Cultural impact of Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey's enduring popularity as a musician has received extensive recognition. Anne Branigin from The Root commented: "There's longevity, then there's Mariah Carey". When reviewing her fifteenth studio album, Caution, Eddino Hadi wrote, "In the last three decades since she made her debut, many female pop stars have scaled the heights that Carey has reached but very, very few have matched her longevity". She is the first artist to reach number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the physical, digital, and streaming eras. Carey's music has been recorded, performed or sampled by a variety of artists such as Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Dolly Parton, Luciano Pavarotti, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Shania Twain, Michael Ball, Bryson Tiller, Drake, Fifth Harmony, and Sigala. The 2019 film Always Be My Maybe was a play-on-words of Carey's 1996 single "Always Be My Baby", which was used as the movie's theme song.

Carey has also been credited for her role in breaking down racial barriers in popular culture and facilitating public discourse surrounding multiracialism during the 1990s. Brittany Luse from Vulture wrote that Carey "rose to fame as public conversations about multiracial identity were expanding in the early '90s", noting that the singer "became something of an avatar for biracial identity, a validating presence for some and a source of both curiosity and discomfort for others". Luse concluded that "Carey's experience of fame could have happened only once; her stardom punched a hole in the sky. Her career matured as current conversations about mixed identity were still forming and while the passing narratives of the past, both brilliant and clumsy, had yet to fade from pop-cultural memory. There was a time when she might have been considered the most famous mixed person of Black and white parentage in America, but now the field's far more crowded". In her book Tragic No More: Mixed-Race Women and the Nexus of Sex and Celebrity, Caroline A. Streeter, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, also described Carey as one of the "ideal figures through which to consider the post-Civil Rights era's apparent rehabilitation and transformation of the mulatto/a into a biracial subject of representation".

Vocal influence

Carey's vocal style, as well as her singing ability, have significantly impacted popular and contemporary music. She has been considered one of the greatest vocalists. As music critic G. Brown from The Denver Post wrote, "For better or worse, Mariah Carey's five-octave range and melismatic style have influenced a generation of pop singers." According to Stevie Wonder, "When people talk about the great influential singers, they talk about Aretha, Whitney and Mariah. That's a testament to her talent. Her range is that amazing." Carey has inspired singers and songwriters all over the world. In a review of her Greatest Hits album, Devon Powers of PopMatters writes that "She has influenced countless female vocalists after her. At 32, she is already a living legend—even if she never sings another note."

Multiple media sources referred to Carey as the "Queen of Melisma". According to Rolling Stone, "Her mastery of melisma, the fluttering strings of notes that decorate songs like "Vision of Love", inspired the entire American Idol vocal school, for better or worse, and virtually every other female R&B singer since the Nineties." Chart historian Tom Breihan chose "Vision of Love" as one of the chapters in his book The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music, stating that it "established melisma-heavy R&B as a powerful commercial force". Author Bruce Pollock said the song led "to a generation of aspiring belters from Beyoncé to Rihanna to Christina Aguilera".

In 2008, Jody Rosen of Slate wrote of Carey's influence in music, calling her the most influential vocal stylist of the last two decades, the person who made rococo melismatic singing. Rosen further exemplified Carey's influence by drawing a parallel with American Idol, which to her, "often played out as a clash of melisma-mad Mariah wannabes. And, today, nearly 20 years after Carey's debut, major labels continue to bet the farm on young stars such as the winner of Britain's X Factor show, Leona Lewis, with her Generation Next gloss on Mariah's big voice and big hair." New York magazine's editor Roger Deckker further commented that "Whitney Houston may have introduced melisma (the vocally acrobatic style of lending a word an extra syllable or twenty) to the charts, but it was Mariah—with her jaw-dropping range—who made it into America's default sound." Deckker also added that "Every time you turn on American Idol, you are watching her children." As Professor Katherine L. Meizel said in her book, The Mediation of Identity Politics in American Idol, "Carey's influence [is] in the emulation of melisma or her singing amongst the wannabes, it's also her persona, her diva, her stardom which inspires them ... a pre-fame conic look."

Popularizing remixes

The impact of Carey's artistry has helped popularize rappers as a featured act in pop music through her post-1995 songs. She has been called the "Queen of Remixes" by multiple media sources, with Princess Gabbara of MTV News writing that it is "no secret that [Carey] goes to great lengths to deliver a spectacular remix, often re-recording vocals, penning new lyrics, shooting new music videos, and recording different versions to satisfy pop, R&B, hip-hop, and EDM audiences".

Sasha Frere-Jones, editor of The New Yorker commented, "It became standard for R&B/hip-hop stars like Missy Elliott and Beyoncé, to combine melodies with rapped verses. And young white pop stars—including Britney Spears, 'N Sync and Christina Aguilera—have spent much of the past ten years making pop music that is unmistakably R&B." Moreover, Jones concludes that "[Carey's] idea of pairing a female songbird with the leading male MCs of hip-hop changed R&B and, eventually, all of pop. Although now anyone is free to use this idea, the success of The Emancipation of Mimi suggests that it still belongs to Carey." Judnick Mayard, writer of The Fader, wrote that in regarding of R&B and hip hop collaboration, "The champion of this movement is Mariah Carey." Mayard also said that "To this day ODB and Mariah may still be the best and most random hip hop collaboration of all time", adding that due to the record "Fantasy", "R&B and Hip-Hop were the best of step siblings." Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times wrote, "In the mid-1990s Ms. Carey pioneered a subgenre that some people call the thug-love duet. Nowadays clean-cut pop stars are expected to collaborate with roughneck rappers, but when Ms. Carey teamed up with Ol' Dirty Bastard, of the Wu-Tang Clan, for the 1995 hit remix of 'Fantasy', it was a surprise, and a smash."