about the daydream year and about fantasy in particular that really spoke to you as a kid at that time. I looking back on it it's hard to really pinpoint it but I think as an eight-year-old just seeing the fantasy video in the in the amusement park was probably something that really sparked sparked me at that point in time obviously I knew I was very aware of music even though I was like eight nine years old I knew who like boys to men were and I one of the first albums I also bought along with Daydream was Janet Jackson's design of a decade which came out that year as well and so those were the first two albums that I bought but with Mariah I just I don't know there was just something about her voice obviously and I think the whole package is an eight-year-old I was just drawn to and I just latched on I was like oh she and she's doing really well on this number one show that I watch every Saturday of morning so seems like a seems like a fun person to follow and then sure enough like you know I learned quickly that at the time she was in a race with Whitney Houston and Madonna they had a left they each had like 11 number one songs 10 number one songs whatever it was in Mariah was trying to catch them at the time with like 9 or 10 and I thought that was kind of a fun race to follow yeah I've also been a fan for a long time and I also kind of entered the picture around the same time that you do for me it was maybe a little bit more like early 96 and late 95 so I was coming a little bit late but certainly fantasy was still huge once we day was still huge and like just this period in general like when I was first getting into pop music and MTV and the radio and all that stuff like Mariah Carey was pop music like it was her and then it was like a big drop off to whoever number two was like she was so definitively mainstream and she felt so central to everything and she was so all the songs were so catchy and so poppy that like especially at a time we'll talk about this more later but at a time when pop music was not always so big and a lot of the things that were really popular were maybe a little bit more reserved or down tempo or just not what we conventionally think of as being pop music like she felt very very dead center pop and this is still like 30 years later this is the period I think of when I think of Mariah Carey first and foremost like I did that entire 2005 podcast a few months ago with my coworker Trevor Anderson and I love a lot of those songs and I have a lot of fond memories from that period and I certainly remember it very very well but when I close my eyes and think of Mariah Carey I think of Mariah Carey roller bleeding on the boardwalk in the fancy video like that that is the Mariah Carey that will always sort of burn brightest for me as like the definitive Mariah Carey that's prime Mariah Carey to me is it the same for you too and 30 years since then it is and it was just kind of absolute I guess whatever the words are ubiquity domination yeah like she was just everywhere and and I think one of the things about fantasy that's so remarkable in this era was that it just felt inevitable that it was gonna be a hit yeah it's like you take for granted sometimes with these you know these imperial eras of these artists that these songs are just gonna be hits right that there's is there even a consideration that a song a lead single from a big project of a major artist may flop right and with fantasy it was just like oh no this is a runaway hit from the very first week essentially at radio kind of reading back on some of the articles of how many stations jumped on board right away and and going into the weeds of all that stuff was really fun but it just seemed inevitable and I think you know it took me a while as a fan to realize and obviously I went through the the ups and downs of being a fan during the glitter area it's like oh no not not all of this is inevitable it's not inevitable that every song of hers and every album of hers is gonna be a smash hit like this it takes a lot of work it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of effort and a little bit of luck at the end of the day to have eras like this and I think it was a credit to her creativity her persistence her work ethic and also I think you know as we'll probably get into her reading the the shifting landscape of popular music as she started to adapt her sound to trying trying to move away from the big ballads of the early in mid 90s into you know what would become you know a more comfortable sound for her I think which was you know more towards the R&B and hip-hop realms yeah I mean this is all certainly true and the sort of chart achievements of Mariah in the 90s are remarkable in a lot of different ways but I think the most remarkable thing about them is the consistency of them she has a number one hit in every year of the decade now what one of them doesn't the 1994 one doesn't start in 1994 it's kind of a holdover from 93 but still to have at least one week at number one in 10 years out of 10 in a in like a calendar decade that I mean we might never see that again and we've gotten some artists who have come close but it's hard to do it really is it's hard to be that prolific and that consistent and that consistently evolving and not a lot of them were cheap either like you know there there are definitely some number ones during the 80s and 90s where you look back and go okay well that was maybe more of a momentum number one it wasn't necessarily a number one on the basis of the song zone merits was more about about the artist and where they were at that point in their career and Mariah and arguably as a couple of those but not many right and definitely not over the course of an entire album era in every album there's at least one song they're like oh wow that was like a no-dowder that was a knockout obvious number one from the jump so that's all remarkable and as I mentioned earlier and as we've already sort of talked about a little bit like this is arguably the week that we're talking about right now that she's maybe experiencing the greatest chart high of her entire career which is really saying something from Mariah Carey but this is the week and this is actually the day we're recording this on a Monday even though it's not going to go up until Thursday but just hours ago really we announced that all I want for Christmas is you her 19th number one hit is going to spend a 20th week a top the hot 100 that's an all-time record that breaks a tie with Shabuza's Bar Song Tipsy and Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus's All-Town Road that record is now Mariah's and Mariah's alone and to a certain extent it kind of feels like coming home because that record used to be hers not that long earlier she had that with one of the songs we're going to be talking about a lot today we'll certainly get more back into that in a minute but I would say you and I Chris a lot of the the Mariah related conversations we've had over the years have been about the sort of slow journey of all I want for Christmas is you to getting to where it is right now where it didn't hit number one for the first time until 2019 and that was a solid 25 years after it was released and it kind of was a slow build every every year it's been another couple weeks and other couple weeks and now finally here we are so like Chris how does it feel to you that Mariah finally has the record back I'll give you just been victory lap and all that I've been victory lap and kind of all week is the holiday season here and just kind of knowing that she was going to she was going to get this yeah speaking of inevitable this was only matter of time probably listen well that well that's just it I kind of to the other point I don't want to take these things for granted like yes you see easy to look back now and be like of course this was inevitable that she was going to spend 20 weeks and eventually hold this record like it's easy to look back on that but it took 25 years for the song to get to number one in the first place like there was nothing nothing given it was you know banned from even charting for for a long time even though it was selling pretty high numbers and like the early to mid 2000s so nothing is you know nothing is given or nothing is automatic and so it just is really great to see her and I think I'm happy for her to because she cares about the billboard so much and I love that about her I know you guys do and she's I know she's been great to billboard over the years she always you know it has the reaction videos does you know promote your stuff and it's great to see that symbiotic relationship I love the fact that she cares because we care and we love the fact that she cares artists will try to pretend that they don't care and it's like no she very much cares I remember reading a quote of hers and I think it was in 2005 when when shake it off didn't get to number one and she said she wanted to fire some people at the label or something like that she was she was yelling at people at the label because shake it off didn't get to number one in part because she blocked herself from going to number one but I love how passionate she is about it because that's how passionate I am and how passionate a lot of us fans are and and I don't want to I don't want to brag a little bit here but I feel like the whole chart watching phenomenon that that has taken over Stan culture and in the wars that fan base has waged I feel like us as Mariah fans we were in on the ground really on that one yeah we were we were the OGs of of chart Stan watching in the midnight I remember coming home and like reloading billboard.com in the early days of the internet to see if you know my all which had spent like two or three weeks at number two when a debut it was finally going to inch up to number one those were excruciating weeks for me as a as a little kid so I feel like I feel like we were the OGs of billboard chart watching all right and let it never be said otherwise so does it feel right to you that this is the song now a well A does it feel right that Mariah has the record again and B does it feel right that this is the song that she's doing it with possibly now in perpetuity it feels right that she has the record I just think I just think the story of all I want for Christmas is you is just such a remarkable story of of her career and it really personifies I think what her 90s career kind of was in in some ways where her the song was almost an afterthought right even after it came out and had an initial burst of success you know it did pretty well in the radio the first a couple years that it came out there was an interview she did in 1995 that when I was researching for this with MTV and they asked her why she wanted to do fantasy as the lead single and she said well I haven't really put out an uptempo song in a long time and I'm thinking in my head like you just put out all I want for Christmas is you the previous year but she wasn't even thinking like that she was thinking well the last uptempo song I put out was dream lover and then it was hero a ballot without you a ballot anytime you need a friend a ballot endless love a ballot so it was like I hadn't put out an uptempo song in a long time and she was even thinking of it as like part of her chronology like singles chronology right she was thinking oh it's been two plus years since I had an uptempo song on the radio and I think you know a lot of critics just would write her stuff off in the 90s um you know the the rock the more rock oriented critics would write her songs off as forgettable and bubble gum and saccharine and all this especially her uptempo songs and I think looking back on it I think to the general public some of the 90s uptempo bangers are the songs she's remembered the most by sure more so than some of the ballots um and so all I want for Christmas is you kind of standing the test of time is emblematic of her career as a whole from the 90s where I think she created stuff that people didn't think was going to stand the test of time but it did no absolutely and we're gonna talk more about Christmas as a song a little bit because you know it is a 94 song but it does bleed a little bit into 95 if you look at those kind of chart dates that it's got it's you know it hits its peak in the very first chart week in 95 so we're gonna we're gonna force it a little bit but also it's it's the song that kind of sets up everything that she does in 95 even if she doesn't acknowledge it so much but like before we get into all of that like I I am glad to see her take this record back like I have nothing against any of the songs that have passed her over the years like I love all of of despecito which only tied it and old town road and a bar song I think those are all three great songs I have no problem with them having their place in in chart history as well but again like when we were growing up Mariah Carey was synonymous with the billboard charts like she was the billboard charts as far as we were concerned really and those three songs that I just mentioned while being great songs and beloved songs and during songs they are all I would say tied to like a pretty specific moment in time and a specific moment in pop music in their own ways and that's one of the reasons why they were so successful in those original runs but there is something like very very timeless and spectacular and unique at this point about the popularity of all I want for Christmas is you that I think does make it feel right for this particular distinction and like I have talked to some chart watcher friends of mine not necessarily people on the billboard staff but folks who kind of want to give it a little bit of an asterisk and say like this isn't really what the chart should be measuring and it's not the same thing to have a song that comes back every year rather than the songs that were so popular for such a contract period of time and like I guess that's fair I understand where they're coming from there but I also think when you kind of boil it down to the simplest question which is like does it make sense that this incredibly beloved universally recognized pop song is now the longest reigning number one of all time it does I think it does yeah like it and so you know it's arguable and everybody sees like the charts and what they measure everyone sees it differently so I respect that but for me personally I'm very glad about Mariah Carey and I'm very glad about all I want for Christmas is you having this record now and it's going to have it probably for a pretty long time I think I think it's fitting to that you know one of the the biggest songs most historic songs of all time a song that spans generations is now the record holder for this and people ask me is like well don't aren't you afraid that Mariah is going to be like only known for the Christmas song and I'm like listen songwriters would kill to have a song that is known by people who are six years old and people who are 80 years old yep that doesn't happen music is very generational in terms of how people consume it right like I make the analogy a lot that you know teenagers and people in their 20s may not know like Bruce Springsteen's songs and like boomers may not know Billie Eilish songs but that doesn't make Bruce Springsteen or Billie Eilish any less important as artists or important to the time frames in which they exist it right they're still two of the most important artists of all time I would I would argue but to have one song that transcends all those generations and all those genres and everything is truly a gift that does not come along the music every day and she's got it no absolutely and especially a song that is not just that ubiquitous and omnipresent but is really passionately loved like there are songs that everybody knows but they know it is kind of ambient noise or they know it is something that's been foisted upon them their entire life and maybe there's some people who feel that way about all I want for Christmas is you too but I would say that the general public sentiment for that song is one of almost pure affection and has been for as long as I can remember even going back to the 90s when as we'll talk about this more in a little bit but as you were saying it wasn't as ubiquitous it wasn't as totemic a song when it first came out but people liked it and people have always liked it and and now we're at a point where it is now one of the most recognized and one of the most kind of a eternal songs of our lifetimes but it doesn't seem like people have really ever turned on it it doesn't seem like it's ubiquitous ever made people feel less charitable towards it I think people still really love the song I think they do too I think it is it is woven into the fabric of the holiday season just like a number of the other songs that you know are super popular every year I think this one just has a little bit of an edge of just and how it is that the tent whether it's the uptempo nature of it the the exuberance in it and you know her vocals obviously but to kind of tie this all into to 1995 fantasy too I think one of the interesting qualities about Mariah's songs from this time and all for Christmas is you has it fantasy has it and then always be my baby I think has it too there's songs that are about longing yeah kind of sad at the end of the day they're kind of sad when you read the lyrics like fantasy is about daydreaming about somebody and being with somebody always be my baby is about the end of a relationship so it was kind of all I want for Christmas is you looking back with a little bit of longing but the way that they're produced the way that she sings them makes you feel like she's overcoming the sadness in the song and I think that's one of the the cool qualities about her music especially from this time is that while there are songs of kind of sadness on paper the way that she sings them it gives you a different feeling about the song and about the lyrics then if you were just reading them on a piece of paper now it's a great point it's an important one we'll talk more about these songs in a minute but first I do want to do like a little bit of catch up just kind of get us up to date with Mariah Carey in a pre-1995 career for context so don't need to do the full back story a broad strokes of it Mariah Carey grows up on Long Island in New York she moves to Manhattan to make it as a singer in the late 80s does backing vocals from Grande Caste Star who's a big R&B singer at the time that's her kind of first foot in the door but the big thing is she meets Tommy Mattola at a party one night and he is immediately smitten with her signs her to Columbia makes her a big star pretty much right away her first album in 1990s an enormous success she basically releases one album a year throughout the first half the 90s all of them to one extent or another our major successes and he also marries her in 1993 and that's a marriage that very quickly proves to Mulchewis and suffocating from Mariah but also in 1993 she releases music box which takes her to an even higher plan of stardom goes diamond has two gigantic gigantic number one hits in dream lover and hero makes her an a plusless superstar basically all over the globe did you have a quick music box take Chris my controversial music box take is I put it in kind of the bottom tier of Mariah albums to listen to because it's just kind of balance it's a little too balady and repetitive and I thought when she released the 30th anniversary it was very interesting to see all the unreleased tracks which were a lot more uptempo music box could have been a very different album if some of those unreleased tracks had been on the album but I'm guessing that the machine made her go ballad heavy with that and commercially was obviously the right move because it's the biggest seller worldwide of her career so which I think sometimes can get forgotten about because maybe because the singles from daydream were maybe a little bit more spectacular or like a little bit more enduring in the memory I don't even know maybe that's a personal prejudice but yeah music box was her biggest seller and hero certainly a signature song for her it's a lot of ballots and they're kind of watery ballots they're not even like it's like later in her career ballots does become like a strong suit for her when she gets kind of the the more soulful edge to them she starts working with some more interesting producers but at this point in time they're kind of watery sounding they aren't really that remarkable I do really like everything fades away which is like a international bonus track for that album that is a I think a little bit of a fan favorite that's a really good song and I love dream lover certainly that's a great single but yeah not the one I go back to very often yeah I mean either but the the thing is they pick the right singles like they pick the four best songs or five if you throw and never forget you they pick the right singles they were huge smashes and then the without you cover I think was the thing that really launched her internationally yeah that was like her first real worldwide number one hit and so yeah from a from a calculation standpoint from a single choice standpoint it was a 10 out of 10 because it really took her career to another plane yeah you can't argue with the math of it certainly but in any event in 1994 she's basically in between studio albums but she does still get something out for the holiday season with the Merry Christmas album which of course has all I want for Christmas is you on it and at the time like it did well it did do very well got to number three on the billboard 200 Christmas was a very big song for a holiday song it wasn't like we got like huge hit new Christmas songs every year in the 90s that song you know it wasn't eligible to chart on the hot 100 at the time because it wasn't released as a physical commercial single and back in the mid 90s to be eligible for the hot 100 you did have to have a physical commercial release which Mariah plays with that role really interestingly on some of the day dream singles talk about that in a minute but the bottom line is that in the 90s that song never chart on the hot 100 it did make it to number 12 on the radio songs chart as I said it peaks the very very first calendar week in 1995 and that in itself is again not spectacular by Mariah Carey standards because she was going to number one most times out by that point but for a new Christmas song not a lot of those were getting played on the radius number 12 is a very very good showing for that still I doubt that if you asked anyone at the time and also if you asked Mariah herself I doubt anyone would have predicted that this album would place such a huge part in her legacy 30 years later like it to you know as you sort of mentioned Chris like this is now maybe the thing that she's best known for is this album in this song because if you're a kid growing up maybe you aren't familiar with the you know 16 number one hits that she had during the 90s or haven't had it was exactly but it you know they everyone knows her as a queen of Christmas that is the thing that she is really embraced particularly in the last decade and now it is the thing that is maybe like the front and center of people's impressions of her so what when do you feel like that shift first started really happening Chris when do you think it became oh Mary Christmas that was a fun album and fans really love it to oh this is like a major major major part of her legacy and maybe even the thing in her legacy to me it became a huge thing I think when iTunes became a thing in the mid 2000s and people could finally buy it as a stand-alone song for the first time and I think I remember in 2005 one of the one of the things that happened was during the holiday season all I want for Christmas is you was the number one digital seller for a week it beat all the the current songs the time including I think her own uh don't forget about right which was the owner at the time yeah yeah and so it's when that happened and she became she had the number one selling song in the country at a time when downloads were really increasing in popularity that was like oh shoot like this is this is the thing this is you know and we were clamoring like on the message boards things like they're like how high would it have gotten on the hot 100 if it was eligible to chart right I think it might have been somebody was running the math like maybe top 10 at the time if it was eligible to chart so I think that was when it really sunk in for me that this was going to be a huge part of her legacy was when you could finally see the individual consumption metrics of just how much people were getting this song and consuming this song before it just kind of existed in kind of the nebulous Christmas playlist area that you would hear on the radio and and you'd maybe hear it on the radio as like when your stations would turn to all Christmas music and then obviously when it gets featured in love actually a few years before that that plays a big part in the songs legacy as well so probably the mid 2000s was I think when it all clicked in for everybody that oh this could be a thing going forward for her yeah and just even beyond that like the mid 2000s was the period I just remember reading more things having more conversations where everyone just sort of agreed that this was now one of the Christmas songs because Christmas canon is a very very very slow moving canon so it basically it's like it's like a double hall of fame sort of eligibility period where you have to basically be around for maybe close to a decade before anyone starts to take you seriously as kind of one of the main contenders and this was a thing that kind of happened with all of my for Christmas is you where everyone sort of I don't know if there was like a governing body that decided this or any sort of movement that actually happened maybe all we're doing it stealthily behind the scenes and we just didn't realize I don't know but it seemed like everyone just sort of came to the realization that this is one of the great Christmas songs and maybe the best Christmas song of the late 20th century and then obviously iTunes played a huge part in the decade later of course streaming plays an absolutely game changing part in this like I think people can forget that playlisting used to be very difficult to do on your own like it wasn't like everyone just had a playlist of their favorite Christmas songs so listen to in the pre iTunes era you would have had to dub a cassette from like 18 different CDs or vinyl that you had and it would have been wildly impractical to do so what you did was you turned on the radio and there would be some stations that'd be playing these Christmas songs and you were sort of at their mercy so you did you almost didn't you were almost an unwilling participant in a lot of this process but first with iTunes and then especially with streaming people started to collect their own holiday playlist they started to listen to some of the automatically generated or or or or Spotify curated type playlists and then all of a sudden you got to see just how much people wanted to listen to this song every year around the holidays and the answer was a lot and also I think in the last decade maybe which sort of goes kind of hand in hand with the streaming aspect of it I think we also just started taking Christmas songs more seriously yeah like in the 90s they were novelties for the most part like they're like and as Mariah sort of treated it herself she didn't she didn't think of Mary Christmas as being like a main release of hers she thought it was sort of okay this is something for my fans and maybe for me personally because I always love Christmas and it's kind of like a footnote because it's a Christmas album and they aren't really considered part of our of my larger legacy because nobody really thinks of Christmas music on that level these weren't songs that you would compare to non-holiday songs you only ever compared them to other Christmas songs and you only really ever thought about them once a year but I think with the streaming era in particular as we were able to see the sort of numbers that this song and other songs like it were producing and we were able to tell like oh it wasn't just that people accepted this as an ambient part of their holiday music listening experience of their holiday experience in general but this is something that people feel very passionately about is holiday music and the songs that are the best songs are ones that they cherish on the same level as any other song really and that's what I think is allowed all I want for Christmas is you to become this kind of tent pole song for her where it's not just good for a Christmas song and it's not even just good for a Mariah Carey song but no this is just one of the most beloved pop songs period and is it the song that she would have chosen as her longest rating number one is the song that she would have predicted it as her longest rating number one almost certainly not but it is about as perfect the pop song has been released in the last 35 years and like even my grinsiest friends Jewish friends I've I'm Jewish myself we also love the song exactly I you don't get to choose the song I think ultimately that becomes your legacy as an artist it kind of happens for you right and the other thing I'll I think about this song that lasts is I'm a also a major fan like I said Carol King was one of my other favorite artists and I'm a huge fan of the Brill building 60s girl group pop era I think that is like the purest form of pop music that has ever existed and this fits right kind of in that mold and I think that that that sound like the 60s girl group sound never truly dies out I think it always tends to come back around in some way should they perform whether it's with like Megan trainer a few years back or I think you're seeing it now a little bit too with like Olivia Dean having a little bit of that in her in her repertoire as well like that sound people like the 60s girl group sound and I think that has helped its popularity as well yeah and certainly that intersects with Christmas music in a very classic way too because you've got stuff like Christmas baby please come home which by herself covers on Mary Christmas and that's another one of the most beloved Christmas songs of all time all those other full specter songs so this is certainly a logical entrant into the Christmas canon and she updates it really smartly and now this song yeah it you can do a lot worse for a legacy if this is her this ends up being the song that she's remembered for in 50 years and the Christmas thing in general is being her main thing I think that's fine I mean that's basically what happened to Bing Crosby he was the most beloved entertainer of his era too and now people know him as the Christmas guy and that's fine too like I think you could really do a lot worse as a legendary entertainer than to be associated with Christmas music yeah exactly like I said have that one song that people are going to know for generations and generations you don't get that every day so it's quite an accomplishment so anyway back in 1995 she's coming off music box she's coming off Mary Christmas she's basically been a bulletproof hitmaker for a solid half decade at that point I think she has eight number one singles on the hot 100 she's sold something like 60 million copies worldwide that's I don't know that's not an officially billboard sanctioned number but that is the number that gets brought up in all these interviews that she does in 1995 so we'll take them at their word for now on that one but you could really argue that even already as she's entering into 1995 that she's already the greatest pop star of the 90s and you could you know you can maybe pause the case that it was really on Madonna or Janet Jackson you already mentioned like they maybe felt a little weightier because they've been around for longer and they've already done so much more in their career and they're still very much at the top of their games but in terms of brand new stars like 90s minted pop stars it's Mariah Carey and then it's basically everybody else so do you think that like going into this year does she still have anything to prove Chris either commercially or beyond that like she's already so massive was there anything that her pop star and her career were still sort of missing yeah a lot of the interviews also mentioned her relationship to critics switches something that has been ongoing to not get fixed in 1995 just her relationship to the to the critical crowd and just how they viewed her music which was not giving her much too much credit yeah for what she did for being a writer for being a producer and it's funny to kind of track the critical arc of her early career you know she came out around the time of Millie Vanille so at first it was oh she's a studio creation there's no way she could actually be singing like this and then she does like the unplug thing and that kind of dies away and then the next criticism as well she's overseeing now she's doing too much right she she's so gifted but she's using it in the wrong way and she's overseeing and so she can never please they would always find something to nitpick with her the kind of the rock critic crowd that tended to dominate I think music criticism at the time and so she acknowledged that there's a there's a big there's a good VH1 interview that she did during the time and she really goes in depth about her relationship with the critics which is you know she's like well if somebody trashed my first three or four albums like why are you having them review my next album anyway just so they could trash me again obviously they're not into me so why don't you get somebody that's gonna review me fairly and on the merits of the work instead of just looking for another reason to trash me that was a very good answer that she that she gave to that that being said the you know the daydream album I think you know was the best reviewed album of her career to that point so she I want to say she won people over but it seemed like she at least got her reluctant all right this one wasn't as bad from from the critic crowd yeah I think pre daydream pre 95 there's still definitely a sense that Mariah on her albums especially was kind of a cog in the machine that she was you know she was a very talented singer obviously although you know obviously people had issues but she was very talented singer she had some great singles but when you listen to the albums you could still kind of feel the strings being pulled and you talked about a little bit on music box already it felt like a lot of things were being kind of group thought and and decisions were being made on a commercial basis on a global commercial basis that weren't necessarily particularly attuned to one individual's artistic vision and I don't say that to discredit Mariah at all because I think she would basically admit as much right like she basically says I was at the mercy of these label decisions at that time I was only able to express my artistic autonomy in very very kind of limited doses yeah she didn't even want to record the Christmas album like yeah that was a label decision essentially yeah to your point and like the thing that I think really brought this home for me was I read her autobiography for the first time and in the book it almost jump cuts like directly from her meeting Tommy Matola and her getting signed to Sony Columbia for the first time right to 1993 where she's on her first tour in support of music box and those three years in between which includes some of her biggest albums some of her biggest singles and her biggest moments enduring iconic Mariah Carey things they basically get like a paragraph or two and she doesn't go into depth on any of them and I was like wow like really don't have anything to say about the MTV unplugged or emotions or vision of love and I think it's because for her these were all Tommy projects and like she I'm sure has some affection for some of those works and she you know I'm sure she respects what they did for her career but to a certain extent they're all kind of clouded by that and the fact that you know that they weren't necessarily decisions that she was making she wasn't really front center for her career I'm and she didn't quite know how to stand up for herself artistically yet so I I understand why that would be the case but it also sort of goes into what we're saying here where she was getting very middling reviews largely for that reason which I'm sure me things even more frustrating for her because I'm sure she wanted to just kind of scream at some of these critics like okay this one's not on me like this is this is all like label stuff I if you were hearing the album that I wanted to make it would sound very different and she was fighting the Tommy stigma to it yeah like she was still in interviews it was being brought up that she was just a success because she was married to the head of the record label so six years into her career this is still something that she's that she's having to address in interviews and and one of the reasons why she felt critics were snubbing her and as I think we're gonna get into the Grammys we're going to be snubbing her because she was fighting this this unfair perception that she was you know I like you said a product of the machine because she was married to the head of the label and you know I obviously talent wins out in the end but this was something people thought of her in the industry back then unfortunately but this is all to say that she really did still have like a decent amount of proof her as much success as she had already had pre-95 like she's still had points that she needed to make probably more for her own sake than for anybody else is because she hadn't ever really gotten the kind of make the album that she wanted to make and she does start to do that with the adream there's still some concessions and what we'll talk about those later but there are definitely examples of her working with new producers and new sounds and kind of being a little more personal some of the choices that she's making but the really funny thing about this period and this is the thing that we didn't know most of our fans most of our fans didn't know maybe you knew maybe the true heads knew but while she was working on daydream she's also working on this totally different album that never gets properly released and this is an album that she kind of was making in secret undercover of night in the studio that she would record daydream during the day and then at night or sometimes very very early in the next morning she would adopt this much darker artistic persona and she would make an alt-rock album and I think she didn't totally mean it to be like a straight face thing I think she thought of it as partly satirical partly her playing a character her kind of under the guise of the sort of alternate identity version of Mariah but she makes this entire album as a rocker basically and she gives it to the label and they basically say okay this is not going to happen there's no way that we're going to release this or if we do it is not going to be under your name it is not even going to be with your vocals on it and eventually it does get released as a work by the band chick with her Frank Clarissa on lead vocals she's supposedly on there somewhere buried in the mix I can't hear her I don't know maybe you can but the album's called somebody's ugly daughter it's not on streaming but it is you can't listen to it on YouTube I assume you must have heard this album by now Chris did you do you have any take on his nesting you yeah I definitely did a deep dive once or twice you can hear her in some parts in the background for sure like if you if you listen very closely to the background vocals it's like that's Mariah there she is you know but I think yeah that's an interesting it's an interesting legacy turn like I do remember at the time being vaguely aware of the whole Chris Gaines Garth Brooks thing and that that turnout not to be the right call for his career at the moment right so looking back on that time like it probably was as unfortunate as it is now in 2025 that we don't have access to her version of this album yet right may fingers crossed that maybe one day we get it but it probably was the right move for her career at the time I don't think it was going to win her any fans of the people that already hated her yeah I don't think it was gonna win any of them over I think they were just it was just gonna be another reason for them to dislike her and it probably thinking back to what her fans were in the 90s and you know in my own life I think of like people like my mother who liked you know early in mid 90s Mariah not so much later 90s Mariah but early early mid hero Mariah was good girl Mariah mom yes yeah probably not probably would not have helped her with that crowd either so probably a good business move in the end to shell that yeah I mean I like a lot of the album I think it's definitely interesting some of it really does sound like a like a purposeful parody I don't know if that's what she was going for it like there's the first track on it it sounds almost exactly like the Root Assault song seater and it's like I wish that was that what she's going for it she kind of doing her a knock off on that some of the other songs kind of sound like whole some of them sound like a popular L7 I really like love is a scam I think that's a pretty pretty big banger that song like prom queen too that's a good one yeah there's definitely some gems on there it is 0% surprising that the album got shell I remember reading interviews at the time that she was a big fan of whole like I remember I think it was like a vibe magazine interview and she said she was a big fan of Courtney love and whole and that was like and as a nine year old that was like who the hell is whole yeah the other side of pops yeah the flip side certainly yeah but it's not surprising because Mariah does have very very diverse musical interest and she is kind of omnivorous with this stuff like she's listening to all stations on the dial so I'm sure there was some ulton there too and she says herself that she really admired or at least envied the way that these women were able to express themselves very honestly on their records they weren't necessarily listening to what their label heads were telling them and they weren't maybe asking in the first place but they were just kind of venting directly from their diaries in a way that I'm sure Mariah would have loved to do more of if she wasn't under the thumb of Tommy Matolla and if she didn't have all these commercial pressures related to her superstar I'm in her sonity contract and all that and also I think it's important to remember the thing that you already kind of mentioned which is that the 90s were not like they are today in terms of you could be a rock star and cross over to pop but you could not be a pop star and cross over to rock that just did not happen and you didn't get these things like we have today where okay maybe the new scissor album has like one rock song on it or maybe bad bunny's gonna kind of do a rock thing for this new project or Billie Eilish happier than ever like that's kind of a rock song you guys are cool with that right in the 90s we would not have been cool with that so if this album had come out it would have bricked almost guaranteed it would have been like Chris Gaines maybe even worse like it is there's just no way that this was ever going to happen like that but it's cool that it exists did you ever think we'll get to hear the proper version with the Mariah vocals on it Chris do you think that even exists anyway at this point I hope so I don't I'm sure she has a reason for the hold up I don't know what it is exactly but I hope we see it maybe it's just tied up in legal loopholes I don't I don't know but you know I thought when she put out her memoirs and released that she had done this I thought we were gonna get it soon thereafter as a as a part of the promotion of it all but it's five years later and and we're still we're still waiting for it I want to hear it I do want to hear it it's interesting I think it fits in with her creative persona overall even when she when you read her memoirs and you see her talk about like you know the videos for like dream lover and fantasy and it's like I was kind of she would say like I was kind of creating a version of myself that I wanted to see on screen because my personal life was so hellish and so yeah and so I think this this fits kind of right in line with who she was as a person at this point which is like trying to invent these characters and different personas to escape the reality of what her situation actually was in her in her day to day life maybe we need to get her to do the the Mariahs version re-recording maybe that could be a project for 2026 we could only share she might have sailed on that one but it would be cool but in any event back in 1995 nobody outside of her inner circle knew that this was even a thing that was happening they she did like drop a couple kind of cryptic hints that it was something she was at least working on or thinking about in interviews over the years but the actual like full album nature of it I don't think anybody knew about that until the book in 2020 the first thing that we actually heard from her I carry in 1995 doesn't come out until August of that year but that's fantasy and I think we could say that that was probably the most modern sounding song she has done to that point which is a little ironic because it samples us off from the 80s in Tom Tom close genius love but this was an era where sampling was getting very big in pop music and hip hop in particular and sort of crossover between the two because hip hop was getting more and more popular and it does have some of those like G funk sounding synths on the chorus and it's got some harder hitting drums than we used it for Mariah Carey so it does have like a little edge to it but it's also got some of the popiest hooks that you've heard in your entire life some of which are borrowed from genius of love but others are kind of Mariah originals so like Chris when you're thinking of the defining Mariah Carey pop song like capital P pop song is this the song that you think of? it's tied with always be my baby I know always be my baby is a little more R&B but I think when she comes out of the gate with that first verse in fantasy like it's just like like there's no weak spots in the song it's that first verse is just kind of hammered home and it just sounds so good the melody kind of with the beat and segmenting into the chorus like it's it's just perfect pop music to my ears and I think to a lot of people's ears over the years I think even if you're a Mariah Hater you're not like I have friends in my life who are not the biggest Mariah Carey fans they love fantasy or they love listening to fantasy because it really is just the definition of a pop banger and from the opening from opening like Chicago Bulls intro kind of you know kind of way that the song opens right yeah like you know Michael Jordan's about to come out of a tunnel or something like that and then she just it's good people to be associated with something that you find right yeah so yeah and then you know the beat drops and you know we get the Shadu da da doodoo's all all around the background vocals just forming this this wall around you and then it's just her with that lead vocal in the verses and it's just yep this is this feels right this feels right we consider like a personal favorite as well I mean obviously it has its place in her catalog and it's one of her most beloved and famous pop songs is it one that you personally return to a lot or is it more like it's such a part of the pop culture ether at this point that you almost don't necessarily feel like you have the same kind of personal relationship with it I probably return to a few more songs more than that but sometimes when I just need to pick me up throughout the course of the day or whatever that song never fails to get the job done it's probably that and I would say like we're talking lead single Mariah songs from the 90s like that that in like probably heartbreaker or the two I come back to the most yeah yeah this is good as 90s pop music gets like to straight up as you say there's there's not a single part misplaced in the song every part of it kind of works spectacularly and the sample is perfect and like a perfect sample for Mariah specifically like she says she was just listening to the radio one day and the song came on she's like hey I love that song and it's just such a satisfying feeling song is such a good feeling song which is kind of ironic because as you mentioned earlier Chris it's kind of a bummer when you look at it on paper like it is all about having this kind of unrequited fantasy or maybe not even unrequited but like just unrealized because as far as you know listening to the song Mariah has never talked to this guy in her life he might not even know that she exists like it is very much all going on in her head but it doesn't sound like she's that sad about it it sounds like she's enjoying it she's having a great grand old time like just fantasizing about this guy and just daydreaming about him like it seems like almost she wouldn't want to get his attention or actually make it become a thing that could actually happen because then it might ruin the fantasy that she has in her head that's right I mean sometimes thinking about what could be is better than what the real thing actually is and isn't that isn't that dating and relationships in general sometimes so maybe it is that right yeah yeah it's it's certainly I kind of think of it you know and as somebody that was going through you know just being in like grade school and then you know middle school high school I kind of think of it as just kind of sitting in class and your mind just starts wandering and you're thinking about your crush and this and that like to me that's that that's kind of the emotion I I attached to this song at a place in time in my life is just that being in class and it's getting towards the end of the day you're just bored out of your mind and your mind just starts wandering to like that that that that crush that you have and and I don't think I've ever really not heard listen to that song and it's brought me back to like those specific moments in my life the thing that I think can kind of get lost about this song is you know we talk about the ways that it fit in with mid-90s pop music but it also really stood out from mid-90s pop music can I can I read you Chris can I read you a list of the five songs that went to number one directly before fantasy yes and I researched this myself I have I have a very intro I go ahead go ahead I'll say okay so the five the five songs I'll do my observation then you can do yours so the five songs leading up to it are Brian Adams's have you ever really loved a woman TLC's waterfalls seals kiss from a rose Michael Jackson's you are not alone and Kulio and LV's gangster's paradise and that ends up being the number one song in 1995 for the year in high 100 so we've got a lot of ballads and a lot of like very heavy message songs not a lot of like upbeat frivolous pop fun to be had in 1995 at least just going by the number ones like everything was very mid tempo or down tempo and very straight faced very serious not the sort of airy breathy like flight of fancy thing that Mariah is doing there and also just not a lot of pop songs like chirping synth hooks and like these euphoric single on choruses and all that so that lean basically belonged to fantasy and fantasy alone 1995 and it owned it very very well yeah it did I'm glad you had the Brian Adams one in there because I I remember looking at the list of this the other day and I remember that song I was very like I said very aware of what was popular and what wasn't at the time but the fact that that song no offense to Brian Adams but the fact that that song was like five five week number one in 1995 kind of tells you all you need to know about the state of pop music in 1995 but that song has some bangers that is not one yes I would agree I would agree but the fact that song could become such a big hit in 1995 really gave you a taste of what the music industry was thinking what was tried and true what was selling what was kind of a safe bet to sell and yeah it's so so fit juxtaposing kind of creep in Brian Adams and then fantasy later like yeah it was a it was a weird it was a weird world in 1995 for what was popular and what you know what was charting high but Mariah was at the point in her career where she could kind of do anything and be super successful with it so it didn't necessarily matter that it didn't sound like everything else that was happening on radio at the time and as was off in the case with Mariah in the 90s the video helped a lot like she she directed the fantasy video herself she did and that's her first time doing that when that's probably also another sort of mini rebellion against Tommy who had a very very sort of controlling hand with the video director she worked with she says in the book that she didn't get to work with most of the directors that she really wanted to so she kind of says okay fine I'll do this one myself and we'll we'll set it at playland though the amusement park in right New York that she's spent a lot of time as a kid and she's on the rollercoaster she's rollerblading down the boardwalk and she's in the parking lot she's got the obligatory 90s Jeep going like it's a very fun very 90s video is this like an important part of the fantasy experience you Chris I think so too I think it's just the video the visuals just match up so well with the feel of the song and and rollercoaster being a maybe a tripe but a good metaphor for the song of kind of riding the highs of yeah the emotions that you feel in it and and I'll say another thing to I remember if you remember the 90s VH1 used to do like the top 10 sexiest videos of of all time they said he's definitely have ones like that I remember like fantasy being on the list and I was an eight year old nine year old me and you know I'm openly gay now but I remember thinking at the time like is this considered a sexy video what why is this considered a sexy video exactly and it didn't really dawn on me until a little later that you know maybe the the shorts and you know the belly button being exposed a little bit was considered sexy even though it looks very tame by 2025 standards but they got some attention at the time for being maybe the the sexiest video she had released up to that point yeah I guess it was I don't I don't necessarily like group it in my head as being a sexy video because I don't think it's necessarily trying to be overly sexy not the way that like I don't know we could game was her like it's very very much more like sex forward videos I will say the Mariah Carey looks incredible in this video and that she's one of the most beautiful women probably that's ever lived and especially during that time period so I guess any video that she does where she's not wearing all of the clothing maybe counts as a sexy video but yeah that I think that is sort of a weird designation for that video because it's very innocent right like it's a very it's her enjoying these things that she enjoyed as a kid and she's hanging out with literal children and I think that the the the things that really make the video memorable are not necessarily her being sexy they're just kind of her feeling the rush of the song like it's a very very momentum forward video it's got the roller coaster it's got the rollerblading like it feels like you can feel the rush of the song while watching the video and that's what I think really makes it work yeah it's energy it all kind of sinks up together like you said the the motion of everybody in the video the the roller coaster and the motion of the song it just it it fits all of it fits yeah it's a pretty impressive feel like a first time director yeah exactly it's a very last and it's a very lasting clip to it really is it's it's held up well over over the years so fantasy obviously enormous hit they've used it number one on the how-and-hundred only the second single to ever do that you remember the first one is Chris you are not alone by Michael Jackson which was like two months earlier or something yeah really sure before I think this was a time when artists kind of learned how to work the billboard charts a little bit yeah and as I mentioned earlier there was this rule at the time where you couldn't chart you weren't eligible to chart on the how-and-hundred unless you had a physical release of your single physical commercial release of your single so what artists learned that they could do was release songs to radio ahead of the physical single release and so that way they build up momentum on radio they get people excited to buy them and they also kind of help their chart positioning because you know radio takes a while you have to kind of let that marinade before songs don't debut at number one on radio very often so fantasy starts at something like 12 in a couple weeks later as number three and they say okay now release the single and it's got all this pent up demand because people love the song and so then yeah fantasy debuts at number one I think Michael Jackson took a similar route to it but there is another reason we should talk about why the single did so well and again if we're going to talk about the sort of larger fantasy experience we have to talk about the song's remix so Mariah remixes pretty much always a pretty big deal like they are a big part of the story for a lot of her 90 singles even to that point a lot of artists at the time when they were doing these remixes for their CD singles they would just kind of hand them off to the biggest DJs the day they say you do what you want we'll stick three or four of them on the single you get a couple extra copies out of it Mariah was like really really involved with her remixes and she would often re-record vocals for them she would often like entirely re-imagine their songs like the there's some songs that you listen to from music box or emotions you listen to the single version and then you listen to the remix and they sound like almost too completely different compositions like the I think of the anytime you need a friend remix that I think I think see a C music factory does that one or and that's they take this ball and they turn it into this 11-minute dance epic I think it's actually better than the original version but like again totally new vocals totally new vision for the song altogether this when when she does the fantasy remix or the first version of the fantasy remix it's a little bit less dramatic but she does get assistance from two of the biggest figures in hip-hop at that time which are puff daddy who's going to produce it and old dirty bastard the Wu Tang clan is going to rap on it and he's the first rapper as far as I know that appears on any Mariah song there's there's no like example of a Mariah song with a with a rapper before this is there Chris no there isn't yeah this is the first time yeah and that partly that's Tommy the toll is doing because he fucking hates rap he wants her to have nothing to do with it he thinks that he's a quote from the book where he says the puff daddy is going to be shining his shoes in two years Mariah is horrifically offended at this quote as she probably should be but he has no respect for puffy or for hip-hop or anything from that world in general but Mariah she's already so all systems go on this song and kind of her vision for it that he basically lets her do her thing on it and like I said like the puffy and odb they don't dramatically reinvent the song but they they do make some pretty subtle and pretty important alterations to it and puffy kind of changes the beat a little bit changes the song structure a little bit and of course odb goes fucking wild for the songs intro and in his guest verse and the remix of fantasy ends up playing like a major major part in the story of the song and the success of the song and today you could argue that it has matched or even surpassed the original in terms of the public affection for the song and certainly the critical affection for the songs and just the sort of legacy that fantasy has in the Mariah Carey catalog and then the sort of story of 90s popular music and being such an important turning point for hip-hop and pop kind of merging worlds like this it is considered by a lot of people to now be the main version of the song like I did you see it as being that much of a game changer Chris from Mariah or or just from music in general and do you rate it as high or higher than the original I rate I prefer the original just slightly more just personally but I think the legacy of the remix is undeniable because in the ensuing decades after fantasy came out not only was she doing this regularly on her songs but other artists out there it just became a thing in the music industry you add a rapper to a pop song yep or you know then you or you're bringing a pop singer to sing the hook on a on a rap song and it literally became standard practice in the music industry something that people became so accustomed to and this was the really first notable instance of these two worlds colliding and she normalized it she made it a thing and I think one of the ultimate ironies of the Grammys is that they snubbed her so much over the years but yet they created a whole category best rap song collaboration that is basically her doing that that category does not exist if not for Mariah Carey not the same right exactly that that category came about because of her she never won it of course and it was it came along too late for her to really even be nominated uh you know during the peak of her career but you know I I think back to like to me the ultimate example of like this is like California girls Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg right there's no reason why Snoop Dogg should be on California girls I don't think like it's just what you did to try to ensure it was it became a business move to try to ensure a big hit for the first release of a of a new single in that instance right California girls would have been just fine without Snoop Dogg on it but yeah at Snoop Dogg he had a little different flavor to it and it just it was just something that you did as part of as part of making a song and Mariah Carey is responsible for that because the fantasy remix was such a massive runway success so I'm gonna say if it's all right with you Chris I'm gonna see something a little controversial here go ahead so the remix I think has maybe come to be a little overrated you think so okay which is not to say that it's not very good obviously it's very good obviously there are incredible moments in it most of which belong to ODB I mean the the New York in the House intro classic me and Mariah go back with babies with pacifiers obviously all-timer I have to draw the line at the idea that this version of the song is as good as the original or possibly even better that I find really really upsetting like I don't know if you saw a few years ago pitchfork did a list of the 250 best songs the 90s and at number one was the fantasy remix and I even have a co-worker I'm not gonna put them on blast here but we were doing a list a few years ago as well and it was a list that fantasy had made and I just I just sent them as a fantasy made a list and I asked them to blur the song and the blur did they wrote sort of intimated that the original version of fantasy was merely the prelude to the remix and that the original was like okay that was cool but what really went off was the remix it did I gotta say I'm with you though I like I said I prefer the original to the remix personally I like both but I but you know gun to my head you give me the original the remix I want to listen to the original so I'm with you there well thank you for that I find all this like totally stupid finally I I you know the remix obviously very cool obviously very fun obviously very important it is to me age dramatically inferior song to the original version and I think the what the disconnect here is maybe for a lot of people is it just my theory I might be totally wrong I think in people's heads when they think of the fantasy remix they think of the original plus a couple of the ODB parts I think they think the there's basically the same song but it also adds in the ODB intro and the guest verse and aside from that it's basically the same thing as the original that is really not the case because if you listen to the remix version puff daddy like he had a very specific vision for what parts of the original worked and what parts didn't and he takes out the chorus of the original entirely that chorus is gone that sweet sweet fantasy baby that doesn't appear in the remix at all to me that is one of the things that makes the original what it is that was one of the things that makes it great and what he does instead what he uses kind of to fill in for that chorus spot is he takes the breakdown section of the song the sort of bridge section in which Mariah does the I'm in heaven with my boyfriend my loving boyfriend with this which calls back to the original genius of love he takes that from the bridge and I think it's a perfect bridge for the original song but he takes that and he makes that the chorus of the remix and that to me is overexposing that section of the song that section works as a fun little kind of hidden and quiddit callback I don't think it works at all as the main hook of the song and like you need to have the chorus the original chorus I think because otherwise there's no like explosion in the song at all the version of the pop that he version with the remix there's really no lift from the verse to the chorus it's all kind of on the same plane so there's no like dynamic to it at all like I don't get that way is this something that you have observed at all Chris is this a problem that you have with the remix why I prefer the original just because of the the propulsive energy that is that is present in the original I think I think people just they remember the remix I think because of odb primarily and just the iconic lines they're in and then the mythology around how he recorded it as I think you know you guys detail the few years back has also become part of the legend of the song and I'm with you though I I remember when she put out her number one CD in 1998 and she had all of her 13 number one songs on the CD up to that point she did not put the original version of fantasy on there she put the remix version of fantasy as a part of that CD it's clearly the version that she holds more special yeah and I understand that because that that I think is less about necessarily this two specific songs as to what it represented for her career and probably how hard to read how hard she has fun for vis-a-vis Tommy right it probably holds a lot of personal significance in that in that way and I think at the time too it was just very fresh and and again the the whole concept of the the woman who's saying hero you know now doing a collaboration with the a member of the Wootain clan was just not something you that was like anybody's radar at the time so the novelty of it which you know was not just a novel idea it became part and parcel of the music industry and and Brent maybe heard doing a bit of a victory lap on on coming up with that which rock and roll hall of fame voters pay attention like she's got some lasting some some things that she's done that shape genres of music over the years yes those bastards it snubbed her twice they didn't know that we'll see at our time it's gonna happen um by the way the um I think I think too like I go back to that time and my sister was dating this guy who not a Mariah fan at all and they were my sisters were like nine 11 years older than me so they were in high school at the time and my sister was dating this guy not a Mariah fan at all listen to rap rap listen to hip-hop you know uh you know white guy from small town Pennsylvania listen to rap hip-hop sure he had the fantasy single in his car he did and every time I was in his car with him I would ask him to play it obviously but he had it because of the he liked the remix not because he liked the original version yeah it of course plays a huge partner career and in the story of 90s pop music in general like I said I do have two more things I want to quickly take issue with here and I apologize we go on on this big long ramp this is something I've been holding in for a lot of time this is good it's good chances I'm ever gonna have to get this out there is a sort of perception that this is the first time this has ever been done this is the first time that a big pop star and a big rapper of the moment have gotten together on a single and done a video for it whatever like this this is like the first of its kind not really true like you can go back to 1989 uh a very big pop star at the time named Jodie Watley had a song called friends with the rappers Eric Beenrakeem rapper in a DJ Eric Beenrakeem and that was a top 10 pop hit that was not like a some obscure song that is just a historical footnote that was a very very big pop hit at the time did this six years before the fantasy remix and if we want to say okay but she wasn't like an a pluslister the way Mariah was fine Janet Jackson for the remix to her song all right had heavy-d on that song and that was in 1990 I think so five years before fantasy still so like this was a thing that had been done several times before now it might not have been done in such an extreme case of the biggest pop star in the world working with a fairly underground rapper that might have been a little bit unprecedented to a certain degree but then we're talking about gradations here we're not talking about the big bang of pop meets our baby tip up that that was not what this was in any stress the imagination and the ODB verse maybe not as great as people remember it being either to be honest like the me and Mariah line that's eternal obviously that's an all-timer it loses steam real quick after that first line like the because he is sort of a mess at this time and like if you read the stories about it like they only get like one usable thing from him a day or like an hour and then he's off doing something else refulsively for another hour whatever so they have to kind of stitch together this awkward verse and the lines don't really go with each other sometimes they don't rhyme at all and then part of it is fun okay it's ODB's chaotic in general so it's not like it doesn't fit and it's not like it totally ruins the song but it's not like he laid down 16 bars of magic and it just elevated the song to a completely different place it's not like that it's just fun to have him on a Mariah song and there's two kind of all-time moments in it so this is all to say like fantasy remix incredible moment incredibly important part of her career definitely like an irreplaceable thing in 90s pop culture don't try to act like it's better than the original and definitely please don't try to act like the original was just sort of the opening chapter and this is the main event like single the original version of fantasy is one of the greatest pop songs of all time are none like you don't need to qualify it it is already that the remix is an important part of that song story but that song is still the story and this is just the additional chapter is the remix so I just don't want to I don't want to get to a point in history Chris where no one is acknowledging the original fantasy as being what it is and people just think the remix was always a thing I refuse to let that happen so I had to say my piece I'm with you on that I don't think we should lose the legacy of the original because the original is fantastic and it is a classic like it absolutely is I think you're right I think you know the remix is obviously taken on more of a critical appreciation in the 30 years since it's been out I think it worked well at the time because I think the the remix being a little more different a little more downbeat than the original and maybe it wasn't just a good combination at the time to have something that was a little more energetic and it wasn't just the original with odb wrapping over the bridge and said a moriah doing the doing that part right maybe the fact that they were a little a little opposite a little yin and yang of the same of the same song maybe that's why it works so well I don't know maybe yeah maybe and because you know in later years really it's just okay a rapper is gonna rap over the bridge instead of having a bridge you're gonna have a rap part and you know for the stations that can't play rap music there's just going to be an awkward instrumental for for 30 seconds then we're back into the final chorus this was not that this was just a whole new track because like you said moriah had a history of kind of reinventing her songs via remix which as somebody in the LGBTQ community I took on a greater appreciation that oh she was doing this for the gays like she was doing these house remixes for the gay community especially specifically so that they had a little something to dance to in the clubs at the time a 10 year old me to not realize that 30 year old me did realize that you know a few years later so you know I think it bonded her to that to that segment of her fan base a little more um but yeah I think if I think the fact that the songs were so different fits into how she was doing remixes at the time which was to try to reimagine the songs a little bit even though she even if she didn't come in and redo her vocals for the fantasy remix because it just sounds like they took the the stems from her you know the original and just in general it does sound like they basically used the vocals from the original fantasy but it it is still a reinvention look it worked obviously the song the original song is a classic the remix is also a classic in its own way so the two of them together is an extremely powerful combination it helped her sell a gazillion copies of the single and it basically ends up being the perfect first taste of the entire daydream experience and the single spends its first eight weeks on top of the chart it's still number one when daydream is out in october and that album that also debuts at number one and knocks off a lattice more says jagged little pill last is going to get her revenge later but it's been six weeks and number one gets gets some of the best reviews of her career again that's not really that tough to do at that time because she was getting pretty middleing reviews for most of her first four or five albums but the craze were a little nicer like I found the the New York Times review of it that Stephen Holden did and he calls it subtly innovative and he says that her songwriting took a leap forward so it was definitely getting a nicer reception even if it wasn't you know it was crickly claimed as you know radio heads the bands or p.j. Harvey's to bring my love what else what else was going on that time did you find this album to be like sort of a new peak for her at that time Chris and like how do you personally rate it in her catalog these days I think so I think it's in the for me it's in her my personal top five of my albums it's not my number one but it's but it's up there um I think the songwriting aspect is is important because I think she also was playing around with different sounds you have babyface coming in for a song uh for melt away underneath the stars which she constantly cites as one of the favorite songs she's ever done I think you know in a weird way kind of laid the groundwork for a man's patient of Mimi 10 years later and maybe her love affair with having that kind of 70s retro soul sound mini ripper tin like um like going for that vibe maybe set the groundwork for what you do 10 years later and yeah you listen to it it's got it's got gospel it's got obviously huge pop songs she's she works with Jermaine Dupree uh obviously I'll always be my baby and then looking in the kind of the the somber dark twists uh and and what would become you know kind of a tradition of Mariah album closers uh of them kind of having a different flavor from the rest of the album uh in having these kind of somber ballads as the closers in a lot of ways um really begins here with with looking in I feel like and so yeah I think she she she plays around with some different genres and I do think that her songwriting looking back on it especially when you compare it to music box was much better now I I think that's all very fair uh it's it's it's a it's not like a great leap forward I don't think but it's like a subtle one for sure and I I also love melt away I mean anything 1995 baby face I think you touched there in that time where it was pretty much golden uh underneath the stars the mini ripper tin thing it's definitely like that becomes kind of a recurring theme for her throughout like the rest of her her catalog and it's an important kind of strain of Mariah Carey I even really like the fantasy reprise interlude like yeah could that could have gone off for another seven or eight minutes and I would have been happy with it in general there are still like a couple of those watery ballads maybe a couple more than we would have liked uh I don't need that open arms cover at all it's fine but on the all the whole even that I think it's all like a little bit less bland than some of the worst of the music box stuff I think it's probably the best for Tommy your albums I think I think forever if we're talking about ballads I think forever if we're going down that lane of kind of goopy ballads I think that's one of the better ones actually I am and I'm not I like the duop sound of it like I kind of like the duop feel of forever that kind of differentiated differentiates it from some of her other stuff but I also at the time this is going to sound super super sappy but I loved the song when I saw you when I was like 12 years old that was I thought that was the best ballad ever created when I was a kid and I started playing the piano specifically so I could learn how to play when I saw you on piano I thought it was that that great of a song and I was so disappointed when it wasn't released as a single and I still have the sheet music to this day of me writing the notes underneath like the staff of that song in my daydream sheet music book when I was 14 years old still have it sitting sitting about 10 feet away from me in my party that is very sweet but as I got older I was like oh this song it's fine it's not it's right right it's not as groundbreaking as I once thought it was and it's certainly fine but I thought that was the best song she'd ever created when I was like 10 years old well we can go back and forth on like which which the the best deep cuts were I think we can probably agree that it's still mostly about the singles on the album they're still the main thing and she's got absolute doozy coming up next so in October she releases once we date her radio once we date is the biggest of the big ballads on the album and it's also her first team up with the R&B group boys to men who I think we already mentioned once on this podcast but they were one of the only other 90s acts that were sort of anywhere near the Mariah Carey plane at that point when it came to crossover success and pop success and being huge on MTV and stuff like that they were still riding high from two at that point which they released the year before and that album had a bunch of massive massive crossover hits on it went diamond did all these other things that Mariah Carey was doing at the time too so to get them and Mariah on the same song was obviously a very very very big deal particularly if you were a chart watch or wondering what can these two chart superpowers do when they finally team up and it released wise that the same deal with once we date it was with fantasy where she takes it to radio first before releasing it as a physical single so it's already a pretty big hit by the time it's out and it debuts at number one the hot 100 surprise surprise ends up staying there for a pretty long time we'll talk about just how long in a minute first Chris I do I do kind of want to get your take on this song and I think I know what it is in general because we've gone back and forth on one sweet day on social media once or twice but obviously even though this song was like almost incalculably huge at the time today I don't think it's necessarily considered one of Mariah Carey's most popular songs it's certainly not one of the biggest songs on streaming and it's not a song that you hear covered particularly often it's not a song you really hear out in the world particularly often it's not even one of the songs that she performs the most live although I'm sure part of that is because you know she can't look boister better around with her but I think there's also a sense that this song it was maybe more about like a place in time and a moment and a specific like very 90s sort of hit song than it was about actually being one of her best songs do you agree with that how are you feeling about one sweet day in 2025 I tend to I think it's maybe lack of success in the 30 years since maybe overshadows the fact that I think it's still a very good song I think I think they sound phenomenal on it and I think it walks the line of not being overly sappy pretty well and so I think it's still a very good song but to your point yeah I think it's interesting that of especially of the singles here in this era this is the one that gets listened to the least yeah and you wouldn't have thought that at the time given how much of a smash this was and I was just at her Christmas show in Las Vegas recently and she you know did a medley of hits quote-unquote right she did fantasy and she did always be my baby she did not have on sweet day as part of the as part of the medley right so to your point it's not something she even performs live or that fans are necessarily disappointed that she doesn't do a snippet of when she doesn't perform alive and to think of you know it's a testament to her career that a 16 week number one song can just get left off the set list like what other artists could could do that even but you know I still look back on this song very fondly and I still listen to it and I enjoy it and it means a lot I think especially after you lose a loved one I can tap into the emotion that they were obviously feeling I think Mariah said she wrote it for David Cole who she had worked with on music box and emotions and you could definitely feel it could definitely comes through in the song yeah like I'm sure I came off a little bit of a hater when doing my thing about the fantasy remix just now I'm gonna try to make up for it here I love love love once we die like I think there's a lot of reasons why it was such a big hit and like one of the biggest hits of the 90s I think the main reason it was one of the biggest hits of the 90s is because it was one of the best songs of the 90s I think I mean obviously of course you get peak Mariah you get peak boys to men you get them to gather it's gonna be huge and it's gonna be something big and obviously this song was very very big and sounds very very big but it also sounds to me at least it sounds very personal and this was the great thing I think one of the things that really made both boys to men and Mariah carry so successful at the time is that as big as they could go it never really felt like they were doing big for big sake or very rarely felt that way it's still always felt like they they meant it and that they believed what they were singing and that they found their own kind of personal way into the song and as you were saying like this is a very personal thing from Mariah she's inspired by the death of David Cole who's grown very close to before is death in 1995 boys to men had also lost their road manager a guy named Khalil Roundtree they lost him a couple years earlier in an attempted robbery and shooting so they all felt the song obviously very very personally and I feel like you can feel that from the first line and that's a great first line sorry I never told you all I wanted to say really kind of encapsulates the song like immediately like that's sort of all you need from it and they do a really good job of doubling that as the last line of the song to fantastic stuff and this song fucking kills me like I don't know if I've ever once gotten through a full listen to the song without crying it was a little bit like even doing the listening preparing for this podcast like that key change hits and it just fucking makes you weak like Mariah and Juan you start doing those like matching runs where it sounds like they're almost competing with one another but it also sounds beautifully in sync with one another and it's just absolutely devastating to me and if those parts don't get me then certainly by the time it gets to that the sorry I never told you repeat that that'll always hit me and the chorus like just in general like it's it's so big but it's an earned big yes and when you've got like some of the greatest singers of the 90s of course they're gonna go big with it and like I feel like it would why bother holding back I know some people accuse the song kind of being over singing or show off you or anything like that but to me that's like saying that like Vince Carter showing off the dunk contest like this is what you want them to do in the situation I feel like and I don't I don't know if you've ever been in the room for like a really good karaoke rendition of this song Chris but this happened to me a few years ago where you got people doing both the boys and the Mariah parts that could really hit those notes and by the end of it like I felt like the entire room was just kind of floating in midair like it was such an elevating experience and such like a beautiful experience and it really kind of it folks with my head a little bit that people disregard the song so easily like I get why it's lost a little bit of its cultural cachet because we don't really have songs like this anymore like we don't really have big ballots that's not really a part of pop culture the way it was especially in the 90s but really like in the last 20 years you almost get maybe one song like this every five years if that so it's not a major part of the pop landscape I understand why it hasn't necessarily endured so well or as well some of the other songs this period the song itself I think it holds up I think it says powerful is anything she's ever done and it's still as powerful as ever was so first of all where do you are you doing karaoke nights because I need to come to do it well I need to come to your karaoke nights so next time in New York we're going I will get you to the right place is absolutely uh and look it's a degree of difficulty assignment for sure I don't think I would feel comfortable attempting either part of it but if you can do it then do it and it's it's really beautiful I don't know I think it's a great song I'm a sucker for you know I somebody that that writes very amateur songs in my own I'm a sucker for major seven chords okay and this song opens with a major seven chord in the verse you know the the sorry I never told you all I want to say um and it ends on it too and I just love how I just love how it ends like you said I'm glad you pointed out at the the beginning and the end because the end line is really I think my favorite part where they circle back to the first line of the song and it just ends on that I believe it's an E major nine chord because we've shifted the key from A flat major to B major but they ended on the E major nine chord and I just think it just it's it's coming off of the high of that key change on the chorus and just coming down to this E major nine chord with it's kind of not not fully resolved but resolved right and it's beautiful it's a beautiful way to to end this song specifically and I think it's you know you said songs like this don't come along every day if I had to kind of pinpoint a song that I think is maybe a little similar I would go and die with a smile that okay should I think you know big valid that you know kind of sticks out and also also major seven and major nine chords all around that song as well so when I hear those opening guitar strums of die with a smile I'm transported back to one sweet day because that's kind of how you know those chords kind of open that song as well and I get two superstar artists coming together to perform this this big valid and they deliver on it like I think you know there's there's been room for that throughout pop history pop music history and I think if you think about Mariah's career and boys to men's career at the time and boys to men's coming off of on bend and knee and all make love to you and you know either it's like either super sexual or it's like super like I'm down on my knees on the rain begging you to come home and then Mariah the dream lover fantasy hero and then she you know she comes back with this thing and they come with the song about mourning and loss I think it's I just think it was maybe a bit of a curve ball from the two of them in 1995 as well and maybe that's why it caught people's attention obviously it's it's two of the biggest artists all time was going to catch people's attention anyway but the subject matter and just how song maybe the song could be heavy yeah heavy is a good word heavy is a good word how heavy the subject matter was was maybe a little bit of a surprise and maybe why it worked you know it's certainly a left turn after fantasy but yeah like you say it worked and everything about the song I think does work and if you only know the song by its reputation or its chart history I do urge you to kind of try to meet it at its own terms I think it's it's the one incredible listen and regardless it does it is one of the great hits in Billboard Hot 100 history it stays number one for the rest of the calendar year as well as a long way to go in 1996 but while it's number one we also have Mariah's kind of a final big moment in 1995 which comes in November she releases the the fantasy Mariah Carey at Madison Square Garden TV special which is taking for a concert that she'd done at MSG that October she actually brought boys to men out for that I don't I don't think they've done that too many times or other respective careers but they come out they do once we day live together for the first time do a couple other songs as well and this special I think it first aired on Fox and it was a pretty big deal for her because she still hadn't really toured that much she'd done that 1993 tour from music box that I mentioned we talked a little bit about the MTV unplugged and the kind of credit she bought from that and she'd been at a couple award shows but for the biggest pop star of the 1990s you really didn't get that many chances to see her and there was probably still at least a little bit of a question about you know okay can you do as well live as you do as on the records so how do you think that she acquitted herself in that special crystal is this peak Mariah to you phenomenal she sounds phenomenal and I remember I do remember watching this as a kid and oh wow okay we we recorded it like you know my dad we brought out the tape and we recorded it and everything and I would rewatch it you know in the pre internet pre-YouTube days this was one of the things that I had in heavy rotation as a kid just watching the various performances and rewatching it even last night and preparation of this like watching like make it happen and just taking it's having a greater appreciation for some of the stuff that she's able to pull off live vocally unreal just just absolutely unreal what she was able to do you know like the bridge and end of make it happen like I don't know who else can do that it is Michael Jordan like stuff that really is yeah I mean she does well like I don't know if I'd call it a must see like I don't know if you would say like this is like the app like Mariah was just on a different level that night she's never done anything like it before like it probably was any number of concerts like that from that time that were to work equally to kind of show enough what she was doing at that time I do think the parts with boys to men are cool especially when Wanya sticks around to do I'll be there with her after that that's fun and she sounds great she plays the hits I would say I mean I also watched it last night I think for the first time and the thing that really took out about it to me was just how far pop concert production has come in the last 30 years like you watch a pop concert now and it's always like bells and whistles and their side stages and there's like conceptual through lines and there's little theatrical interlude sometimes and like artists dramatically reinventing their songs and the arrangements and all that this is Mariah Carey singing like over the backing tracks basically like there is a band on stage I don't think they're really doing anything when she's performing it sounds like she's performing over the records themselves so yeah but it's Mariah Carey and so the fact that she's singing over anything is still pretty spectacular so I it you definitely do worse than watching this concert I don't know if it's like essential but it's still great as somebody that I didn't get to see her live until 2003 and again you know YouTube wasn't a thing so like looking up live performances if her this was you know the concert videos and this was like what I had right as a kid so I cherish this video so much growing up because this was like my entry way to seeing a Mariah Carey concert until I actually did so in 2003 so I loved it and you know the choir comes out a couple different times which you know Mariah loves herself a choir constant in her career she loves to bring out the choir and you know looking back on it I I prefer like her version of without you from this concert I love what she did there it's more nostalgia for me I think is a fan just like where we're in this tape out for several years growing up do you still have that tape somewhere no sorry together we moved on we moved on from that yeah I probably taped divas I probably think he was lying 98 over it or something like that another excellent choice sure so that's basically the end of Mariah's 1995 but daydream keeps going well into 1996 I mean first of all once we day eventually breaks the record the hot 100 record with this 15th week on top eventually goes for 16 weeks total and it has so possession of that record for another 21 years after that it's not until Despacito in 2017 and that ties it with the 16 weeks and then a couple years after that Old Town Road passes it and that gets tied by Shabuzy a few years after that but that is probably the greatest achievement of Mariah carries 1996 but it's just the beginning of her year because she's still got always be my baby which we aren't going to talk about today the same way we talked about these other songs but that's the third number one hit off daydream also an absolute classic we can debate whether or not it's better than fantasy but it's a 10 out of 10 for sure and forever which you know it's not as big of a hit but I know you've got some sentimental affection for it I do too and then at the end of the year she also leaves Tommy Mutola and that kind of sets up the entire you know new chapter of her career that's going to start in 1997 with Butterfly and that's that's really her breaking out as an artist as well as a pop star we're not going to go deep on any of that stuff today Chris because we're going to save 1996 for you know 1996 Mariah is going to be its own podcast sometime down the line and that was also like an absolutely huge year for her I did want to give you the chance to talk about one 1996 Mariah moment in particular because it's a moment that really kind of comes from in 1995 and it is a moment that has stuck in the pause I guess we would save the Lambly for a good three decades now and you've already referenced it several times on this podcast but this February she's at the Grammys and you know Daydream had been one of the biggest albums of her career at that point and it also got like a new found critical reception as well as a commercial success so a lot of people predicted that it was going to be the album that kind of runs the table at the Grammys that year I mean she gets nominated in six different categories including record of the year for one sweet day an album of the year for Daydream and everyone predicts that she's if she's not going to win everything she's at least going to win something in fact she ends up going over six jagged little pill I mentioned that in last was going to get a revenge that piece her out for album of the year and then the other five nominations she gets beat out by some some songs that you wouldn't be surprised by and some that you would be quite surprised by but she was over six and this is a shutout that it looms kind of large in Mariah mythology and I think with the fans in particular so Chris what what do you think happened that night and why do you think this is a moment that really still burns with the Mariah fans after all these years how much time do I have to because the floor is yours there's go nuts okay okay well this was my intro to oh people may not actually like Mariah oh this is interesting um number one this is tells you everything you need to know about where the Grammys were at this point in time when she's losing best pop female vocal to Annie Lennox which no more I love you this is a very good song uh we but come on it's fantasy and then she's losing best pop album to Joni Mitchell you know okay so they're going to reward the the veteran artist well established well established singer songwriter creds all that stuff this is what the Grammys did in the 90s it was hard for Mariah Whitney uh Janet Selene Madonna it was hard for them to win the number of Grammys in the 90s that we see like Sisa Billie Eilish Beyonce Taylor Swift everybody that's popular these days winning dozen over dozen Grammys upwards of 20 you know Lady Gaga throw her in as well um for them to even get like four or five Grammys was was an achievement back in the day because they were constantly budding heads with these artists that the Grammys wanted to award over them or that they weren't deserving or they were too young or this or that so right up front you had a problem with that number two the Grammys history of uh rewarding white artists in the general field is well documented I don't think I need to get into that too much here but Mariah was you know her her Grammy wins were a consequence of that and then not rewarding music that tended to lean towards RMB hip hop rap whatever um you know her Grammy career was was that now I want you to imagine something about the Grammys in 1996 and imagine if this happened to a major artist or artist today of all the six categories that she was nominated for she was nominated in Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for one sweet day you would think of the six nominations that she had that year that that was the one that she would have easily have won with the song that spent 16 weeks at number one she lost Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals that year to Van Morrison and someone else that I can remember that's Van Morrison and the Chief Dance can you imagine if Beyonce or Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga whoever set the record for the longest running number one song and they couldn't even win the genre vocal category at the Grammys can you imagine the uproar that would have happened on Stan Twitter in 2025 if that happens today people would have had thoughts with an artist people would have had serious thoughts about what it meant for the Grammys how they viewed that certain artist you know in 1996 we did not have an outlet for this we were just we were just watching considering the status of the best I mean look at 30 29 years later and I'm still letting out thoughts about this and obviously she felt a type of way about it it's hilarious to go back and look at album of the year when she's obviously going to lose and she's just kind of sitting there with a sour look on her face I love that look like she's over it at that point in time she was over the Grammys after that she did not show up at the awards again until the Emmett's patient of Mimi Hera so it was another 10 years or so before she showed back up at the Grammys and I think she what happened to her in the 90s was a predictor of where the Grammys were going in later years because artists like Drake and the weekend and you know the uproar over Beyonce not winning album of the year all these years like I feel like this was the start of all that you could see this was the tea leaves this was the tea leaves for some of the problems that the Grammys were going to have in later years was not just Mariah specifically but this year in particular was one of the main issues that and I love the Grammys it may not sound like it I love the Grammys which is why I think I care so much about this and what they mean and what they can mean for an artist's career and to see her just not even get that pop collaboration with vocals Grammy I think was the ultimate ultimate slap in the face from a music industry that did not like her I think the Jagger Little Pill loss is basically explicable at the end of the day that was kind of that and it took it to compare to one of your idols that was the sort of the tapestry of the 90s absolute commercial blockbuster critical sensation like everything that you would have wanted in a album of the year winning album basically so you know Daydream would have been fair choice too but Jagger Little Pill no one's gonna really get too bent out of shape about that I don't think except that it came at the end of this night where she had lost these other five categories at least two or three of which she should have won pretty handily I think we can agree on that but yeah this is really the only big loss that she suffers during this two-year period like otherwise it's just win after win after win for Mariah and again this is at a time when like the capital P version of pop start and was in relatively short supply so kind of close at Chris when you look at when you look back at the entire Daydream era the sort of 95 to 96 period for Mariah like do you see this as being the kind of peak of 90s pop start in general like was this as big as a God or do you think there's somebody else or some other period that you have in mind for the sort of apex there I think when you look at 90s pop history if you're looking at numbers like take let's take the spice girls for instance right when you think of 90s like the spice girls becoming a cultural phenomena for two years right like that was probably quote unquote bigger than the Daydream era right at the time in terms of just the mass publicity mass consumption of where they were at the time but it was more of a fad and you know kind of a lasting kind of indicator of a pop star working through their career and reaching new heights that they had previously reached of something as an artist so I don't think it represents the absolute height of like 90s pop stardom but it's maybe like just a rung below but it is the biggest artist of the 90s really beginning to shift her sound beginning to shift herself as an artist and while still maintaining these ridiculously high commercial highs that she established a few years earlier yeah I think we can argue between certain artists in certain periods we can even argue for 1995 specifically we're going to do that later on this podcast but I think like when I look at this sort of two year period from R.I. I see a sort of analogous to the run that Madonna had from like 1984 1985 where it was just sort of the center of everything and it's sort of the different like it might not have been the biggest or the most phenomenal but it kind of defines the way you look back at the decade and the decade pop music and it kind of feels like it's sort of like the fulcrum for the entire decade like everything kind of hinges around this two period this kind of feels like the midsection to me and when I think about 90s pop in my head I think of this this two year period from R.I. I just like when I think of the 80s pop I think of that two year period from Madonna so yeah I was going to say if I if I if I could compare it to another era I was thinking about this last night to me this is it's kind of kind of 1989 Taylor Swift a little bit yeah yeah I was definitely a little bit of that there you know an artist is shifting their sound the first single comes out and it's just an absolute smash right away like no doubt about it clear cut the second single comes out and it's an absolute smash right away even bigger about it they both come out in the fall you know like I don't know there's a lot of parallels to me between this in 1989 a little bit as well and we're going to talk about that more in a minute because we're getting into the categories now so first ones YouTube deep dive any sort of listening performances interviews other stuff involving 1995 Mariah that you think it's fun or telling to watch all these years later what would you have for this Chris it's fun to see her relationship with Tabitha soaring in the 90s shout out Tabitha soaring for actually be a be a be a capital J journalist I love the you know the the clip that goes viral sometimes is her like cursing out Mariah's PR repressed the label rep or something like that from a 1997 interview go back and look that one up if you if you can that's that's great but like when watching interviews of Mariah in the 90s like she's very like it's the most media trained she's ever been in her career she is very on point on message she sounds very very mature very you know wise beyond her years even but the one interviewer who always kind of pulls out a little bit of her personality was Tabitha soaring so shout out Tabitha soaring for the many interviews that she did in Mariah during this era in previous ones and later ones but I always felt like she did the best interviews in Mariah because Mariah showed a little bit of her personality in those interviews yeah I think the one the half hour special for MTV that is hosted by Tabitha soaring and kind of stitches together a bunch of those Mariah interviews I think that's that's definitely one for this category and you already mentioned I think the VH1 one to one or so the VH1 to one interview that she does that's also pretty cool and you mentioned my favorite part which is her talking about the reviews that she's getting and basically saying hey like why do you keep getting these rock guys to review my pop albums like of course they're not gonna like it and I think I thought that was sort of a healthy perspective on it that she's not saying like hey I'm better than these people are making me seem she's saying hey get the right people to review me in the first place and then we can have an honest conversation about it but I'm sure a lot of those rock critics were watching this interview and thinking of themselves well why would anybody be a pop critic who who takes pop seriously enough to like have that be their entire thing as a music writer it sort of shows you how far we've come in 30 years I think the next category is required reading just sort of any press any clippings from 1995 involving Mariah that you still find to be particularly notable or interesting there is I mean we talked about this a little bit before we got on the podcast but there isn't really a ton for Mariah at this point in terms of like good interviews or profiles because I think a lot of the writing that was done about her was still still felt like it was early enough for under career still that they felt the obligation to kind of hit all the bases and kind of cover all like oh well she's married to Tommy Matola and she was Brenda K star's backup singer and they kind of have to hit all the obligatory background information about her so they don't really have time to probe any sort of interesting or new ground or anything particularly deep with her I instead wanted to mention the interview I think yeah we already we already talked about a little bit but an interview done not with Mariah Carey and not in the year 1995 but several decades later my co-writer is my then co-writer's Natalie Weiner and Adele Platon did a series of interviews with a bunch of the collaborators for a number of Mariah Carey songs one of which was fantasy and that's where we get those incredible quotes about ODB falling asleep and about puffy demanding more money to do the remix and it doesn't make either of those guys look that great I think puffy in particular I mean compared to some of the headlines about in 2025 it's pretty genteel but certainly like if you read that eight years ago you think oh this guy's kind of a dick because he sort of says that Mariah Carey's lame and he didn't want to get her like lame stink on him which is absurd to think about at this point but he basically just wanted to he wanted the paycheck and he got it ODB is just you know he's a chaos agent he's all over the place he's kind of charming in his disruptiveness but the stories are so phenomenal that if you haven't read that I definitely recommend going back and reading that do you find anything else we're talking about here Chris yeah it's kind of to your point they all they'll hit the same notes with her biracial identity obviously something people really like to talk about interviews with her in the 90s as well that you never really stop answering questions about but yeah for the most part like you said kind of everything just kind of hit the same notes you know not a ton one of the reasons why I think also the tab with the sword interviews kind of kind of stood out was she would ask her a little bit about like hey what were you thinking when you wrote this certain song or like when you were making this certain track and like you didn't see a lot of that with Mariah like asking about her songwriting process so I think that's another reason why those interviews stood out to me yeah that's good call all right so we can move on now to movies and television 95 Mariah's best appearance or her music's best appearance in film or TV have anything good for this one Chris well there was fantasy as I was using rush hour yeah that's probably the first thing we're all going to think of here obviously an iconic iconic moment in that in that movie and then sets her up later I think after that to start work with Brent Ratner who directed that movie on a number of her music videos I did not even think about that there's a connection there that you know that you know heartbreakers directed by him and I think maybe one or two others but you know that that set up a couple other moments of her career as well yeah all I got to say is ask Sue young and rush hour if the original version of fantasy is a classic or if it's just completely displaced and replaced by the remix I bet you she has an affection for the original as well the most 1995 moment the part of Mariah's 1995 that feels the most specifically like the year it came from I did want to talk I actually originally had this in required reading I said I decided to move to this category there's a story in billboard that year that our writer Larry Flick did that sort of is summarizing the promotional push behind the dream the album and it's a little bit more interesting than some of the the kind of wrote profiles or interviews of Mariah that are from that time period and I especially like the paragraph about the internet yes you you brought up the exact paragraph I'm gonna I want to talk about to you hit the same thing yeah go ahead all right well you can take it from here Chris going on so it was like oh they're gonna have a Mariah Carey design website as part of the Sony website and there's going to be a message feature where she can interact with her fans and this is all part of the big promotional blitz of 1995 Mariah Carey it's like we're gonna design a website for her fans to come to and visit yeah and I especially like the part at the end uh where one of the people from Columbia says that they're developing a computer screensaver from the fantasy video it was like sort of the ringtones of its day was like download your own custom screensavers sure it was an excellent screensaver I would have gotten that for sure absolutely I didn't know that I didn't know that was a thing if I had read that profile I would have been searching for that screensaver uh halloween costume if you're gonna dress up as 1995 Mariah for halloween how are you gonna put that costume together Chris I was thinking about that and I saw a performance of hers at the American Music Awards and I think she refers to it as militant Mariah where she is dressed up in like all black with a black trench coat right it's like the antithesis of of like what she was about to become in the late 90s with her clothing choices right like as little skin showing as possible so I think I would go as militant Mariah deep with it I just thought you know you get the black tank top the black sweatshirt on top of it you put on some short shorts you go rollerblading down the boardwalk and uh the fantasy video I think is the iconic look of this period I don't know if it's gonna you know you were I doing that costume I don't know if we're getting 10 sexiest videos of the 90s as a result of that but uh you know it's an identifiable look maybe it's up corners of the internet yeah maybe that's right modern day pops are equivalent we already talked about a couple ideas here who were you saying from the last five or ten years most reminds you of 1995 Mariah Carey yeah I guess I think you know 1989 Taylor Swift uh definitely I think hits the notes chart wise and where she was at in her career at that time haven't really thought of another of another comp I'd be interested to hear you yummy well so from that almost basically that exact same period and an artist who's been compared to Mariah Carey I don't know how many times throughout their career I was thinking of Ariana Grande okay where she was also sort of coming into her own like the the her first album uh yours truly was very very specifically Mariah indebted by the time she gets to my everything which is the year that I'm talking about here she's branching out a little bit she's working with some new producer she got some new collaborators she's doing some more stuff with R&B and hip hop so it's like roughly analogous I think it might not feel that way because Ariana still has greater heights to hit later in her career so if you look back at my everything it doesn't feel like that big breakthrough that maybe mid 90s Mariah was but it's still pretty close and I was also just thinking in terms of an artist who kind of brought up tempo back to radio during a sort of down tempo period I was thinking to do a leap on 2020 and the sort of future nostalgia run of singles that she had there it's not a perfect comparison but I think has a look a little bit of the same feeling there yeah I can see the I guess the Julie I even think Ariana is good because I think like thank you next Ariana I think like that kind of transition also I think works well throughout her career and just the way that those songs smashed right out of the box as well and kind of marked a new high in her career as well I also should say about 2014-15 Ariana she's also got maybe the greatest Christmas song of her generation that period too so parallels there sort of with Mariah as well one song to save one song that you think absolutely defies Mariah's 1995 which one are you going with your Chris I mean if we're not picking fantasy I'll pick I just I just I want to save melt away okay I really enjoy that song so I'm gonna I'm gonna save that because that one has carried me that one's carried with me through the years I've really I've really kept that as a top tier Mariah song for a long time I'm just gonna say fantasy I got to problem with that yeah I know you I appreciate you trying to say a little bit well yeah I'm just trying to just throw some variety there I appreciate that Chris one moment to save the one pop culture moment that we're gonna say absolutely defines Mariah's 1995 I guess I guess the fantasy video to me I guess if we're talking about pop culture moment that video and what it represented for the song and just the whole launch of that song and when you think back on iconic Mariah moments iconic Mariah videos that stands out to me in my head I think if I think of an iconic Mariah video that's probably the first one that comes and pops into my head is fantasy totally group that I think if you want to back up choice you could say her and boys to men at the MSG concert and then coming out and doing one sweet day with her and then actually I didn't realize this I was looking out like the set list for that show the show that they filmed for the concert they do once we day together then they do I'll be there her and Juan yeah then apparently she does unbending with the entire boys but they didn't televised it for some reason and I don't even think it's on YouTube so I if that's out there yeah why did they do that because that was I would have loved this song their song not hers I don't know yeah maybe yeah maybe there's licensing or who the hell knows but yeah if somebody out there's got video of that please let us know last question was Mariah Kerry the greatest pop star in 1995 yes easily easily so I've actually talked about this a couple times this podcast this is sort of runs counter to literally everything that I've said about Mariah Kerry 1995 until this point for the year 1995 not talking 95 to 96 not talking about the day in era for the year 1995 I think it's TLC okay that's fair yeah because we as we sort of talked about Mariah is in the studio for the first eight months of this year she's not really doing that much until August with fantasy and then only fantasy in sort of the first half of one sweet day happened in 1995 you know always be my baby's 96 the tours 96 a lot of the other big stuff that comes from this era is 96 so considering TLC they dominate the entire year creeps number one basically the first month of that year and they're still having top 10 hits at the end of that year they were just essential they weren't maybe a spectacular but they were still pretty spectacular and so and that I went time into like that I think TLC is that's true I was thinking of the whole era but you're right yeah yeah for zoning it in specifically to 1995 yeah TLC had a hell of a year and legendary year absolutely but if we're talking about 95 to 96 it's as good a two-year run as anybody had in the 90s so and listen it was a whole bunch of it was it was a time for the devas like it was 95 96 was about as devalicious as it gets Madonna starts the year with take a bow and Janet releases design of a decade Mariah comes with danger and Whitney has waiting to exhale then a 96 Celine Dionne Lee is falling into you like this was this was as a peak diva as it gets 95 96 this time period absolutely yeah so all right so that'll do it for this final vintage pop start with 2025 on the greatest pop stars podcast Chris it has been a sweet sweet fantasy having you on the pod I hope you enjoy the rest of your week I hope you get to go out and celebrate with the other lambs tonight and I'll tell you what I'll make you a proposition right now if you are around at this time next year and this podcast hasn't been discontinued how about you come back and we'll do the full 1996 Mariah Carey I am down for this let's do it and hopefully we get a karaoke night yeah I gotta see these people I gotta see who I can't promise that they'll be there but I can promise that it'll be a good time in any event we'll do that for sure thank you again Chris and by the way if you're listening at home and you're like Chris and myself and your two twin passions are basketball and pop music I definitely recommend checking out Chris's book and which I'm holding up right now you can't see it's an audio only podcast but I do have a coffee with me and it was released earlier this year Chris's biography of the Minnesota Timberwell Superstar Anthony Edwards definitely one of the most interesting basketball players of this decade and you capture him really well in this book I'm not I'm not through reading it yet I'm still in the early parts but I've really enjoyed what I've read so far and I'm looking forward to getting to the you know the first conference finals appearance and hustle and all that I'm already hooked so I will get there shortly if you ever talked to Anthony Edwards about Mariah Carey no that is not there's not two things that I tend not to bring up my Mariah Carey fandom around the team that's that's something that naturally comes up in conversation the only player I've really ever had in death conversations with her about his Carl Anthony Towns okay see if you know I'm the next y'all he's a fan yeah yeah yeah so so he and I would would chat about her from from time to time and and you know love Carl love covering them and you know was sad when he got traded to the next but uh but he and I would would chat about her sometimes the locker room all right well shout out cat hopefully he can come to our karaoke night as well I would like to hear what his Mariah's song is choices yeah and I certainly appreciate you taking time out you know we're in the midst of the wolf season now and I appreciate you taking the time out to talk Mariah for a couple hours of me here I can always make the time to talk Mariah that but be here and I'm gonna I'm gonna take you off on that very soon so I appreciate you and I appreciate everyone at home for listening this podcast we'll be back Thursday and every Thursday until the end of pop stardom next week we're gonna do a full Christmas episode this is sort of like a half Christmas episode next we'll give you a full Christmas episode talking a little bit more about about another Christmas favorite one that we've we've already talked about a little bit in this podcast so uh if you like this podcast please come back and listen to that and as always if you can please do take a little bit of your time maybe a little bit of your money in the fight for trans rights holidays are obviously a brutal time of year for a lot of folks particularly those in the trans community who are going to this new year not even sure what of their basic human rights are so they're gonna have in 2026 so definitely please figure out a way to help there if you can and we do have some links to places in the episode description and the post accompanying this podcast and where you can do that before we get out of here Chris is is there a a 95 Mariah song that you'd like for us to go out on or should we just keep it simple and do all I want for Christmas what are you thinking uh what's too fantasy you can do fantasy are you original version that original version that's really fun can't argue with that congratulations to Mariah Carey queen of Christmas queen of hot 100 history i'd love to see it i'd love to see you again shortly on the greatest posture of podcast