The most exciting new book on a popular artist I have read in quite some time. Andrew Chan pays close—even devotional—attention to Mariah Carey’s work, but maintains the critical distance needed to evaluate and historicize it. Combining the passion of the superfan with the analytical wit of our best cultural critics, Chan illuminates Carey’s art and legacy while raising the bar for future appraisals of women in pop.
~Emily J. Lordi, Vanderbilt University, author of The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience since the 1960s
Virtuosos are the trickiest subjects: as they bespell you they shut you down, they put you on your hands and knees. Andrew Chan's criticism stands straight up. He reveres, but he also explains, connects, analyzes, elaborates; he helps us see Mariah Carey as a tradition, a code, and a curriculum.
~Ben Ratliff, author of Coltrane: The Story of a Sound
Andrew Chan deconstructs the powerhouse that is Mariah Carey through exceptionally intimate writing, breaking her talent into its most fundamental elements. This book is an invaluable, deeply researched document of Carey as a pop anomaly, vocalist, songwriter, and creator in her own right.
~Clover Hope, author of The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop
In expansive prose . . . , Chan proves that despite a smooth-edged commercial exterior, Carey’s style “foregrounds the ways singing can activate something irrational and untamed within us.” It’s a satisfying tribute to a dynamic and influential singer.
~Publishers Weekly
Required reading for Lambs worldwide: In Why Mariah Matters, Andrew Chan looks beyond Mariah Carey’s undeniable glamour and incredible five-octave vocal range to examine the diva to explore her life as a mixed-race woman in music, her adventurous forays into gospel and house music, and her appeal to multiple generations of queer audiences.
~NYLON
Why Mariah Carey Matters makes the case for Mariah Carey’s place in the pantheon of great musical artists and it’s hard to disagree with its central argument, that for all her accolades, mainstream success and her over-the-top camp persona, we have overlooked the nuance and artistry underneath.
~The Queer Review
[Andrew Chan strikes] an elegant balance of tone and writing as a critic, a reporter, and a memoirist all at once . . . when Carey’s effect on audiences poses a phenomenological hurdle, he spins illuminating personal narratives only to then pivot towards rigorous close-readings of her lyrics, voice, and performances worthy of Barthes’s Mythologies.
~The Millions
