Her fifth studio album, 1995’s Daydream, played host to some of her purest pop songcraft, but it also pushed the boundaries defining what a Mariah Carey song was supposed to sound like. single to rap alongside Pharrell, they’re walking a trail Mariah helped blaze. (And Claire Boucher, of course: “The first time I heard Mariah Carey it shattered the fabric of my existence and I started Grimes.”) When Taylor Swift taps Future and Ed Sheeran for a posse cut and Rihanna hops on a N.E.R.D. The aftereffects trickled down through the teen-pop icons and R&B crossover acts of the late ’90s to the stars shaping contemporary music: Beyoncé, Kanye West, Drake. She fused genres and sounds that were otherwise distinct, encouraging future artists to find and meet her somewhere in the middle. Carey did more than any other artist to bridge the gap that once separated traditional pop and hip-hop and R&B. Her second stroke of genius was ultimately more impactful. It took Carey three and a half minutes to lay down the terms by which pop virtuosity is still defined: power, range, and versatility, all of which she possessed for the first decade of her career. You can hear her ghost in Adele and Sam Smith, in Bruno Mars and Demi Lovato. The critic Sasha Frere-Jones outlined the two linchpins of Mariah’s legacy in an astute 2006 piece in The New Yorker, published after she defibrillated her career with the release of “We Belong Together.” Frere-Jones called Carey’s 1990 debut single “ Vision of Love” the “Magna Carta of melisma,” and while its influence has finally started to wane, it remains the gold standard for pop stars who care about the craft of singing. Her dominance gave her the reach she needed to become the most influential pop vocalist and writer of her generation. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 this summer after 16 consecutive weeks, it had only just managed to tie a record Carey and Boyz II Men set two decades ago with “One Sweet Day.” She may reject being called the “ queen of Christmas,” but it’s a title she earned by co-writing the greatest contemporary holiday song in “All I Want for Christmas is You.” Her biggest hits have cumulatively spent well over a year on top of the charts. She’s sold enough albums to afford a new chaise longue every day until the sun burns out when “Despacito” finally fell out of the No. No matter how she got there, Carey found herself in an ignominious position for one of the greatest pop stars of the last 30 years.
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