And then a hero comes along with the strength to carry on

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

13/11/94 : Music Box - Mariah Carey


Our second visit with Mariah and I can't claim I'm looking forward to it - but it's nice to have a hat-trick of albums from the ladies to counteract the very testosterone-heavy which we had previously.

But nah, this isn't for me. I can't deny she's got a nice voice, but this is just too ballad heavy to keep my interest - it even uses that seventies piano sound that I thought everyone had given up by this time. I can handle something like "Hero" provided it's surrounded by enough of something different to lessen the syrupy effect, but a whole album is just too much for me, I'm afraid. Grudgingly, I will admit "Now That I Know" does have a bit of life to it and "Without You" shows off her incredible vocal range, but most of them are just too same-y - none of the tracks are over five minutes long, but some of them felt like they lasted years.

We're all the way down at #18 in the chart this week on her 63rd week of a 77 week run, with it having spent six weeks at #1 in its debut, 25-28th and 30th weeks. The chart was very compilation heavy this week with the top five being best-ofs from Bon Jovi, Sting (a new entry), The Beautiful South (another new entry) and INXS and a live album from Nirvana. The next highest new entry is a Jimmy Page & Robert Plant live album (#7) and with the exception of Eternal and R.E.M. (which has already had two write-ups, so it's not getting another one), all the other albums above Mariah are best-ofs, live or cover albums - amusingly, we just missed out on PJ & Duncan's album which is at #19.

Wikipedia has a massive amount on the album (335 milliPeppers) and it tells us its her third album and has a more laid-back feel than her previous offering, which hadn't done as well as hoped. I flicked through the rest of it, but didn't find anything of particular interest - allegedly she had more input into this album than her previous offerings, but who really cares? Critically, the reviews were pretty below par at the time and they've not really improved greatly retrospectively, despite its commercial success. And boy, was it successful, getting to #1 in a squillion countries (including the US) and getting to #3 in our year-end chart and #2 in theirs. It sold 1.5 million here, 8 million here and even 2.5 million in Japan (and hardly anyone cracks Japan), with a global total of over 28 million copies - which is, quite frankly, somewhat incredible.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, discogs.com can get you a decent version for 50 pence but if you're in the market for an extremely niche Zimbabwean release, then it's going to set you back £200 - WHY?!? Personally, I can extend the "why?" question to the entire album, but I appreciate there was obviously a market for this sort of thing back then and she tapped into it very successfully, so I'll give her some admiration for her market knowledge, whilst not appreciating the musical content.

06/11/94 - Considerably better than the album cover suggests
20/11/94 - One that certainly could have been worse

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