Do not compare 2025 Mariah Carey to 1995 Mariah Carey. She does not have that same voice, and if your yardstick of a “good Mariah album” is how closely she can match her delivery from 30 years ago, every project will be a flop.
Let that part go. If you compare every R&B singer out right now to Mariah Carey singing “Fantasy” or “My All,” then nobody has a good album, so we have to stop ourselves from holding Mariah Carey to that same standard.
Here For It All is a brisk, 40-minute album with only eleven tracks, and that works in her favor. Mariah Carey has firmly planted her feet into Auntie R&B and she’s not interested in experimenting around with blending genres or fiddling with song structure. She is a Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Bridge Chorus Out girlie and she lives very close to that pocket for the most part. You only need 11 tracks for that and the album breezes in and out before it has time to get repetitive.
And the Aunties love a little boppity bop. From Mary J. Blige to Faith Evans, there is a sisterhood of 90s R&B singers who feel a lot more comfortable these days on a track with a cute two-step. Mariah is still an excellent writer with great ears, and I think she sounds the most at ease when the production is doing most of the work. Lead single “Type Dangerous” isn’t re-creating the wheel, but she sounds fun and relaxed. On “Jesus I Do” with our favorite Gospel Aunties, Mariah and the Clark Sisters harmonize over a easy Chic-esque bassline, and she very nearly gets jiggy with it on “I Won’t Allow It” which should be played at somebody’s roller rink.
For better or worse, depending on how much you love the way she sounds, Mariah is still first and foremost a balladeer who doesn’t like to play second fiddle to the track. “Mi” is an understated slice of Quiet Storm with her signature breathy delivery on full display during the chorus. When people criticize pop for being formulaic or R&B for being boring, I would show them a song like “Mi” because a real listener will compare the melodic lines in the first verse to how Mariah decides to lay down the second verse — this is how you keep a simple song from becoming repetitive and these are the little things Mariah doesn’t get enough credit for. She’s an excellent musician, regardless of how much you enjoy her voice.
I do not enjoy her voice, but that’s all subjective. Coco Jones has a growing fanbase and I love watching how much passion she puts into her performances, but I do not actually care for the way her voice sounds, so there are only a couple of songs I can handle from her. Coco Jones sounds like this Mariah Carey. Something about their timbre feels strained and uncomfortable. I love a vocal delivery that sounds effortless and it sounds like Mariah Carey is struggling in the booth. Whenever she starts to move up her range, I feel nervous that she’s not going to make it to her destination, and that stresses me out.
On “Nothing Is Impossible,” I feel like we’re both on the same page that we know the limit when the song starts. Similarly on “My Love,” I started getting a little tense, but she cut the song about 30 seconds earlier than she would have if she had more notes to give — but the writing is just so painfully insipid, we should pretend this song never existed. “Here For It All” is a lovely piano ballad, and I will be checking YouTube for covers because I will not be able to listen to Mariah sing that song again. I can actually hear a little “spread your wings and prepare to fly…” sprinkled in there before the beat kicks in and Mariah vamps us out with some of her “Fly Like A Bird” energy from Emancipation.
If you were not previously a Mariah Carey fan, there’s nothing on Here For It All to change your mind. If you were a Mariah Carey fan already, your mileage may vary depending on how much you like her voice. Oddly enough, I was never a huge Mariah Carey fan growing up because I thought she was doing too much on her pop songs, and then after the excellent flip into R&B with Butterfly, I hated her breathy delivery from Charmbracelet onward and how jarringly she switched back and forth out of chest voice in her songs. I mean that to say, I think I’m pretty good at keeping my Mariahs separate in my mind, and this one has a voice I’m even less interested in.
Score: 3 / 5
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