Mariah Carey's first proper album since 2009 is a couple covers away from being as nostalgic as the Glitter soundtrack. Its title – well, the part that precedes the ellipses – is taken from a self-portrait, reproduced on the back, drawn at the age of three and a half. "I'll just sit right here and sing that good old school shit to ya," she sings on "Dedicated," a song seasoned with a Wu-Tang sample, a Nas throwback verse, and reminiscent chatter. Like many other songs on the album, flashbacks are laced through the music as well as in the lyrics, with Carey reflecting upon happier moments in a relationship while either pining or scolding.

Upon its release, Butterfly was interpreted as Mariah Carey's declaration of independence from her ex-husband (and label president) Tommy Mottola, and to a certain extent, that's true. Butterfly is peppered with allusions to her troubled marriage and her newfound freedom, and the music is supposed to be in tune with contemporary urban sounds instead of adult contemporary radio. Nevertheless, it feels like a Mariah Carey album, which means that it's a collection of hit singles surrounded by classy filler. What is surprising about Butterfly is the lack of up-tempo dance-pop. Apart from the Puffy Combs-produced "Honey," Butterfly is devoted to ballads, and while they are all well-crafted, many of them blend together upon initial listening.

Grammy-winning and best-selling female recording artist of all time Mariah Carey will celebrate the 30th anniversary of her third studio album, "Music Box," this fall. The celebration will include the release of new unreleased tracks, mixes, live audio, and remastered audio with "My Prayer," "Hero (2009 Version)," "Anytime You Need A Friend (Extended Mix)," and "Music Box (Acapella)." A remastered version of "Mariah Carey Live at Proctor's Theatre" will also be released. Carey will release a mini documentary behind-the-scenes of "Dreamlover," which will also be released in 4k. Mariah Carey's "Music Box: Then & Now" celebration will begin on September 8. "I’ll never forget creating this record, fully immersing myself in the music that would change my life and connect me with YOU, the lambily, in a way that bonded us forever," Carey said in a social media post.

Upon its release, Butterfly was interpreted as Mariah Carey's declaration of independence from her ex-husband (and label president) Tommy Mottola, and to a certain extent, that's true. Butterfly is peppered with allusions to her troubled marriage and her newfound freedom, and the music is supposed to be in tune with contemporary urban sounds instead of adult contemporary radio. Nevertheless, it feels like a Mariah Carey album, which means that it's a collection of hit singles surrounded by classy filler. What is surprising about Butterfly is the lack of up-tempo dance-pop. Apart from the Puffy Combs-produced "Honey," Butterfly is devoted to ballads, and while they are all well-crafted, many of them blend together upon initial listening.

Mariah Carey certainly knows how to construct an album. Positioning herself directly between urban R&B with tracks like "Fantasy," and adult contemporary with songs like "One Sweet Day," a duet with Boyz II Men, Carey appeals to both audiences equally because of the sheer amount of craft and hard work she puts into her albums. Daydream is her best record to date, featuring a consistently strong selection of songs and a remarkably impassioned performance by Carey. A few of the songs are second-rate – particularly the cover of Journey's "Open Arms" – but Daydream demonstrates that Carey continues to perfect her craft and that she has earned her status as an R&B/pop diva.

Mariah Carey claims Rainbow, her first album since divorcing Tommy Mottola, "chronicles my emotional roller coaster ride of the past year," but less subjective listeners could be forgiven for viewing it as simply another Mariah Carey album. After all, all the elements are in place – the crossover dance hits, the ballads, the cameos, the hip producers, the weird cover choice from the early '80s. But dig a little deeper, and her words ring true. Rainbow is the first Carey album where she's written personal lyrics, and allusions to her separation from Mottola are evident throughout the album, even if it doesn't really amount to the "story" she mentions in the liner notes.

In 1998, it would have been a cheap joke to say that Mariah Carey had no other kind of hits than ballads, but in the ensuing decade she steadily remade herself into an R&B diva, obscuring if not quite erasing the well-mannered adult contemporary singer of the '90s. The 2009 compilation The Ballads – released just before Valentines Day 2009 – attempts to turn back the clock by focusing just on those AC tunes – 18 of them, in fact, including such mammoth hits as "Hero," "One Sweet Day," "Vision of Love," "I'll Be There," "I Still Believe," "Dreamlover," and "Always Be My Baby."

Protest as she may – and she does, claiming in the liner notes that #1's is "not a greatest hits album! It's too soon, I haven't been recording long enough for that!" – it's hard to view #1's, Mariah Carey's first compilation, as anything other than a greatest-hits album. Carey was fortunate enough to have nearly every single she released top the pop charts. Between 1990's "Vision of Love" and 1998's "My All," all but four commercially released singles ("Anytime You Need a Friend," "Can't Let Go," "Make It Happen," "Without You") hit number one, with only a handful of radio-only singles ("Butterfly," "Breakdown") making the airwaves, not the charts.

This extremely impressive debut is replete with smooth-sounding ballads and uplifting dance/R&B cuts. Carey convincingly seizes many opportunities to display her incredible vocal range on such memorable tracks as the popular "Vision of Love" (featured during her television debut on The Arsenio Hall Show, an appearance noted by many as her formal introduction to stardom), the energetic "Someday," and the moody sounds of the hidden treasure "Vanishing." With this collection of songs acting as a springboard for future successes, Carey establishes a strong standard of comparison for other breakthrough artists of this genre.

Like many big-budget albums of the last years of the 2000s, Mariah Carey's Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel faced shifting release dates, all as the final product was tweaked in light of disappointing reactions to early singles, particularly the Eminem-baiting "Obsessed." Unlike many of those big-budget albums, including several made by Mariah herself, Memoirs isn't the product of a stable of producers and collaborators; it is almost entirely the work of The-Dream and Tricky Stewart, the team best known for their tracks for Rihanna. Certainly, there are echoes of "Umbrella" to be heard on Memoirs, just as there are elements of the gauzy "Touch My Body," The-Dream and Tricky Stewart's previous single for Mariah, although working with mainly one set of producers does give Memoirs a cohesion that can sometimes lapse into sameness, but not in an unpleasant fashion.

The titular "Mimi" of The Emancipation of Mimi is, by all accounts, an alter ego of Mariah, a persona that captures Carey's true feelings and emotions. In case you didn't know what "emancipation" means, Mariah helpfully provides a dictionary definition of the word in the opening pages of the liner notes for her eighth proper album: it means "to free from restraint, control, oppression, or the power of another" or "to free from any controlling influence" or "to free somebody from restrictions or conventions." So, on The Emancipation of Mimi, Mariah frees herself from the constraints of being herself, revealing herself to be well, somebody that looks startlingly like Beyoncé, if the cover art is any indication.

Columbia Records cannot be accused of stinting on the two-CD Remixes set, which has a running time over two hours and 20 minutes. Mariah Carey's former label, before she moved to Virgin and then Island Def Jam (where she recorded under her own MonarC imprint), has made a point of licensing extra tracks from those subsequent corporate associations, as well as borrowing a track from J Records in compiling a survey of the various remixes of Carey's recordings.

LoveSongs is a compilation album by R&B superstar Mariah Carey. It is a re-release of her 2008
collection The Ballads [without the song "All I Want for Christmas Is You"], and was released
exclusively in the UK in time for Valentine's Day on February 8, 2010.