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Boston Globe
Mariah Carey: On A More Personal Note
By Steve Morse, Globe Staff, September 17, 1991 Page: 57 Section: Living
As good as she is, Whitney Houston must tremble a little every time she hears Mariah Carey. Houston was the unchallenged queen of pop/soul music until Carey came along last year. A 20-year-old phenomenon with a timeless, octave- leaping voice, Carey stole part of Houston's crowd -- and copped some valuable Grammy hardware as well, earning two awards for best new artist and best female pop performance.
Carey's self-titled debut album sold 7 million copies and ran off four consecutive No. 1 hits in "Vision of Love," "Love Takes Time," "Someday" and "I Don't Wanna Cry." To prove that was no fluke, Carey today releases the follow-up, "Emotions," which shows a quantum leap in maturity and confidence. Now a heady 21, the New York-born-and-bred Carey sounds so accomplished that this feels like her 10th album, rather than just her second.
Where the first album was overproduced -- by Carey's own admission -- this one is more tightly and subtly drawn. The focus is on Carey's soulful, gospel- steeped voice, not the wizardry of computer arrangements. Her influences are more apparent -- Aretha Franklin, Minnie Riperton, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight -- and there's a warm, personal touch not always felt before.
The first single, the title track "Emotions," was recently heard during an uncomfortable stage performance at the MTV Video Awards. Carey doesn't yet have the goods in concert -- she still has no plans to book her first national tour -- but she's an absolute pro Minnie Riperton-like falsetto that frames a feeling of pure joy that didn't come across on her MTV stint. "I'm in love/ I'm alive/Intoxicated/Flying high/It feels like a dream," Carey sings of a newborn romance.
Elsewhere, she runs a gamut of emotions, as befitting the album's title. When you consider she writes all the lyrics, it's all the more remarkable. She's tearfully down-and-out in "Can't Let Go" ("do you know the way it feels when all you have just dies?"), then comes right back with the insistently funky, positive-thinking anthem, "Make It Happen," a clear slice of spiritual autobiography. Sings Carey: "I struggled and I prayed/And now I've found my way/If you believe in yourself enough/And know what you want/ You're gonna make it happen." The last verse is sung in glorious a cappella.
There are more ballads than before, furthering an adult-contemporary mood. Most of the ballads are unspeakably beautiful, even dipping into classic soul. "If It's Over," which Carey wrote with Carole King in one hour while the two sat at a piano, sounds out of a '60s Memphis Stax/Volt session, as if Otis Redding were coaching. Carey pleads with a boyfriend: "If it's over, let me go," as the drama builds.
Carey keeps her dance bases covered with several songs coproduced with David Cole and Robert Clivilles of the currently hot C & C Music Factory. But it's her wrenching ballads, plus a surprise, Barbra Streisand-like cabaret song in "The Wind," that suggest just how unlimited her talents are.
All Music Guide
By Ashley S. Battel
Rating: 4 stars/5 stars
A strong follow-up to Carey's self-titled debut album, Emotions puts to rest any concern of a "sophomore jinx." The same mix of dance/R&B/ballads that gave Carey's debut such tremendous auditory appeal can be found with equal strength on this release, indicating that placing firm belief in the notion of "Why fool with success?" may, in fact, have its merits. Most notably, the gospel influences of "If It's Over" (with music co-written by Carole King), the yearning cries for a lost love in "Can't Let Go," and the catchy, upbeat title track, all serve to send the listener on a musical journey filled with varying emotions. However, the one emotion that prevails upon completion of the album is definitely a positive one - satisfaction!
Rolling Stone
By Rob Tannenbaum, November 14, 1991
Rating: 2 stars/5 stars
A rookie success as spectacular as Mariah Carey's tends to spark a backlash, and Carey was derided by skeptics who saw that Columbia Records had spared no expense in accessorizing her with the most dependable collaborators money could buy. Emotions addresses the perception of Carey as a fabricated star, as well as the comparisons to Whitney Houston, by giving the twenty-one-year-old singer greater control: She wrote all the lyrics and coproduced all ten tracks. While it sustains her stature as a pop goddess, Emotions demonstrates the hazards of such calculations.
Like many young performers, Carey doesn't understand the value of understatement. "I Don't Wanna Cry" was the best track on Carey's debut because her downcast whispers animated the song's luxurious sorrow; at full speed her range is so superhuman that each excessive note erodes the believability of the lyric she is singing. On Emotions her eagerness to deploy her immense vocal range results in the overheated growling of "Make It Happen," a teary tale of how she kept her religious faith despite hard times.
Carey coproduced four songs with David Cole and Robert Clivillés, this year's pop-dance maestros, but the partnership doesn't fly: Their beats aren't as unrestrained and joyous as they are on their work with Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam or C + C Music Factory. Instead, they back Carey with pumping house keyboards and shamelessly recycle the chords of Cheryl Lynn's "Got to Be Real" and the Emotions' "Best of My Love" to construct the bubbly new-disco "Emotions."
On the other six songs, all ballads, Carey works with Walter Afanasieff, who produced "Love Takes Time" on her debut and also helped create Michael Bolton's bombastic soul. When the pace slows down, Carey does too, and Afanasieff can be an effective one-man orchestra: The moody grandeur of "And You Don't Remember" and "Can't Let Go" will sound great on the radio.
There's a conflict between Carey's thirst for musical challenges, like gospel choruses and the light jazz ballad "The Wind" which ends Emotions, and her dependence on commercial dance pop. Her goal is to elevate the Top Forty tricks of Janet Jackson and Karyn White with vocal greatness. On "If It's Over," Carey even invokes the style of Aretha Franklin's classic Atlantic sessions. Carey has spoken of Franklin as a hero, but there's an essential difference between their styles – the daughter of a preacher, Aretha imbues even her dullest work with the spirit of the church, whereas Mariah's mother was an opera singer, a background that translates into such excesses as the falsetto whoops that punctuate so many of Mariah's songs. Carey has a remarkable vocal gift, but to date, unfortunately, her singing has been far more impressive than expressive.
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