Carey’s ‘Caution’ offers great diva moments
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Maeve McDermott: Singer’s singular personality defines 15th studio album
Every year, the changing of the seasons from fall to winter comes with its constants, as the air grows colder, the nights get longer, the trees lose their leaves – and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” returns to the charts, an event that has become as inevitable as the winter solstice.
This year, Carey’s early gift to fans doubles as a reminder that, in addition to her Christmas-music reign and her general existence as one of pop’s most consistently entertaining figures, she also still makes new music. Out Friday, “Caution” is the 15th studio album from the singer. Plenty of her contemporaries – as well as the younger gen- eration of pop stars raised on her music – are making music similar to the slick R&B heard on Carey’s new album, featuring the same kinds of omnipresent producers and buzzy featured artists (in her case, DJ Mustard and Gunna, respectively).
But in Carey’s case, her personality is so singular, her diva presence so imbued in every big note she hits and lyric she seductively slurs through, that she stands alone. Because half the fun of “Caution” is listening to Carey navigate the life of a diva, here are the four best songs where she’s most famously, deliciously extra.
“GTFO”
The introductory single is everything that makes 2010s-era Carey great. What she lacks in the vocal-somersaulting powers of her early days she makes up for with the towering melodramatics she has cultivated over decades of being a star, which play out amazingly here as she drops maybe the year’s best f-bomb in the vicious sweetly sung chorus “How ’bout you get the (expletive) out.”
“One Mo’ Gan”
Who cares that D’Angelo already released a near-perfect, achingly sentimental song of the same name? Carey swipes the title and makes it unabashedly lusty, because she’s Mariah Carey and she can. While D’Angelo sang about wishing to hold a lost love one last time, Carey goes for a more carnal interpretation, with the hilariously straightforward “Can we just get it in one mo’ gan.”
“The Distance”
A feature from Ty Dolla $ign, rap’s MVP guest vocalist, almost never makes a song worse. And “The Distance,” a bratty love song about Carey showing off her man for all her jealous followers, is elevated by his presence, his ad-libs making the song even more punchy. “The hate only made us get closer,” she gloats, with all the peasants listening clearly incapable of reaching her level.
“A No No”
The album ends with this energetic anthem that channels another classic about the power of “no,” TLC’s “No Scrubs,” as Carey slams the door in the face of the bum she kicked out on “GTFO.” “Rocking Dior ’cause it goes with my diamonds,” she sings, while telling the man who got on her bad side that he’s excommunicated from her life, including the gem of a phrase “Parlez-vous francais, I said no / Let me translate, I said no.”