Dis Cover: Mariah Carey - Here for It All

Mariah Carey lifted the lid on her upcoming album, sharing the title, the release date and the album covers — all three of them.Something that I’ve not always thought about when it comes to Mariah Carey is how memorable some of her album covers are — the good and the bad. When you think of a Mariah album, you can picture the cover immediately. Mariah’s never been much of a visual girly, But the branding has always been pretty consistent — such as her classic font, despite a deviation for E=MC². And when Mariah gets it and she locks in, she really gets it. And I think Here for It All might be one of those moments, because Mariah gave us a really nice album cover here. It’s no Caution. But it’s nice.

Mariah Carey - Here for It All | Mariah / Gamma

I really like this shot of Mariah. Not only is it just a really nice shot, but it encapsulates the carefree, nonchalance of the album title. Mariah’s just here. Living her best life. Here for it all. Of the three album covers, this is by far the best one. So it’s just as well that it’s the main one.

Mariah Carey - Here for It All | Mariah / Gamma

Now, this is the D2C album cover. And whilst I like the shot of Mariah, I don’t like her outfit. The colour of the outfit, the material of it and the cut of it just draws your eyes to it. And it’s not a particularly nice or flattering outfit to look at. If the cut was different and the fabric was softer, this would have worked much better. Maybe the intention was to draw our attention to the titties and torso, to distract from how much Mariah’s make-up artist Kristoffer Buckle overdrew her top lip. AND THEN there is the lack of fun, charm and playfulness which the standard cover has, which I feel every version of the album cover should’ve had. As an album shot in the inlay or on the back of the CD / vinyl, it’d be fine. But I would not have chosen this shot as one of the covers.

Mariah Carey - Here for It All | Mariah / Gamma

Then there is the Amazon exclusive cover. This shit is boring. But at least Mariah is smiling. This would make a nice single cover for the album title track “Here for It All”. And with how Mariah has been talking the song up lately, even sharing a snippet of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were released as a single. But ain’t no way this shot is gonna be used for a single now, because it’s obviously an album cover. And I doubt any single from here on out would even get a single cover. “Sugar Sweet” sure as hell didn’t get one, at least not on DSPs.

The last time Mariah gave us a black and white album cover was with E=MC2 in 2008. And before that, it was with Daydream in 1995. I don’t think there’s any significance to this. The E=MC2 album cover was probably in black and white to make her name pop on it. And the Daydream album cover was shot by Steven Meisel, who was known for shooting in black and white. And with Here for It All, I guess they went with black and white as a creative choice — which was the right choice. I don’t think the standard album cover shot would look as good in colour.

However, whilst it’s easy to make album cover shots look classic in black and white, it can make an album difficult to brand, because there is no colour you can use as a central theme across all of the marketing material. One of the coolest things about Caution was that the branding for that album was all pink — a colour which featured on the album cover. Associating an album with a colour has a lot more importance than it seems. Just look at Beyonce’s Renaissance going all in on silver and how that translated to the outfits people wore to the tour. And look at Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour, where each era was represented by a colour, correlating to the dominant colour of that album cover. And interestingly, it’s the two albums which had no colour — Reputation and Folklore — which were branded with snakes and fonts respectively because of that. So part of me does wish that the album cover did feature a pop of a colour. But irregardless, the main album cover is really nice and I’m here for it all.

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💿 Mariah Carey album reviews: Merry Christmas | Rainbow | Charmbracelet | Glitter | E=MC² | Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel | Merry Christmas II You | Merry Christmas II You | Me. I Am Mariah... | Caution

🎛️ ?J Mariah Carey mixes & mashups: Mariah Carey x Sonic the Hedgehog | Mariah Carey featuring Megan Thee Stallion | Mariah Carey x NewJeans