Mariah Carey: Butterfly [LEGACY/COLUMBIA]

Why you'll love it

This 2020 reissue is freshly remastered. Butterfly topped the album charts in Canada and the United States, went five times platinum in the US and has sold more than ten million copies worldwide.

This edition

• Remastered

About the album

Every great pop star has the album where she stops taking notes and starts giving them. For Mariah Carey it was Butterfly, begun in November 1996 and built around a new circle of collaborators: Q-Tip, Missy Elliott, Stevie J and the Trackmasters, alongside her longtime partner Walter Afanasieff. The result leans hard into R&B and hip hop while keeping the soaring ballads that made her name.

"Honey" opens the record on Q-Tip's drum programming and Stevie J's keyboards, and it went straight to the top of the charts in Canada and the US. Afanasieff co-produced the title song, "My All" and "Whenever You Call," the big, sweeping numbers, while "Breakdown" and "The Roof" sit back in a cooler, late-night groove. Her cover of Prince's "The Beautiful Ones" and the closing "Outside" show how personal the writing had become.

Critics now tend to call it her finest work, and the R&B sound she found here shaped everything that followed. In some countries it first came out on MiniDisc, which we mention purely so you can feel good about choosing the vinyl.

Also at Kops: more Mariah Carey on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Legacy (cat# 19439776411), a reissue of the 1997 album.