Every Mariah Carey Album, Ranked From Worst to Best (Part 1) [Updated]

When you think of Mariah Carey, “meek” isn’t a term that comes to mind. Unfortunately, it’s an apt descriptor for Charmbracelet, her 2002 album that, more than anything else, is unassuming to a fault. It’s an example of Mariah at her lowest.

There are ample reasons why she found herself in such a fragile state at this particular point in her career. Following the nasty backlash to Glitter, a pop culture maelstrom I’ll discuss in more detail later on, Mariah had checked herself into a Connecticut hospital for what was described as an “emotional and physical breakdown.” It’s worth pointing out how nasty the backlash against her got, especially following a failed stunt appearance on TRL. Virgin Records decided it was an opportune moment to kick her while she was down, buying out her $100 million deal with the label. She fled to Italy to complete her healing process, writing much of what would become Charmbracelet during that trip.

After all that, it’s a miracle Charmbracelet exists at all, even if it’s “meh” musically.

As far as I can tell, it’s the first album she ever put out without a bankable lead single blazing a trail for its commercial prospects. There’s no pillar bop or ballad here, and, as a result, the LP plays as a bit of a rudderless creative crisis following the Glitter catastrophe. The only single that came out of the Charmbracelet pre-album cycle was “Through the Rain,” which is solid but doesn’t add anything fresh or exciting to her catalog. Her introspective lyrics are undercut somewhat by a stiff vocal performance that, compared to her 90s output, lacks confidence.

Clocking in at a flabby 65 minutes, it’s arguably the most forgettable music Mariah’s ever released. It’s a skip for me unless you’re a die-hard or completist.

Call me a Scrooge, but I’m not a huge fan of Christmas music. It has nothing to do with any religious point of view or contempt for that specific holiday—I just think a lot of it ranges from annoyingly, incessantly pleasant to straight-up bad. As such, I’ve never really cared about Mariah Carey’s status as the Queen of Christmas. But, having said all that, the optics of Merry Christmas II You, the 2010 sequel of sorts to her first 1994 holiday-themed record, fascinate me.

On the one hand, it’s a nakedly opportunistic move made during a career lull. After “Obsessed” peaked inside the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2009, follow-up sequels failed to generate significant buzz. A remix album was started, stopped, restarted, and then shelved, seemingly in favor of running back a familiar formula to get audiences excited about a new Mariah Carey record. But, on the other hand, you’re setting yourself up for a death-by-comparison situation when you go up against a classic as beloved as Merry Christmas. It’s more of the same, but how could it be seen as anything other than at least slightly diminishing returns?

Generally speaking, there’s nothing offensively inept about Merry Christmas II You. The tracklist features a combination of well-known carols and some new Christmas originals, with the latter group headlined by her biggest seasonal single since “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” “Oh Santa.” Even though it’s not awful, it’s still pretty bland. The production is frequently flat and lacks a lot of the soulful character that made that initial holiday record so special. It’s the sonic equivalent of looking at a Christmas tree without the lights turned on or the best ornaments added.

Oddly enough, the best track is a live cut of “O Holy Night” that was recorded live in South Central Los Angeles. You hear how full of life her voice is on that track, set against the rich texture of the choir, and you wish they’d just taped a live album and called it a day. Instead, we got this.

In what will become a theme that runs throughout my Mariah Carey discography ranking, Emotions is the first record that feels the need to walk a tightrope between impressive and expressive vocals.

What I mean by that is the trade-off between the singer’s showiest, most jaw-dropping displays of raw talent and her more revealing moments that may connect with the listener on a deeper level. She can blow you away with sheer vocal might most of the time, but those instances also keep you at arm’s length. She’s showing off; to a degree, that’s what you’re there for. That’s what you’re paying to hear. But it’s challenging to keep that high-wire act going for an entire album’s running time and not have those seams show at some point.

Examples of this phenomenon are all over Emotions’ tracklist. A song like “Till the End of Time,” an empty-calorie, overproduced 90s ballad, is built to showcase Mariah’s virtuosity at the expense of any depth. On the other side of that equation, “Can’t Let Go” is more nuanced and consistently resonant emotionally. The best-sounding moments on this LP are the slick R&B grooves that sit on the fence between impressive and expressive. The title track, “Make It Happen,” and “To Be Around You” are all immaculately produced and mixed, delivering just enough razzle-dazzle to suck you in.

Emotions leans adult contemporary by today’s standards but what it lacks in excitement it makes up for in polish. I can’t fault this album in any major way, but nothing about it pushes it into the realm of greatness for me.

Music Box is an important inflection point in Mariah Carey’s career in that it proved her music could be a different kind of effortless. On her previous two albums, her octave-bending melismatic singing technique was the star of the show. Here, she reins in the theatrics in favor of precise, occasionally exquisite pop execution. Unsurprisingly, it’s also her first LP that, in fits and starts, approached greatness.

Some of these tracks work much better than they would’ve earlier in her career. Ballads like “Hero” and “Without You” still soar, but don’t fly so close to the sun as to risk blowing your eardrums to smithereens. There’s also the underrated Babyface collab “Never Forget You,” fitting nicely into that smooth, buttery adult-contemporary sonic template he’s now famous for. Almost in spite of its formulaic nature, I was vibing to it.

Less appealing is “Dreamlover,” arguably the purest pop song on this tracklist. Not a popular opinion in the eyes of some, I’m sure, but I can’t lie and say I love it, either. As catchy and gooey as that chorus is, it’s frictionless to the point of being insubstantial. She and Walter Afanasieff have teamed up for more effective radio bops in the years since. But, crucially, this track was also co-produced by Dave Hall, who’d previously collaborated with Brand Nubian, Heavy D & the Boyz, and Mary J. Blige. In a way, “Dreamlover” was also one of the first Mariah songs to approximate rap.

Sanding some of the more grandiose edges off her sound may have been what the label wanted long-term. Music Box was released the same summer she married Tommy Mottola, a man she’d later describe as “extremely controlling” and someone who made their relationship “oppressive.” Both parties were under tremendous pressure to perform at unsustainably high levels. After reading interviews with Mottola, I realized he sounded like a hedge fund manager trying to protect a highly lucrative asset’s value. In a way, this album sounds like that, too.

This album gets the nod over the more commercially successful Music Box and Emotions for one reason: the songwriting is among the best of Mariah’s career.

I’m not ready to proclaim this one a secret masterpiece, though you’ll find plenty of online pop music fans and Reddit threads who twist themselves into all sorts of knots trying to do so. It’s not on that level, mainly because the production choices aren’t all that compelling or memorable. What I will say is the uproariously petty, purposely ridiculous lyricism is so much fun that it’s closer to a Lil Wayne or Kendrick Lamar verse than any of her pop contemporaries.

Some of my favorites include:

• “Put all your s*** in the elevator/It’s goin’ down like a denominator” (”It’s a Wrap”)
• “Love ya like Kool-aid, Louis Millionaire shades/Love ya like sugar daddys, love ya like a pimp caddy” (”The Impossible”)
• “Got you all fired up with your Napoleon complex/See right through you like you’re bathing in Windex” (”Obsessed”)

That last one is so corny that it ends up being a sick burn aimed at the guy she’s mercilessly brushing off. It’s the kind of line you’d expect to hear in a knowing SNL sketch or one of those celebrity roasts on Comedy Central. Coming from Mariah, it’s odd and somewhat out of place, but I can’t deny that I laughed my ass off. Or that I was charmed by it. As we’ll see in this discography ranking series, petty Mariah is often the best version of her writing-wise.

The only major disappointment is the closing cover of Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is.” On paper, it has all the makings of an extra-base hit for her, if not an outright home run. But, puzzlingly, it never gets off the ground. It closes the record with a whimper, which I wish weren’t so, but unevenness aside, there’s a lot to like on Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel.

Which of these albums is your favorite? Which Mariah Carey jam ranks up there for you? Sound off in the comments.

In this post, I continue my discography ranking for all of Mariah Carey’s studio albums (i.e., no “best of” compilations or live records). Lots of great music to get to, so I won’t belabor this intro longer than I have to.

To skip to a specific portion of the Mariah Carey discography ranking, use the following links:

• Part 1 (No. 16-12)
• Part 2 (No. 11-6)
• Part 3 (No. 5-1)

Make sure you peep my other discography ranking posts and subscribe to this newsletter for fresh music picks every week.

Housekeeping over. Let’s get to some music:

Of all the records in this discography ranking, Rainbow may be the most confusing. It’s not a miss, exactly—there’s at least one or two dynamite singles on this album. But that also doesn’t make it a thoroughly engaging listening experience, either. More than any of her other 90s releases, this is the moment when the execution started to feel more like a factory-standard output than a singular, distinctive artistic vision. Let’s classify the vibes as “overly familiar.”

The best aspect of Rainbow is how unabashedly she leans into her growing hip-hop influences, an instinct that played especially well during the genre’s turn-of-the-century transition phase. Lead single “Heartbreaker,” by far and away my favorite bop off this album, fuses her effortless charm with an equally breezy Stacy Lattisaw sample to disarming effect. The remix, featuring killer verses from Da Brat and Missy Elliott, is even better than the original and was a staple of my DJ sets for many years. In a similar sonic vein is “Crybaby,” a fun, underheard Snoop Dogg collab that does after-midnight soul-searching better than many of her ballads.

Which leads me to the LP’s weakness, which is the overdose of by-the-numbers Big Ballad energy. She could (and likely still can) churn out soaring, stadium-ready love songs like nobody’s business by that point, but you hear some of these cuts and wish they were at least a little more inspired. “After Tonight” and “Thank God I Found You” are to Mariah’s catalog of ballads what Casino is to Martin Scorsese’s stable of mob movies. The craftsmanship remains, but the death-by-comparison trap looms around every track transition. She’d already made her version of Goodfellas, and, by that measuring stick, this album suffers.

Ultimately, Rainbow is too invested in straddling the line between the old and the new, lacking punch and cohesiveness, despite some standout flashes of brilliance.

Before I get to the album, I need to discuss the “Touch My Body” video.

Back in the day, it was on Canada’s MTV equivalent (shout out to all those who remember MuchMusic) all the time. It literally got to the point where part of my brain thought poor Jack McBrayer would never recover from this shameful act of public humiliation. Here he is, following Mariah Carey around her mansion as she struts from room to room in various skin-tight fits, never getting anywhere close to realizing his fantasy. They even have a pillow fight. Nothing. It was basically rubbing it in my and every other average male’s face.

Anyway … the album. Much like Rainbow, it’s fine. Nothing cringeworthy or embarrassing, but nothing spectacular. If nothing else, it sounds a bit tighter and more cohesive than that comparable, but it was a different time in Mariah’s pop star trajectory, too. She was coming off a career-saving (and possibly career-defining?) effort and, as a result, E=MC² plays like a victory lap—polished, confident, and definitely calculated. If you’re like me and have a soft spot for the strain of uber-airbrushed pop-R&B that dominated radio countdown shows in the late 2000s, you’ll dig a lot of what’s on this tracklist.

Beyond “Touch My Body,” which still stands up as a winking earworm, songs like “I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time” and “Bye Bye” are examples of how adept Mariah’s voice is at cruising over this kind of sleek production style. Elsewhere, “Thanx 4 Nothin’” is a definite throwback to her Daydream days, while “Side Effects” is the record’s lone curveball, a raw, edgy trap gem that’s a welcome changeup from everything else this album has going for it. And yet, having said all of that, there’s part of me that believes you could put any number of era-specific pop stars behind the mic for some of these songs and they’d sound pretty similar. That’s not a dig at Mariah, simply an admission that there’s not a ton of transcendent material present.

File this one under: If it ain’t broke, run it back again (and again and again).

First, the title: Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse. It sounds like a ridiculous self-help memoir—an outcome that the singer thankfully avoided when she penned her actual memoir, which is incredibly vulnerable and frequently harrowing. I bring up that dichotomy because, while the words on the album jacket suggest one vibe, the actual music is pretty far removed from that absurdist framing. Strikingly, it’s one of her quietest and most affecting releases.

A major reason why is how reflective she is throughout this record. Then-husband Nick Cannon confirmed that her writing process was inspired by her early-90s debut and sophomore records, as well as the upcoming birth of her twins. She was taking the time to look back on her life and career with wistfulness, pride, and, subtly, tinges of regret. Songs like “Dedicated” and “Make It Look Good” meld supple soul samples and slick production to deliver two of her best late-career pop-R&B moments, with the former weaving in a spoken-word portion that drops us into the middle of a front porch nostalgia session. Elsewhere, “You Don’t Know What to Do” is pure roller-disco euphoria, the kind of track that reminds you Mariah can still own the dancefloor when she feels like it.

The standout track on this LP is its lead single, “#Beautiful,” a sweet and sunny collaboration with Miguel. What I love about this song is how much restraint Mariah shows. She’s not forcing it or hitting you over the head with showy vocals. Yes, she gets a couple of moments to let her singing really soar, but by dialing it back a few notches when it comes to the performativity, you’re left with something that sounds far more authentic and luminous than much of her other post-90s output. The elusive chanteuse may not have revealed her entire self, but the version we get on I Am Mariah is wonderfully layered. All that’s missing is a “Fantasy”-level pop hit, and this easily would’ve been a Top 5 candidate.

Alright folks, let’s do it. Let’s have the Glitter conversation.

Those old enough to remember the movie’s rollout can back me up on this, but its cinematic debut was an unmitigated disaster. Critics were particularly harsh, using terms like “sugary,” “over-produced,” “a derivative mishmash,” “hilariously inept,” and “heroically bad.” Not a surprising end product, considering how troubled the production was, with a half-dozen script rewrites, multiple reshoots, and delay after delay on the release calendar. I covered how the fallout affected Mariah personally in Part 1, but suffice to say, the press junket was just as weird as the film itself. Thankfully, in the years since, it has been reappraised as a cult classic and gained popularity as a midnight show darling. It’s not a good movie—not by a long shot—but it can still be a fun watch if you meet it on its level.

The soundtrack, on the other hand, is a bop. It’s simple and direct, hitting you with one delectible disco-funk-inspired jam after another. There’s “Loverboy,” with that Cameo bassline that should be sampled far more frequently than it is. “Don’t Stop (Funkin’ 4 Jamaica)” and “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” are party tunes that tell you what you’re going to get based on the title alone. There’s also an above-average Mariah ballad (”Lead the Way”) and a dynamite mid-80s pop cover (”Didn’t Mean to Turn You On”) available for your listening pleasure. After a fresh listen, I was left with a lingering question: Why all the hate? Why was this perfectly entertaining album positioned as a career killer?

Perhaps the real answer lies in the timing and optics. If your movie is released in the wake of 9/11, it certainly won’t help your cause, nor will an early-2000s tabloid media salivate at the opportunity to tear another pop icon down. In retrospect, it’s clear there was too much hate heaped on this record, especially during a pop music era that wasn’t exactly known for its risk-taking or inclusivity. If Glitter were released today, it would be a much bigger deal than it was back then—or, at least, for far more positive reasons.

Historically, a notable comparable would be Xanadu, Olivia Newton-John’s 1980 ill-fated roller disco musical. Both movies tanked at the box office and earned their share of jeers from the critical community. However, the soundtrack is rock-solid, with several tracks that have been given new life as part of nostalgia playlists and yacht rock documentaries. I think Glitter should benefit from the same treatment. It’s slowly being recognized as what it always was: a joyful, if uneven, party record. It’s not musically or thematically profound work, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, the disco ball spins for no reason other than the joyousness of the occasion.

In his 1995 review of Casino, film critic Gene Siskel described it as “a bit of a letdown,” despite saying, in the same breath, that the film “looks great” and is “memorably acted.” He reasoned that it was yet another mobster flick from a man who’d already made plenty of them, trotting out the same tropes, however effective or tired. I thought about this review after listening to and reading other reactions to Here For It All, Mariah’s first studio effort of the 2020s. Some have hailed it a return to form, while others have called it safe and predictable. I’d argue it can be both.

Unlike some of her other career “comeback attempts,” Mariah sounds totally unbothered on these tracks. She’s not reaching too much, nor is she jadedly phoning it in. For lack of a better descriptor, she’s locked in. She leans into the aesthetic she rebuilt in another album further up this list, prioritizing crisp, clean instrumentals and simmering swagger, layering in a warmer, more upbeat glow over the top. At this point, she’s also doling out the fireworks in shorter, more effective bursts, instead of trying to stretch those moments into entire songs. That restraint was an unexpected perk, enabling her to glide through a tracklist that’s just under 40 minutes.

The production choices play a bit like a greatest hits package, reminding everyone just how many different styles Mariah can still wear well. You have the retrograde funk of “I Won’t Allow It” and “Play This Song,” with the latter’s Anderson .Paak cameo making me wish that he and Bruno Mars had signed Mimi up for a Silk Sonic joint (there’s still time, though). “My Love” and “Nothing is Impossible” harken back to the Mariah slow-burns of yore, while “Type Dangerous” is the kind of club anthem I wish she made more of, both past and present. The Eric B. & Rakim sample is well-chosen, the claps snap with purpose, and, perhaps most impressively, she serves up a Busta Rhymes collab callback by ending a line with “rigmarole.” It’s one of several Easter eggs that are there for fans who are looking for them.

Lyrically, Mariah examines her past without dwelling on it. She throws a couple of jabs at past lovers while making it clear she’s already moved on. “Pain from the heartache, we’re back where we started,” she observes on “In Your Feelings.” “I can’t keep playing these games.” There’s a more adult sensibility to the themes and lines drawn on this record, which is a relief for anyone who thought Mariah was going to try to chase online trends to scale short-term clicks. In reality, “Here For It All” sounds like she made it for herself first and everyone else second, which I admire greatly. It may not rank among her top-tier material, but it’s more than worth your time as a late-career effort that trades sweeping spectacle for a distinctive brand of calm, confident stoicism.

Imagine you’re a young pop star. Raw, talented, but still requiring a lot of polish. You’re discovered almost by accident by a record executive who later brings you over to a major label and begins plotting your rise to superstardom. He wants you to make a splash big enough to rival the established divas of the day—think Whitney Houston, Gloria Estefan, and Madonna. And then, amid all that pressure and hype, imagine your first single is “Vision of Love,” one of the most impressive and influential vocal performances in pop music history.

That is how you make an entrance.

What’s wild about Mariah Carey’s self-titled 1990 debut album is how fully-formed she sounded right out of the gate. She’s evolved stylistically and matured vocally in the years following its release, but the pose, control, and range she had from the beginning are nothing short of astonishing. A word like “iconic” gets thrown around too liberally these days, but that’s exactly the right term to describe “Vision of Love.” It’s such a moving song that’s structured so well, you could make the argument that she’s been chasing that level of near-perfection ever since. “Hero” and “One Sweet Day” are just two examples of Mariah basically covering herself, at least in spirit, and kinda sorta falling short. Again, not a knock on those tracks, but a testament to how incredible “Vision of Love” is.

Then, what’s even wilder is that she followed up that single with three more No. 1 hits in the US. In order, those standouts are the breathy “Love Takes Time,” the New Jack Swing bop “Someday,” and the Latin-inflected “I Don’t Wanna Cry.” Throw in the slow jam gem that is “Vanishing,” and you’ve got a half-dozen highlights worthy of any Mariah best-of listening rabbit hole. The biggest factor keeping this album out of the Top 5 is a relatively weak second half. You can hear her trying to find her footing in a few of those back-nine moments, which is to be expected. She was only getting started.

But, in the pantheon of pop music debuts, Mariah Carey ranks up there with all-time greats.

Any of these albums over- or under-hyped? Sound off in the comments.

In this post, I conclude my Mariah Carey discography ranking. It’s time for the Top 5 and, if you’re interested in pop music history and how it informs itself within an artist’s career, you’re in for a treat.

Before I dive in, a reminder to peruse my other discography ranking posts for many other historical deep dives. For the Mariah albums you may have missed, click over to Part 1 or Part 2 of this series to get caught up.

Also, please subscribe. Please and thank you.

Let’s go:

More than all the other growth leaps she made earlier in the decade, Butterfly is Mariah Carey’s genuine coming-of-age moment musically.

Her divorce from Tommy Mottola was still fresh in the public zeitgeist, though reports of just how much of a turn the relationship took is unclear. Mariah has painted Mottola as a controlling Svengali figure over the years, something the record exec took issue with in his book, calling it “lots of crap.” For what it’s worth, Mottola has expressed remorse over his actions publicly, labeling their union “inappropriate,” however you want to read that. On Butterfly, that backstory helps elevate what is essentially a breakup record into a moment where she breaks free of the ghosts from her past.

It’s a transition record, to be sure, but it’s infinitely more compelling than the more manicured pop starlet fare she’d trafficked in until this point. “Honey” is a confident, charismatic single and album opener, framing winking innuendo with G-funk horns and bass. Other highlights include “The Roof,” which turns a Mobb Deep sample into a smoldering, sensuous jam, and “Breakdown,” a crisp, heartfelt head-nodder. The more she leaned into her clear crossover interest in hip-hop, the better this LP sounds because it showcases Mariah at her loosest energy-wise. She sounds like she’s having a ball.

But, like any transition record, it’s not all smooth and seamless. Compared to the songs I just mentioned, ballads like “My All” and “Close My Eyes” sound like they’re stuck in another time and place. They’re fine, but don’t do anything to push her sound in new directions like the deeper R&B grooves do, which results in them being caught in this weird aesthetic limbo. There’s also this strange, seven-minute cover of Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones” that doesn’t fit with anything else she’s doing on the album. That one should’ve hit the cutting room floor.

Let Daydream be a lesson to anyone out there who struggles with risk aversion—sometimes you have to tune out all the advice givers and go your own way.

After Music Box became such a massive commercial success, Mottola and Columbia pressured Mariah to stay in her lane and keep churning out down-the-middle pop music. Big, sturdy ballads. Inoffensive bops. You know the kind. But she wasn’t happy with simply running back a successful formula. As she told Entertainment Weekly at the time, “Everybody was like ‘What, are you crazy?’ They’re nervous about breaking the formula. It works to have me sing a ballad on stage in a long dress with my hair up.”

By breaking the mold that made her famous by planting one foot firmly in the hip-hop and neo-soul genres, Mariah ended up crafting some of the most memorable songs of her career. “Fantasy” is the best-known of the bunch for good reason, flipping Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” into a timeless R&B banger. It still sounds fresh and vibrant, especially when you add the Ol’ Dirty Bastard feature on the remix, a pairing that redefined what those crossovers could sound like. “Always Be My Baby,” a Jermaine Dupri collab, infuses the bones of “Dreamlover” with a healthy dose of fizz and snap. What a vibe.

For those who pine for the Mariah ballads, there’s plenty to love here, too. “One Sweet Day” held the record for the longest stint atop the Hot 100 for a time, holding the No. 1 spot for 16 weeks, and you can hear why. Few 90s songs feature vocals that sound this good. She also makes a meal out of the Journey song “Open Arms,” a cover that she has the chutzpah to start as a throbbing a cappella. The most underrated cut on this album goes to “Underneath the Stars,” a soft, shimmering track that radiates love and longing.

Even as its energy flags toward the end of its running time, there’s no denying Daydream is excellent.

Throughout music history, holiday records have often been exercises in contractual obligation. It’s part of your deal with your label, so you churn out forgettable versions of well-worn songs that everybody has already covered. The entire process is thoroughly market-tested, carefully avoiding deviations from tradition or expectations, resulting in largely bland stocking stuffers. Elvis, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Michael Bublé, and on and on. I’m not anti-Christmas or even music geared toward a specific religious celebration, but holiday music is rarely interesting or compelling to me. Merry Christmas, however, is an exception.

Because it exists in the business template I just described, this album shouldn’t sound as good as it does. But thanks to Mariah’s incredible performance throughout, this collection of songs never feels tossed off. “All I Want for Christmas is You” is the enduring centerpiece because of how well it works as a pop tune. Folks can meme it all they want, but if it weren’t so incredibly catchy, it wouldn’t be as ubiquitous as it is. It’s so earnestly joyous and unencumbered with any cynicism (unlike me in that first paragraph, hehe) that, no matter how many times you hear it, there’s at least a small part of you that buys into it. She’s laughing all the way to the bank, by the way. That one song rakes in an estimated $2.5 million for Mariah every year.

Zoom out and you’ll find many other reverent, gospel-tinged festive delights. “Silent Night” is chill-inducing, “Jesus Born on This Day” is stunning, and her cover of Darlene Love’s classic “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is a raucous ode to the Wall of Sound days that produced their fair share of holiday goodies. All three of those tracks are arguably stronger than “All I Want for Christmas is You,” in part because they provide a nice cross-section of what makes Mariah so appealing as a pop star.

Maybe this is on me and my uncalibrated expectations, but this LP blew me away.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Mariah Carey through this discography ranking exercise, it’s that she’s resilient. Just when you start counting her out, she reliably swoops back in and reminds you she’s one of the best in the game. No one does sleek, sultry, and cool like Mariah, a truth she reinforced with 2018’s Caution. I remember when it was announced, it was met with more than a few eye rolls, if not indifferent shrugs. At the time, she’d returned to Sony Music as part of a deal shepherded by L.A. Reid, the man who supported her most famous bounce back album, though it came at a fraction of the money Def Jam had signed her for. Clearly, her recent commercial stumbles had not gone unnoticed.

None of that could’ve prepared listeners for how focused and sharp Caution is. It’s a lean album, clocking in at under 40 minutes, completely devoid of the filler and fluff that had weighed down other Mariah tracklists. For the first time in over a decade, the pop star glided through a hip-hop and R&B set with purpose. From the ice-cold kiss-off “GTFO” to the crisp bounce of “A No No,” these songs crackle with precision and pleasure. The all-star cast of production talent doesn’t hurt, either. Timbaland, No I.D., Nineteen85, DJ Mustard, and Jermaine Dupri are just some of the names that grace the credit list, proving that, even if she was in the middle of a career lull, Mariah and Reid could still assemble an impressive roster of collaborators.

Lyrically, Caution is all about relationships, mostly about the spark of new love and (there’s that word again) resilience in the face of haters. “With You,” an example of the latter, bridges the old and the new stylistically for Mariah, accentuating booming 808s with smooth gospel piano, while “Giving Me Life” luxuriates in the possibilities of a summer-set romance. I’ve seen some critics refer to this record as a concept album, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. There’s no gimmickry or insistence on making some grand statement. Instead, she and her collaborators deliver one banger after another. Make one smart choice after another.

If it’s her final studio album, it’s some kind of mic drop.

Predictable? Sure. The correct response? Also, yes.

The title is key for this one. Crucially, it doesn’t say The Emancipation of Mariah Carey or something similarly obnoxious. By referring to herself as Mimi, a nickname used only by those in her inner circle prior to the album’s release, it’s an immediate attempt to sidestep the diva reputation that had dogged her for the better part of a half-decade. In other words, she wanted to let everyone know there were multiple other sides to her. In keeping with that angle, this record wasn’t simply a commercial comeback for her—it was a complete renaissance.

I was a teenager when Emancipation was atop the charts, so relistening to these songs hit ultra-specific nostalgia pleasure centers for me. “It’s Like That” is high up on the list of the most confident album openers of the decade, while “Shake it Off” overflows with her distinctive brand of R&B swagger. Elsewhere, her collabs with Snoop Dogg (”Say Something”) and Jermaine Dupri (”Get Your Number,” which features a delightful interpolation of a retro Imagination disco track) remain slept on by casual fans but, if you’re into that mid-2000s R&B vibe, absolutely merit a playlist add.

Then there’s “We Belong Together,” a runaway smash that stayed at No. 1 on the Hot 100 for 14 nonconsecutive weeks. Stylistically, it crystallized a winning formula that she’d reuse to great effect from that point forward in her career: taking lyrics that would’ve previously been set against syrupy, schmaltzy ballad arrangements and, instead, bolstering them with a hard-hitting beat. You can find an acoustic version of “We Belong Together” on some streaming versions of this record, and it’s perfectly fine, but also completely unnecessary. Nothing beats the original as a masterclass in songwriting and production.

There’s also a celebratory quality that permeates every song on Emancipation. There are no guarantees in life, but it’s as if Mariah knew she was finally back with this record, free of the baggage that came with the false starts and setbacks earlier in the decade. It’s extraordinarily difficult to turn an entire career around with one release, but she managed to pull it off. It’s undoubtedly the crown jewel in Mariah Carey’s discography and one of the most satisfying “I’m still here” statements in music history.

Did the right Mariah album land at No. 1? Sound off in the comments.