Mariah: The Ballads showcases blond diva’s greatest slow jams

Eighteen of the greatest songs of the best-selling female artist of all time on one album. What can I say, but Mariah Carey’s Mariah: The Ballads is a testament to her nearly 20-year career – a career she built on singing love songs.

Carey is the first recording artist to have her first five singles top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and was named the best selling female artist of the millennium by the 2000 World Music Awards, after selling 200 million albums.

She also has the most No. 1 singles for a solo artist in the United States, so any album featuring Carey’s best love songs can’t be a bad album. It’s impossible – unless Carey’s high octave, window shattering voice and huge choruses aren’t your thing.

Although Carey has already produced two greatest hits albums, including # 1s and Greatest Hits, Mariah: The Ballads is simply a collection of Carey’s most popular love songs, the ballads. The album features songs Carey sang early in her career from her time at Columbia Records, while excluding her more recent music with her current label, Island Records.

While her current music is mostly R&B, The Ballads features Carey’s early days in pop, showing off her softer side and focusing on her vocals.

Including some of what are considered to be the best ballads of all time, Mariah: The Ballads is an album any one can enjoy – not only the Carey aficionados. Carey’s best are all there from “Without You” to “My All” to “Always Be My Baby.”

The album also has Carey’s famous duets that diversify the album, including “One Sweet Day” with Boyz II Men, “I’ll Be There” with Trey Lorenz, “Endless Love” with Luther Vandross, “When You Believe” with Whitney Houston and “How Much” with Usher.

The first single on the album is, of course, “Hero,” one of Carey’s signature songs from her fourth album, The Music Box.

Starting the greatest hits album – after Mariah’s nearly 20 years in music with the ups and downs of her career and the public displays of her worst breakups – “Hero” can be taken as a symbol of Carey’s own inner strength, her ability to rise beyond discouragements, and still produce good music.

source: The Good 5 Cent Cigar

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