Mariah Carey

You can't argue with success. Mariah Carey is the best-selling female pop artist. Ever. She's had more #1 singles than God and Lucifer combined, and her glass-shattering, ultra-high octave voice could dismantle an army of thousands in just a few notes. The Ballads collects Miss Carey's most-recognizable ballads that are a staple of her career and her live set lists. She built her reputation on bemoaning lost loves, and The Ballads puts all those songs all under one butterfly bejeweled roof. Diehard Mariah'ites will undoubtedly already own the albums that these songs originally appear on, but this nifty is strictly for those who want to overdose on the singer's honey-smooth voice. Is this release necessary? Probably not. But it certainly reminds the world how a girl nicknamed "Mimi," who hailed from Long Island, New York, scratched and clawed her way to the top of the pop food chain.

Her opening salvo, "Love Takes Time," from her curly-haired mop days, and her overly sentimental tune "Hero," along with her covers of "I Still Believe" and "Against All Odds," as well as her unplugged version of "I'll Be There" are here, as is the peppy "Dreamlover," which can hardly be classified as a ballad, but on a "best of" that centers on lovelorn anthems and sadder subject matter, the song's relatively quicker pace lightens the mood a bit. It's Mariah's parade of smash hits, with her celestial voice rising higher than mountain peaks. While Mariah has adopted a more urban groove late into her career, The Ballads is representative of her fragile, vulnerable and softer side. It's as though she comes back down to our level, especially when listening to the songs from the earlier phases of her illustrious and impressive career. If you're a thirtysomething, "Love Takes Time" will remind of when Mariah appeared on the scene in the early 1990s, in her skintight, dark wash jeans and black body suit, with her unruly locks blowing in the breeze while she sang her heart and her throat out. It'll transport you to wherever you were when this voice arrived on the scene. So if anything, it's a sprint down memory lane. Hard to believe Mariah Carey's been singing for her supper for nearly 20 years now!

So if you're in a mellow mood or just got unceremoniously dumped, reach for The Ballads, because you'll feel like Mariah and her big, room-filling voice can relate.

— Amy Sciarretto
02.05.09

In 1998, it would have been a cheap joke to say that Mariah Carey had no other kind of hits than ballads, but in the ensuing decade she steadily remade herself into an R&B diva, obscuring if not quite erasing the well-mannered adult contemporary singer of the '90s. The 2009 compilation The Ballads -- released just before Valentines Day 2009 -- attempts to turn back the clock by focusing just on those AC tunes -- 18 of them, in fact, including such mammoth hits as "Hero," "One Sweet Day," "Vision of Love," "I'll Be There," "I Still Believe," "Dreamlover," and "Always Be My Baby." Of course, this concentration on middle of the road ballads is a side effect of label affiliation: The Ballads is a product of Sony, who had Mariah during the '90s, before the club R&B overshadowed these office-friendly hits, so it's easier for them to cobble together a comp of Carey at her most sentimental. And that's what The Ballads is: nothing but big love songs sung in a big voice. For fans who have missed this side of Mariah in the 2000s, this is a welcome reminder of what they used to love. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide