Singer Mariah Carey has released her latest album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel. Singer Mariah Carey has released her latest album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel. (BMG Music Canada)

It’s been a big season for big-throated divas, what with Whitney Houston hogging headlines with her latest stab at career rehabilitation. Yet the singer who most deserves our loyalty and attention is the one who filled the void Houston left when she began her downward spiral.

Mariah Carey has had her own share of troubles, but however volatile her personal life, her career has been more interesting than anyone could’ve expected when she debuted almost 20 years ago. Carey has just released her twelfth studio album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, so it’s time to look back on the perfect and not-so-perfect milestones that have made Carey a figure of fascination.

Her launch (1988-1992)

Born in Long Island and benefiting from a diverse gene pool (which mixed up Irish-American, Afro-Venezuelan and African-American strands), Carey was marketed as a post-racial icon years before Tiger Woods and a certain U.S. president. Having a former opera singer and vocal coach for a mother turned out to be another advantage – Mariah did whatever she could to show off her five-octave range even before she met future Sony Music head honcho (and future husband) Tommy Mottola at a party in 1988.

Mottola put all of his considerable resources into developing and launching Carey, and as a result, she became the first recording artist to have her first five singles top the Billboard chart. So what if Carey had a propensity for vocal overkill? Her millions of new fans couldn’t be wrong.

Verdict: Perfect, if only from a marketing perspective.

(BMG Music Canada)(BMG Music Canada) Hooking up with Ol’ Dirty Bastard (1995)

The midpoint of the ‘90s was to be a watershed year for Mariah, already one of the decade’s most successful acts. She proved to be a bridge figure not just between pop and R&B (see: One Sweet Day, her bland but record-breaking teaming with Boyz II Men) but America’s musical mainstream and its hip-hop underground. To wit: a typically lively cameo by the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard turned her song Fantasy into a summer classic. (That fact that it recycles so much of Tom Tom Club’s 1981 hit Genius of Love makes Fantasy a cover in all but name.)

Verdict: As perfect as your favourite summer jam.

Getting down in the Honey video (1997)

Separating from Tommy Mottola meant Carey could take greater creative control of her music and image. But rather than go for classy and demure – and take the same road that Celine Dion took to Vegas – Carey went sexpot in the ridiculously lavish video for Honey. Scenes of her “acting” opposite comedian Eddie Griffin may have also foreshadowed her later efforts as a thespian, but who cares when the groove is so sweet?

Verdict: Perfect for her new career as a bikini model.

Glitter (2001)

Having ruled the pop charts for so long, Carey couldn’t pass up trying her luck in Hollywood with Glitter. The storyline was closely patterned after her own backstory (minus Mottola, but plus an abundance of Prince-style pop-funk), but this effort at brand extension was a humiliating flop. Opposite future Oscar nominee Terrence Howard, she was hopelessly wooden. She would later attribute the film’s box office failure to the release date’s proximity to 9/11. Another movie project, WiseGirls, wound up going straight to video.

Verdict: To call Glitter imperfect would be too kind.

The breakdown (2001) and the Eminem thing (ongoing)

Though Britney’s flameout would trump all celebrity spectacles of the century thus far, Carey’s was still plenty weird. After weeks of strange behaviour – like posting cryptic missives on her website and handing out popsicles and doing a mock-striptease on MTV’s Total Request Live – she checked herself into a hospital for “extreme exhaustion” in July 2001. Sleep deprivation may have actually been a legitimate culprit, Carey having overextended herself with her film projects. This was also around the same time Carey had broken up with singer Luis Miguel and possibly had a relationship with Eminem.

This has sparked what may be music’s longest-running he-said/she-said battle. Carey denies they ever dated, despite Eminem’s spiteful assertions to the contrary in tracks like Jimmy Crack Corn. The conflict recently reached a surreal new height (or low) when Carey appeared in her video for Obsessed as a hoodie-wearing Eminem lookalike with stalker tendencies. The battle surely rages on.

Verdict: All too publicly imperfect.

(BMG Music Canada)(BMG Music Canada) The emancipation of Mariah (2002-2007)

Another piece of fallout from the Glitter debacle was the termination of a contract with Virgin Records worth a reported $80 million US. But her recording career showed signs of life on Charmbracelet (2002), her first for Def Jam/Island. Three years later, she would team up with some of the hottest hitmakers to triumphant effect on The Emancipation of Mimi.

Carey claimed “Mimi” was a nickname used by intimates, while the “emancipation” was allegedly from Mottola — Carey had been legally barred from speaking about the marriage for several years. Despite the cryptic title, it became her best-selling album since 1995. It would also prove her forte for sinuous midtempo jams largely free of the vocal calisthenics that made her ‘90s longplayers such a chore to get through. Her ease with the loping grooves of Dirty South-style hip-hop would be further demonstrated on her collaborations with T-Pain and Young Jeezy on E=MC2 (2007).

Verdict: Perfect for your Jeep.

But can she redeem Foreigner? (2009)

Hells yeah. Expect Carey’s new gospel version of the British arena-rockers’ power ballad I Want to Know What Love Is to dominate wedding ceremonies for decades to come. Even if it makes you cringe, just be grateful that she didn’t do yet another rendition of Hallelujah.

Verdict: You ought to know by now.

Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel is in stores now.

Jason Anderson is a writer based in Toronto.