YMMV / Mariah Carey

• Alternative Character Interpretation: "Always Be My Baby" is about a Yandere. Which is probably why Ari Aster used it for a certain film of his.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Started when Glitter tanked and almost ruined her career. It ended after the enormous success of The Emancipation of Mimi.
• Award Snub: At the 1996 Grammy Awards, Daydream was nominated for a total of six Grammys... and didn't win a single one of them. Mariah's growing frustration during the show was quite obvious.
  • She has won at the Europe and Japan versions of the MTV Video Music Awards but never at the American version, despite being nominated several times.
• Awesome Ego: She's a bit of a diva, but it actually adds to her popularity since she pulls off the ego with swag and is also a good person. She's also not above playing her diva-ish behaviour for laughs.
• Broken Base: Basically there are those who HATE everything Mariah has done since Butterfly/Rainbow (more often Rainbow), given that those were the albums when she started dressing in an overtly sexual fashion and collaborating with rappers in most of her songs and those who think her later stuff is good and look down upon her early work, which was mainly ballads and had Mariah playing the virgin ingenue role.
• Covered Up: Most people don't realize that "Without You" is a cover originally by Badfinger. The same could be said of the Harry Nilsson version, which went to No. 1 22 years before Mariah's version was released.
• Designated Hero: According to this, she comes across as this in the "We Belong Together" video.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Christina Aguilera fans and (in the 90s) Madonna and Janet Jackson fans. Also, to an extent, Céline Dion, especially in 1996 when both the Elusive Chanteuse and the Quebecois Chanteuse were at their commercial peaks.
  • With the rise of Ariana Grande (who admittedly does share similarities to Mariah even citing her as an influence) many Mariah fans have taken to mock Ariana.
  • With Jennifer Lopez fans as well, due to a controversy around the release of Mariah's song "Loverboy" and J. Lo's "I'm Real", involving J. Lo and Tommy Mottola reportedly stealing a sample Mariah had signed for a month prior ("Firecracker," by Yellow Magic Orchestra, which Mariah had planned to use in "Loverboy," but J. Lo wound up using in "I'm Real" instead). This forced Mariah to change the sample and composition of "Loverboy" (to instead incorporate "Candy" by Cameo), as this development meant she was unable to use the "Firecracker" sample as originally planned. Mariah herself has never had a kind word (or much of anything to say, really) about Lopez as a result, and the remix of "Loverboy" features a Take That! at Lopez from rapper Da Brat, set to the melody of "Firecracker":
    Hate on me/Much as you want to/You can't do/What the fuck I do/Bitches be/Emulating me daily
• Fetish Retardant: After two minutes of Mariah basically stripteasing the audience in the "Touch My Body" video, we are greeted with the lovely sight of Jack McBrayer climbing up a staircase on all fours, with his ass basically hanging out the back of his pants, while he clumsily lip syncs to the 'touch my body' lyric.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Some of her releases are among the top-selling albums in Japan, and she's still very popular there.
  • "All I Want for Christmas is You" is very popular in Japan, to the point where Mariah has performed it in concerts there. She's never gigged in Japan in December, though.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Without You," with its despair-filled lyrics, considering that both of the song's co-writers died by suicide. Also, the fact that Harry Nilsson, who took the song to No. 1 in 1972, passed away shortly before Mariah's version hit the charts - the week Carey's version debuted on Casey Kasem's weekly countdown, the host used the opportunity to pay tribute to Nilsson.
  • All those jokes on shows such as SNL about Carey's breakdown and her various bizarre appearances (TRL, New Year's Eve 2017) don't seem so funny now that she's revealed that she has Bipolar disorder, which explains many of her actions.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • On Tumblr, people often use gifs of Mariah Carey when they want to convey a diva-like attitude.
  • The sheer ubiquitousness of "All I Want for Christmas is You" throughout November and December^note Some places, like the Philippines, have the Christmas season start — and her emerging — at the first of September has led to countless jokes about it. Some treat her like a Sealed Evil in a Can who thaws from a block of ice at midnight of November 1 and retreats when Christmas comes. Disgruntled retail workers will make jokes about having to listen to it all day long as it plays over the store's speakers. Carey herself eventually got in on it, releasing videos every November 1 where she inaugurates the switch from the spooky season to the holiday season by announcing "it's time!"
  • "I don't know her" came about when an interviewer asked Carey about her feud with Jennifer Lopez. The reason for her response was likely because she didn't want to engage in schoolyard trash-talk, but it has since taken on a memetic life of its own.
• Newer Than They Think: "All I Want for Christmas is You" nailed the Phil Spector style so perfectly that younger listeners these days often assume it's an actual song from The '60s that she Covered Up. But no, she co-wrote it with Walter Afanasieff in 1994.
• Signature Song:
  • "Vision of Love", "Hero", and "We Belong Together".
  • "Fantasy" is considered an iconic number for her as well, to the point of critics claiming to be one of the most important songs in the development of modern Pop and R&B.
  • Her most well known song is probably "All I Want for Christmas Is You", to the point where Mariah's associated with Christmas. It helps that it made #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 twenty-five years after its 1994 release.
• Song Association: Let's just say that Beau Is Afraid using this song in a certain sex scene has changed the way many view "Always Be My Baby".
• Vindicated by History: The Glitter soundtrack, which was critically mauled upon its 2001 release, but has been reevaluated by fans over the years as being an effective 80s throwback in its own right. Such is the power of the Lambily that in late 2018, Glitter reentered the charts, and even hit number one on the iTunes album charts, courtesy of their #JusticeForGlitter campaign. To say thanks, Mariah added a medley of songs from Glitter to the setlist of the Caution World Tour.
• Win Back the Crowd: After the critical and commercial failure of Charmbracelet in 2002, many abandoned Carey and assumed her career was over. Jump cut to 2005, with the release of The Emancipation of Mimi and its hit single "We Belong Together". Many consider the former to be her best album and the latter to be her best song. Both won back a ton of the fans she lost, reviving an interest in her music and eventually paving the way for two more #1 singles ("Don't Forget About Us" and "Touch My Body") to add to her already impressive tally of sixteen.

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