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Caution (86,320) by Tameka walker from United states
Hey lambs. I just want to share with you what happened to me when I tried to get Mariah 's album. I went around 7 am to get the album at Walmart but they did not have it out yet. This was Friday the 16th. So I went back around two they still didn't have it so I found this guy that works for Walmart and he had to go in the back where they had it. I waited two hours for him to go through the boxes and then I was able to buy the album. I think if it happened to me I tend to think that this experience could have happened to some one else.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 21:48)
Re: A lengthy meditation on the album (86,306) (86,319) by ADAM from USA
First off Chris1992, what a beautiful, detailed assessment of Mariah's latest album and overall status. It was very heartfelt and interesting to read.

I felt exactly the way you did probably in 2008. However now, I feel the opposite. I think the Mariah we see and hear now is the one she always was. I think Caution is finally the album she always wanted to create. She's a master lyricist and yes her voice is gone. However, she's learned how to adapt her lower register which is still beautiful to fit the mold of today's climate of music. As much as we all love her golden voice, no one is in more pain over its demise than Mariah herself. I can't imagine the guilt she must feel over her voice. However, I've learned to let it go and enjoy her music for what it is. Everything she does at this point is always a choice. It not a necessity. She will eventually not be here anymore and I want to remember and enjoy her for what she was and is.

I personally love the Caution album. The production is great and seamless. I never skip any song. I think its what Memoirs tried to be. I hope she continues to let Jay Z and Roc Nation guide her. Tommy Mottola was right in his autobiography. I remember a section when he said he always encouraged MC to produce alot of work and stay in the studio and be with the right people because his work as an executive he knew that all artists hit a creative wall and no longer produce their best work so basically strike while the irons hot. Her knew her voice/talent was in its prime and worked overtime to protect that.

I'm so glad Tommy was in her life when he was because if it wasn't for him we wouldn't have her best work, let alone the Christmas album. It's amazing how many points Tommy was behind in her career which made Mariah the superstar she is. Christmas album, Hero, Walter Afansieff, etc.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 21:38)
Re: Caution next single should be? (86,303) (86,318) by B from USA
I don't think Caution is going disappear a week or two after its release. I think when people that don't follow her career that closely go to Spotify to stream AIWFCIY they'll discover Caution and give it a listen.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 21:35)
Mariah at New Years festivities (86,316) by T from USA
Does everyone realize that new years eve is on a Thursday night this year. So if she is planning to return to the stage one more time at times square to debut A No No feat. Cardi B and Lil Kim it will be available to download right at the beginning of Friday morning and if there is a video ready to go we could be looking at a #1 debut the first week of January.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 21:08)
Promo with SNL (86,315) by Tyler from USA
I'll start by saying I am extremely pleased with MC's team and promotion this era. Everything from the shows, her outfits, interviews and performances are close to near perfection. The only thing I wish were added was hosting and performing on SNL. She is coming a cross extremely likable, relatable and humble. Her sense of humor is really showing with the dialing back of the divaness. I think SNL would of been an excellent platform to show her sense of humor and to jokingly make fun of herself. I could see so many of the skits going viral. Can you imagine a GTFO skit? Roc Nation needs to make this happen.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 21:04)
Mariah looks happy (86,314) by TheOne from UK
Mariah looks and acts like the Mariah from the late 90s. She's sounding mature, the right amount of playful. She's not going on tangents. She doesn't look uncomfortable in interviews. I feel like she's found herself again. The real Mariah seems to be present. I love seeing her in interviews atm. So proud of how she's turned a corner on a personal level.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 20:33)
Re: A lengthy meditation on the album (86,306) (86,313) by anonymous from UK
Actually feel it's an excellent post, and I read the whole thing. Thank you for taking the time to write it. But, and of course there's always a but, I have to respond.

The world at large right now seems to celebrate superficiality, where real emotions, feelings and thoughts are derided and are marketed as uncool, unsexy, and frankly things to be scared of. The way the world is going is like what everyone is scared of - the human race worries robots and tech will overtake the world, so before we lose control and that happens, we'll make the humans the emotionless robots first, driven only by consumption, uncaring to the multitude of emotion that makes a human being, well, a human being.

Today, it's more about loving yourself and the things that make you feel good, even for a fleeting moment, even at the expense of others. It made me feel good, so tough luck, baby. The media and the arts seem intent to turn us into selfish, self-centred narcissists with no greater agenda than to self-preserve. So either you turn into a heartless machine or you perish.

Mariah is a deeply feeling, emotional and responsive human being, and that just doesn't sell anymore. It's not what the powers that be want us to be. They have realised they can make more money, control more people by stripping them of emotion and replacing it with crass, unfeeling, ultimately meaningless exchange of ideas. Very precious little is real anymore. It has been given over to people pretending they are always happy, optimistic, fulfilled people.

I guess ultimately what I'm saying with this post is, as much as you, I am sad Mariah can't be herself truly now, but if she were to be, she'd truly have no audience. Not that she does now anyway, but I think the way she is reacting is an overall reaction most of the human race is feeling toward on one hand being encouraged to acknowledge mental health and feelings yet at the same time being told any negative emotion or feeling is scary, bad and somehow wrong. Just my two cents, but again I loved your post and I feel the same as you about many aspects of it.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 20:31)
Re: A lengthy meditation on the album (86,306) (86,312) by Carlos from Brazil
Chill man, chill.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 20:30)
Re: Sales (86,289) (86,311) by Jamie from UK
Hilton I always love your positivity. We can do this.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 20:03)
Re: A lengthy meditation on the album (86,306) (86,310) by Bobby A from United States
Let's look at Caution's as Mariah Carey's debut album. I try not to think about her as artist who was once this huge vocal powerhouse from the 90's whose pengame was well ahead of her peers. She is putting out R&B music that is filled with hip hop lyrics and rapid repetitive style singing. This is what she is most comfortable with at this point in her life. I believe she is going to bring something different when she performs the album on the Caution World Tour. I am predicting huge things are coming in 2019 like Caution Part 2, a making of Caution DVD, and a DVD of the Caution World Tour. We have to hear those JD tracks in 2019. Can you imagine the things her team can do to the stage set and dancer performances on this intimate tour? Remember how good she sounded on the intimate Angel's Advocate tour. The 90's MC is gone from her mind at this point. Embrace the R&B Mariah because she is here to stay.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 19:47)
Re: A lengthy meditation on the album (86,306) (86,309) by Jamie from UK
Maybe it's how you perceive her to be? The balladeer wouldn't have lasted past the 90's unfortunately. Often early on in a musicians career especially back then the record company would turn people into who they wanted them to be (George Michael, Whitney to name a couple). Inevitably like every human we evolve and change over time.
I personally love this album and vocally it's stronger than MIAM. She's more edgy like on Butterfly. Is it a Music Box? No but that type of music isn't made anymore. Best thing to do is appreciate the journey she's been on, no ones perfect. Artistry comes and goes, who's to say she won't write a huge hit in 10 years time?
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 19:41)
Re: A lengthy meditation on the album (86,306) (86,308) by bliss! from Brazil
Hey Chris, I really appreciate your words about the album, it's nice to read all kinds of opinions, especially from early 90s fans. I just keep wondering if the fact that she's singing about childish, casual, self-referential topics is a reflection of a woman who felt she found love (with Nick) - and got terribily devastated when it ended - and now has found that life should be taken less seriously, but always with an underlying caution? Maybe the light-hearted quality of the album is a reflection of how she's dealing with things right now, and maybe this approach is healthier for her?

And even, let's say, Mariah losing herself in this ghetto-princess fantasy is in fact Mariah losing touch with reality after all this years trapped in this celebrity world? I also think she gets frustrated with how she's perceived and how she sees herself, reason why she's always claiming to be a song writer first, and not only a singer. You really gave me a lot of food for thought.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 19:20)
Re: A lengthy meditation on the album (86,306) (86,307) by Bill from the UK
Well that killed the mood.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 19:04)
A lengthy meditation on the album (86,306) by Deleted from Czech
My honest appraisal of the album and general musings on Mariah's creative decline, as a fan of Mariah's 90's music. I have always defended Mariah and she will always be my favourite female artist, but I really do see this album as epitomizing everything wrong with the path she's been walking creatively for a long time.

-The Music is as synthetic and artificial as the blue tint of her skin on the album cover. Everything is so computerized now, everything is built upon digital beats and samples. Where "Emotions" brought to mind images of a live band of musicians putting it all together in some tucked-away studio in the back alleys of New York, "Caution" makes me think of a lonely sound engineer with dorito dust all over his face cutting beats in a home studio, copy-pasting some heavily edited vocals that Mariah's team just sent to his inbox. Everything feels so dead and inhuman. It really is the musical equivalent of all of her photoshopped album covers over the past few years. Of course, this is only a reflection of the general trends in popular music at large, which is one of the reasons we don't have talents like Mariah anymore. Why bother honing real authentic singing talent when people prefer synthetic music anyway? It's also one of the reasons Mariah lip syncs so much now, for what need is there to sing music as artificial as this with your natural voice? Nothing else about it is natural. I don't understand how people can complain about her lip syncing but apparently feel enthusiastic about the synthetic sound of her albums for the past 20 years, one follows quite logically from the other. Why should we demand natural vocals when we accept synthetic music made entirely on computers?

- Vocals are without doubt the worst we've ever heard from Mariah, and not because her voice is damaged. A damaged voice can still possess beauty, it can lend an air of wisdom or tragedy or world-weariness to the right music and actually enrich it. I know that Mariah's voice still has beauty and the right material could bring that out. The problem here is threefold... firstly, this is the antithesis of the right material, the songwriting is infantile and unbefitting of a woman of Mariah's talent and years. Secondly, her voice is buried under lifeless digital production which strips it of it's dignity, truth and character. Lastly, she can't hide just how indifferent she has become to the art of singing now... Everything is robotic, there's no passion or depth of feeling, she's about as expressive as Microsoft Sam on these cuts. Granted it's hard to sing material like this with conviction, but even her signature vocal melodies and melismatic phrasing are nowhere to be found... everything is sung straight, it's all flat and basic. Anybody could have written these vocal lines and anybody could sing them.

- She continues to write and sing in a completely false, contrived "street" idiom, now complete with obscenities and expletives. Who is she trying to fool exactly? Mariah, you're the daughter of an Irish American Opera singer from the midwest and you were raised by her on Long Island. You're naturally well spoken and remarkably eloquent as the countless interviews from the 90's prove but you insist on dumbing yourself down and trying to be something you're not. You're not ghetto, you're not hood and you never will be but you've been speaking and singing with a fake hood affectation for about 20 years, playing make believe as a ghetto princess. This facade has to fall some day. I suppose we can understand it through comprehending Mariah's fascination with Marilyn Monroe... Marilyn too put on a mask and turned herself into a product to be packaged and sold. She had to sacrifice Norma Jean to do it.

- The lyrical content is abysmal, it's actually cringe inducing at times. There's no substance, everything sounds like some kind of narcissistic self-referential in-joke, the songs are ill-defined and don't seem to have any organised theme... It's like she's going off on a lyrical tangent on every cut. A few pop-culture references here, namedropping a luxury brand there. This is not timeless writing. It's inane and juvenile. Nothing reflects any kind of higher values, there's no wisdom, no narrative, no storytelling, no tragedy, no catharsis. All that's left is money, sex, celebrity, and sass.

- The Mariah love ballad has now been all but replaced by the Mariah sex anthem. "One Mo Gen", "Stay Long Love You", "Caution", "With You" erase the distinction between love and lust. All the purity and the high romantic ideals that imbued her early music with an almost spiritual dignity have given way to vulgarity and artless references to sex acts. The woman who once sang "I had a vision of love, and it was all that you turned out to be" now sings "do you mind if we go back in one mo' gen?". When it was once "looking inside you my world is complete, I struggled to find you, now I'm free" it is now "you make me, make me wanna do that thing and do that thing, yeah". She's actually managed to become her own musical antithesis, you can't reconcile that Mariah with this one. Mariah will never write an honest love song again, will she? I don't think she believes in those songs anymore, she won't allow herself to be vulnerable like that. Everything has to be edgy, everything has to be "fun", which is so often just a cover for meaninglessness and nihilism. Even Portrait just feels like an insincere retread of something she said better a long time ago.

The way I see it, the basic problem with Mariah's music and image for a very long time has been this... for all of her otherworldly talent as a singer and a songwriter, she's never had a strong sense of who or what she wants to be as either an artist or as a person, she has no sense of her creative strengths, and so as much as it pains me to admit it she ultimately lacks artistic integrity. That explains how she was able to so quickly transition from her roots as a Soul/Gospel/classic RnB balladeer with an operatic twist (90-93) to a pop princess (93-97) to a Hip Hop diva (97 onwards). It explains how quickly and completely the image was able to devour the art, Mariah didn't know if she wanted to be known as songbird supreme or hip hop sex diva extraordinaire. She ultimately sacrificed her artistry for an image that had seduced her, an image she desired to present to the world, not necessarily who she was but clearly what she wanted to be... after achieving worldwide mega-fame she no longer desired to be seen anymore as the sensitive balladeer she was when she started, but instead as an icon of celebrity, power, sex and success. So she abandoned her true calling as an artist, the very thing that made her brilliant, her unmatched talent as a balladeer, to pursue the fantasy of being an international sex symbol and ghetto diva. She's been in creative free fall ever since. The girl can't decide whether she's a gangsta rapper from the hood or Marilyn Monroe. It's sad more than anything else, she can't just be herself, she's a tangle of contradictions and confusions.

The consequences? Creatively, her art has become lifeless and infantile, there is absolutely no wisdom to be found in it when she once showed wisdom beyond her years, and I believe her legacy has been permanently compromised. Personally I wonder what her inability to mature means for her... you can't be 12 forever. If you won't take the mask off yourself, time will inevitably strip it away.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 18:43)
Re: Understocked album (86,300) (86,305) by Myles from CT, USA
My cousin and I went to Target and they had no more copies left. By the grace of God they had 2 left in the back.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 18:41)
Re: Understocked album (86,300) (86,304) by B from USA
It's also sold out at my local Walmart. I've been streaming Caution nonstop on Spotify and despite not owning a cassette player I'm buying the Caution cassette for the nostalgia, lol. Caution is short and sweet and endlessly repayable which makes it an excellent streaming experience. It's definitely a mood.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 18:39)
Re: Caution next single should be? (86,295) (86,303) by Bobby A from United States
MC needs to move fast with sending The Distance to Rhythmic and Top 40 radio stations. And send A No No remix with Lil Kim and Cardi B to Urban and Hip Hop. If she doesn't do this, Caution is going to fade after Christmas CD sales.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 18:36)
Re: Understocked album (86,300) (86,302) by Bobby A from United States
I mentioned last week that a physical copy would be hard to find in many retailers. The Target store I purchased mine from in the DFW area had to be asked by me to put it on the shelf. Call your local Barnes and Nobles or check back at Target since they will be selling Caution for $7.00 through Black Friday according to Mariah's Twitter. Epic must be sending more copies to Target stores for Black Friday. FYE in the malls has copies for $9.99.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 18:30)
Re: A No No feat. Cardi B and Li'l Kim (86,291) (86,301) by B from USA
Word of mouth and the critical acclaim should keep this album on the charts longer than the two months MIAM was. The music speaks for itself.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 17:52)
Understocked album (86,300) by 123 from USA
So I went to Target in downtown Chicago and they had no more copies. She only had one slot. Buble had a whole top shelf and all his copies were gone. Mullford and Sons had half a shelf but plenty of copies. Looks like retailers understocked the album since her last projects didn't sell. I a lot of other lambs have complained about not being able I find a physical copy to purchase. So she would have never been able to obtain a #1 album unless people ordered online, bought a downloable copy, or streamed. Hopefully retailers order more for Black Friday. I will continue my hunt and in the meantime stream away.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 17:49)
Caution (86,299) by B from USA
Unlike Memoirs or MIAM I don't have to force myself to listen to the whole album. I'll queue up GTFO and the next thing I know Potraits is playing and I'm left wanting more. It's easily one of Mariah's best albums and is deserving of the critical acclaim it's receiving.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 17:45)
Re: A No No feat. Cardi B and Li'l Kim (86,286) (86,298) by Elena from The Netherlands
Since both Cardi and Kim fans want both of them to jump on a track since forever and A No No is a golden opportunity and an open invitation by MC herself, I believe if Mariah pushes this through we will have her 19th number 1 due to Cardi's chart domination and dream collaboration for fans. This is an ultimate slaying combo. Being a huge fan of all 3, I'd die in peace. Make it happen.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 17:24)
WWHL (86,297) by Licia from USA
Just got done watching. I'm so happy she may do Glitter medley on tour. It sucks that it took 17 years for us to appreciate it and for her to finally feel she can be proud of the album, but better late than never. I appreciate Andy for speaking on that good side/bad side crap. I loved how she dropped that knowledge about publishing and people recording her songs. Businessriah/Smartriah kills Divariah all day. The highlight for me was when she mimicked Aretha lol. All in all it was a great and fun interview.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 16:49)
Spotify (86,296) by Tevin from USA
I'm happy to see Mariah's sale projections, quick question. I'm purchasing one or two physical copies tomorrow. I pre saved the album on Spotify, but I'm wondering how do I make sure I'm streaming the album as a whole and not just a single or song from the album? As long as the album is saved can I skip around songs or will that effect the album streaming count? Sorry for all the questions I just want to make sure I'm boosting her album and not just particular songs. Thanks.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 16:46)
Re: Caution next single should be? (86,290) (86,295) by RibbonB from USA
B that's light work for mostly fans only. Sure It's a cool fun sounding song, attached to a familiar, funky sample. But Mariah's spitfire, rapid storytelling is both too coded and specific to draw the interests of the masses. This one needs a spontaneous challenge, with people spitting over the track, either guys shooting their shot to her constant no, or ladies co signing why she should say no. Lastly, since Mimi can't dance and this one is so fast ,it would make for awkward live moments with the song.
(Tuesday 20 November 2018; 16:26)

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