Topics in Recorded Music: Mariah Carey

Catalog description

In the 1990s, Billboard named singer-songwriter-producer Mariah Carey the most commercially successful artist of that decade. Today, she remains the eleventh top-selling artist in music history. Though her commercial relevance is undeniable, there has been minimal scholarly investigation into Carey's cultural importance, and the widespread influence of her musicianship and artistry. That neglect is profound, because few artists have had as much impact on vocal style as Mariah Carey, and her inspirational ballads and dance tracks have transformed the sound and feel of pop. Her massive success across styles like pop, R&B, and hip-hop has also changed the industrial business of superstar-oriented popular music. This first-of-its-kind course proposes to deconstruct Mariah Carey's legacy, with a special focus on issues of race, gender, celebrity, globalization and spectacle. Among topics we'll consider: Mariah Carey's use of melisma; the politics of camp, diva-dom and flamboyance; bi-racial identity and passing; changing 90s definitions of the mainstream and alternative; femininity, control and freedom (economic, vocal, etc.); Carey's outsize success at making Christmas music; how and why women of color tend to become marginalized in pop even as they remain at the center of its very construction.