Greatest Hits is the eleventh album by American singer Mariah Carey, released in the United States on 4 December 2001 by Columbia Records. It is a greatest hits compilation album: CD 1 is primarily a collection of Carey’s hits from 1990 to 1995, while CD 2 is primarily a collection of hits from 1996 to 2000.

Content

Carey had previously released the compilation album #1’s (1998), but the release of her Greatest Hits album was a contractual agreement beyond her control, since she had left Columbia Records and had moved on to Virgin Records. The album had little creative input from Carey and there are no personal messages within its liner notes, unlike #1’s. All tracks from the previous album, with the exception of “Whenever You Call” with Brian McKnight, are included on Greatest Hits. The tracks that were not included on #1’s are:

• the U.S. top five hits “Can’t Let Go” (1991), “Make It Happen” (1992) and “Without You” (1994), and the top twenty hit “Anytime You Need a Friend” (1994);
• the radio airplay-only tracks “Forever” (1996), “Underneath the Stars” (1996), and “Butterfly” (1997);
• “Heartbreaker” (1999) and “Thank God I Found You” (2000), the two singles from Carey’s Rainbow album that went to number one following the release of #1’s, as well as “Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme)” (2000), another track from Rainbow;
• “Endless Love” (1994), a top five duet with Luther Vandross which had not been previously included on any Carey album;
• the “So So Def” remix of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (1994) featuring Lil’ Bow Wow and Jermaine Dupri, which had previously only been on the Japanese re-release of the single in 2000.

Most non-U.S. versions of Greatest Hits retain the track listing as listed below with the addition of “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” (2000), a duet with Westlife. The Japanese version contains “Against All Odds”, “Open Arms” (1996), the non-single album track “Music Box” from the album Music Box (1993), and the Merry Christmas album version of “All I Want for Christmas Is You”; it is also the only album to include the “Never Too Far/Hero Medley” (2001) single. Unlike most non-U.S. versions of the Greatest Hits album, the “So So Def” remix of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” was not included on the original UK edition but on the album’s 2005 re-release.

Release

Carey did not have much power over the creation of the album, but was invited by her ex-husband Tommy Mottola to discuss what tracks were to be included. As Carey and Mottola had their marriage end on bad terms, the dinner concerning the album was a tense one, with Carey not getting a lot of what she wanted on the album. It received almost no promotion, and as it was released shortly after Carey’s commercially unsuccessful film Glitter and its accompanying soundtrack album Glitter, its existence is often not known by the general public. It debuted at number fifty-two on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart with 54,483 copies sold in its first week. It has sold 866,979 copies by 20 September 2006, remained on the chart for eleven weeks and has been certified platinum by the RIAA. It has also sold 4 million worldwide.

Greatest Hits was a failure on the charts compared to Carey’s previous albums, and she does not acknowledge its existence publicly. However, back catalog sales of the album began to sell at a moderate pace following the success of Carey’s fourteenth album, The Emancipation of Mimi (2005). It was then re-released in the UK on 10 October 2005 (see 2005 in music), this time with the inclusion of the “So So Def” remix of “All I Want for Christmas Is You”. It subsequently entered the top ten of the UK Albums Chart for the first time (the re-release debuted at number nine), eventually peaking at number seven in the re-release’s second week of sales.

Charts

Track listing

• CD 1

1. “Vision of Love” – 3:31
2. “Love Takes Time” – 3:51
3. “Someday” – 4:08
4. “I Don’t Wanna Cry” – 4:51
5. “Emotions” – 4:10
6. “Can’t Let Go” – 4:29
7. “Make It Happen” – 5:09
8. “I’ll Be There” featuring Trey Lorenz – 4:26
9. “Dreamlover” – 3:55
10. “Hero” – 4:20
11. “Without You” – 3:37
12. “Anytime You Need a Friend” – 4:27
13. “Endless Love” with Luther Vandross – 4:21
14. “Fantasy” – 4:04

• CD 2

1. “One Sweet Day” with Boyz II Men – 4:43
2. “Always Be My Baby” – 4:20
3. “Forever” – 4:01
4. “Underneath the Stars” – 3:35
5. “Honey” – 5:02
6. “Butterfly” – 4:36
7. “My All” – 3:53
8. “Sweetheart” with Jermaine Dupri – 4:24
9. “When You Believe” with Whitney Houston – 4:36
10. “I Still Believe” – 3:57
11. “Heartbreaker” featuring Jay-Z – 4:48
12. “Thank God I Found You” featuring Joe and 98 Degrees – 4:20
13. “Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme)” – 4:34
14. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (So So Def remix) featuring Lil’ Bow Wow and Jermaine Dupri – 3:43