FEATURE:
Second Spin
Mariah Carey - Butterfly
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I wanted to feature…
PHOTO CREDIT: Frank Micelotta/Hulton Archive
Mariah Carey’s sixth studio album, Butterfly, here because it still gets a lot of stick from some quarters. The follow-up to the phenomenal Daydream of 1995, Butterfly is a terrific release. I don’t think one needs to be a Mariah Carey fan to appreciate the songs and the variety throughout the album. Released on 16th September, 1997, Butterfly contained Hip-Hop and Urban Adult Contemporary sounds plus some softer and more contemporary melodies. Mariah Carey worked with many fantastic Hip-Hop producers and rappers such as Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs, Q-Tip, Missy Elliott and the Trackmasters. With the latter acts producing most of the album, Butterfly deviated from the contemporary sound of Carey's older work. I like how Butterfly is sort of symbolic in its title: the artist coming out of her cocoon and turning into this bright and liberated wonder. Pushing away from the Pop sound of her earliest albums, Carey was utilising R&B and Hip-Hop more – to great and hugely memorable effect right through the album. During her marriage to Tommy Mottola, Carey had little control over the creative and artistic steps she took on her albums. After their divorce midway through the album's conception, she was able to reflect her creative maturity and evolution in the album's writing and recording. With terrific singles like Honey, and Butterfly, I think Carey’s sixth studio album is one that deserves more attention now. It got some great reviews in 1997, but there are some sources that have been unkind towards it.
I want to bring in a feature from Essence from 2017. They marked twenty years of Butterfly in 2017. We hear from collaborators Da Brat, Stevie J, Krayzie Bone and Mariah Carey herself. I want to bring in some sections that caught my eye:
“Of course she’s technically “pop,” in the purest sense of the word. With ten platinum studio albums, 34 Grammy Nominations, countless Billboard hits and a slew of other record-breaking achievements, she is undoubtedly one of the most popular and prolific artists of all time.
But she didn’t choose that. It was kind of inevitable, right? Her voice alone —its palpability, its singularity— primed her for a career of singing chart-topping hits. She couldn’t help it.
It’s the other connotation of “pop” that doesn’t quite fit and feels more determined —the one that makes you think of bubblegum— light, generic, lacking substance or burden. The kind of label we give to artists who can create anthems, but rarely get intimate. That’s where Mariah gets off the train.
To not define (or to not at least offer a careful disclaimer) when calling Mariah “pop” is to ignore her legacy of delivering masterfully written music that’s personal, profound and soulful —the antithesis of the typical pop music formula. While songs like “Love Takes Time” and “One Sweet Day” from her earlier albums hinted at Carey’s desire to go deeper, it was 1997’s Butterfly that solidified the rhythm and blues quotient in her music and presented her as a vulnerable and self-reflective artist ready to break free.
With Butterfly, she created a classic. More than a branding tool, the butterfly became synonymous with Carey, and for a good reason. The imagery of a vibrant, spirited thing with incomparable beauty and an unpredictable wingspan, was the perfect mascot for Carey’s unprecedented range as a musician and an artist —her dynamic voice, so striking and distinct, it could only be something crafted by the Divine. Not to mention the butterfly’s process of becoming —its life cycle, its transition while cocooning, the stages of egg, caterpillar and then butterfly— served as an idyllic symbol for a woman on the brink of emerging.
Stevie J: “She was just being herself [when we worked together]. She was married at a young age, so you know she had really began to find herself and the woman she wanted to be. It’s a great thing for a woman when she gains her independence, so I didn’t really see anything other than just her being a happy, spirited person. We would have our Cristal and our wine and just be writing smashes.”
Da Brat: “Once she broke away from the cocoon, she spread her wings and flew on her own. She was ready to handle her own life. The ‘Honey’ video showed her escaping from an island. ‘Butterfly’ (the song) is self-explanatory. She came into herself. The album was soulful because that’s who she was. Behind all the glam, she was hood, still a kid, knew all of the lyrics to all rap songs… and just wanted to express herself in her own way. Her words are her truth. ‘Breakdown,’ just listen to the words. She joined forces with her favorite hip-hop homies who she knew she had great creative chemistry with and soared even higher.”
With the exception of “The Beautiful Ones,” a remake of Prince’s song, Mariah wrote or co-wrote each track on Butterfly. Carey’s former manager and American Idol judge, Randy Jackson reportedly stated that out of the “Big 3” (Whitney, Celine and Mariah) Mariah is the only one who also writes her own music. And according to her collaborators she really, really writes.
Stevie J: “When you have someone with that type of writing ability… Her pen game is lethal.”
Da Brat: “When MC works, she likes to write together with the producer or artist she’s collaborating with. She starts humming melodies, we throw ideas in the pot, different scenarios, rhymes, ad-libs, harmonies and then a masterpiece is crafted.”
Mariah: “I love writing, sometimes more than singing. There’s something about it. I love poetry. I love writing melodies. I love collaborating with other writers. When I’m not doing it, I don’t feel like myself.”
Even though it received mostly positive reviews upon its release, there were some more mixed and negative ones. This is what NME wrote in their review:
“Or maybe not. Still, we're not a million miles away from that sort of downward-spiralling, because Mariah's seventh album is a bruising diary of personal despair. Like Spiritualized's 'Ladies And Gentlemen...', it's a graphic depiction of a collapsing relationship.
You see, Mariah may have sold enough records to buy a lifetime's supply of platinum-coated elephants, but in the past year she has suffered a much-publicised divorce, as well as being the focus of some intense speculation regarding the nature of her relationship with 'pop genius' Sean 'Puffy' Combs. Needless to say, as a result 'Butterfly' is 65 minutes of gruelling angst.
Still, for an album that will doubtless propel Mariah ever nearer to that magic 100 million mark, it contains some truly great scenes. During 'Babydoll', we find Mariah alone and paranoid in her hotel suite in the early hours of the morning ("I'll have a little more wine/And I'll try to drink you/Out of my head"), while minutes later she's forgetting all about her marriage and getting frisky with a stranger on, er, 'The Roof' ("I couldn't bear to let you go yet/So I threw caution to the wind").
By this point, we're naturally reeling under the sheer weight of it all, and counting our blessings that the soundtrack to this emotional extremity is so reassuringly bland. Let's face it, in Jason Pierce's hands this would have been the most traumatic record of all time. Luckily, with the aid of Puffy and the odd Prince cover, most of Mariah's traumas are washed away in a stream of anaemic synthesisers and medium-paced ballads.
Which is why this album will sell approximately 1,000 times more copies than 'Ladies And Gentlemen...'. And why it's not that bad being Mariah Carey - even if your life is falling apart”.
I think I must have heard Butterfly when it came out in 1997. I liked Daydream in 1995, and I was hooked on singles like Fantasy. I was not a huge Mariah Carey fan prior to that, but I had new respect for her when her sound developed and shifted. I think Butterfly is a great album that deserves a lot of praise.
In a more positive review, this is how AllMusic reflected on an album that is seen as an R&B classic:
“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. Subsequent plays reveal that Carey's vocals are sultrier and more controlled than ever, and that helps "Butterfly," "Break Down," "Babydoll," and the Prince cover, "The Beautiful Ones," rank among her best; also, the ballads do have a stronger urban feel than before. Even though Butterfly doesn't have as many strong singles as Daydream, it's one of her best records, illustrating that Carey is continuing to improve and refine her music, which makes her a rarity among her '90s peers”.
Butterfly debuted at number-one at the US Billboard 200 selling 236,000 copies in the first week after its release. It maintained that position for one week and remained in the top-twenty for twenty-one weeks; it stayed in the chart for fifty-five weeks. Butterfly was certified five-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting shipments of five-million copies. It is one of the most successful albums of the 1990s so, if you ignored it when it came out or were not really aware of it, then check out Butterfly. Breakdown (ft. Krayzie Bone and Wish Bone) is my highlight, perhaps, but I love Honey, My All, and Babydoll. Spend some time and spin an album that is considered…
A classic from the 1990s.