“I don’t acknowledge time,” is one of the first things Mariah Carey sings on her new album, Here for It All. Within the larger scheme of her public persona, this has come to be a refrain, a fun fact about her that is oft repeated in interviews. Her aversion to time is one of her diva affectations, like punctuating sentences with dahling or insisting on being photographed from the right, such that when she appears on Watch What Happens Live, she takes Andy Cohen’s usual seat. There are obvious reasons why someone of Carey’s superstar stature would ignore the clock. One is plausible deniability when she shows up late for an appointment. Another is that time is held against pop stars, especially women, whose years of hard work are met with apathy or even contempt as they age out of charting on Billboard. It’s just not fair. If Carey can’t bend the world to her will, she can at least blank out its needless punishment.
Time, on the other hand, does acknowledge Mariah Carey, and that’s made clear on Here for It All. Her voice, a force of nature that launched her career into the stratosphere, is often hoarse on the album. At times, her rasp flirts with an alternate key. Whereas in the past Carey’s voice glided between notes as though her saliva were silicone based, here it sometimes trips. There are plenty of the kind of creamy, luscious vocals Carey’s known for on Here for It All, particularly when she projects from her chest. Sometimes she still soars. But her vocal roughness is too frequent to be an oversight. It’s unlikely that she just didn’t feel like doing another take, given the perfectionism evinced throughout her career. No, this is Carey opting for realistic portraiture of where she is now as a singer, and if her voice sounds blown out, well, of course it does after singing with the force she has for decades. The grit is alluring, bringing a tear-stained realness to her vulnerable lyrics and teasing out the soul of Paul McCartney and Wings’ previously easy-listening ballad “My Love.” Carey’s raw-piped cover saps much of the song’s schmalz, giving it an unlikely edge.
The voice, and Carey’s decision to spotlight where she is (which, whether she admits it or not, is a tacit acknowledgment of time), is the boldest of Here for It All’s moves, a kind of no-makeup sound for a persona devoted to glamour. The album is otherwise a pleasant collection of the kind of well-constructed melodies that typify Carey’s output. It leans toward a full-band sound, particularly on its collaborations with Anderson .Paak and Carey’s musical director Daniel Moore II, though there are bassy electronic ballads as well, like the skittery opener “Mi,” the lovely Caribbean-kissed single “Sugar Sweet,” and the deliciously petty “Confetti and Champagne,” a fuck-you to an ex in which Carey proclaims, “Cheers cheers cheers cheers cheers/To me, not you, just me.” It sounds crafted to become an audio meme.
A certain sourness, or bubbling rage even, underpins many of these tracks. The Chi-Lites/Delfonics-inspired twinkling ’70s soul that .Paak revisits with Soul Sonic is no safe haven here: “Play This Song” urges an estranged lover to “Listen by yourself, please listen by your damn self.” On “I Won’t Allow It,” an organic disco track that works like a mash-up of Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” and Carey’s own “Make It Happen,” she dogs an ex for his dirty mustache and fast food proclivities, then mocks him with references to acne treatments (“So whatcha gonna do when your face all broke/And you’re hot inside, lost your pride/Can’t obtain any Accutane/Should have been more proactive”). There are more straightforward love songs and some inspir-iah tracks: “Jesus I Do,” a collaboration with the legendary Clark Sisters that sounds ripped from the disco gospel comp Overdose of the Holy Ghost; the minimal ballad “Nothing Is Impossible,” which is about overcoming obstacles and sung with conviction. But it’s striking that an album that sounds low-key at its fastest tempo is often openly negative.
Whether or not this is pointed (Carey broke up with choreographer and backup dancer Bryan Tanaka in 2023) is anyone’s guess. Carey, who has not been very descriptive in recent press, explained on Big Boy’s Neighborhood how Here for It All came about: “We were just doing, you know, a couple songs here and there and then it just became like, ‘OK, this might as well be a project.’” Might as well! Gotta release an album at some point, right? Like 2018’s superior Caution, there is a looseness here as Carey recommits to her craft. The time between albums (seven years, in this case) gives Here for It All a certain weight that its songs don’t quite bear. In the scheme of her smash-packed discography, this is a minor work.
But if only all minor works were so consistently enjoyable. The air of meh palpable during many of Carey’s recent public appearances is mostly replaced with gusto and wit (though the way lead single “Type Dangerous” flatlines in the hook is just meh again). .Paak’s sense of humor, more subdued than Carey’s, provides a wonderful foil. In the pre-chorus of “In Your Feelings,” Carey jams in a string of words (“I think you might be getting a little bit tooooo…”) and then luxuriates in her hook (“…in your feelings!”). It’s a novel way to summon the kind of drama that is Carey’s bread and butter. In “I Won’t Allow It,” she sings, “I won’t entertain all your narcissistic ways” with the put-on formality of a cartoon queen.
Carey remains committed to cultivating her own image. “You couldn’t walk a mile in my shoes/’Cause they hurt like hell,” she sings on “Mi,” a play on her nickname, Mimi, and her focus. “I don’t care about much if it ain’t about mi,” goes the hook. She sounds equal parts celebrity diva and pleb fluffing herself on social media. She is larger than life but also of life. Carey’s vocabulary is as boosted as ever (“harrowing,” “gruesome,” and “diligently” all stop by). Her flair for melodrama is alive, but never more effective than when she’s dead serious—as on the title track, one of the album’s few straightforward odes. Over little more than a piano and armed with an indelible melody, Carey affirms devotion despite personal tumult (“The glory, the shakes, and withdrawals/Even when you bounce off the walls/Baby I’m here for it all”). Then, in a single couplet, she evokes cataracts and anilingus: “Here for the clouds in your eyes/A kiss where the sun never shines.” She sings with a straight-faced vulnerability that boldly risks camp. It’s simultaneously hilarious and moving. Within the song, there is a sense that her declarations double as a request. Here, Carey asks her audience to be here for it all: the lyrical indulgences, the flaws in her instrument, her endless self-absorption. It seems that how she gives love is also how she’d like to receive it.
