(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list of their picks for the biggest pop star of each year, dating back to 1981. Read our entry on why Mariah Carey was the biggest pop star of 1991 below — with '91 Honorable Mention runners-up, Rookie of the Year and Pop Comeback of the Year at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for each year to date here.)
“I wanna be around for a while,” Mariah Carey he said to New York Times in September 1991, two days before the release of her second album, Emotions. She was 21, a studio rat and workaholic—the playful diva persona she cultivated and inhabited so well was still waiting in the wings. (The part where she says she won't be touring because “I need a lot of sleep” closes her hand a bit, maybe). he wanted to wonder if he could succeed where others so often fail.
Dig if you will for a moment when Mariah's star power was far from assured, when nearly a year's worth of coverage from Times he pondered and questioned. It could fall to the sophomore and match the surprise success of her self-titled debut, which earned her a Grammy for best new artist in February, propelling the then-eight-month-old album to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, where he also topped for 11 consecutive weeks? What was it the label does things differently this time around; It was Tommy Mottola, then president of Sony Music and her rumored boyfriend, very reckless and hung up on the influence?
Dramatic irony is delicious. Defying label wisdom by releasing her second album less than 18 months after her debut, Emotions it put Carey on the record books and confirmed her desire for creative control. (Carey is credited as a co-producer and co-writer on each song.) Although it sold less than its self-titled, Emotions made Carey the first and only artist to have her first five singles reach No. 1 on the Hot 100, when the C+C Music Factory-assisted “Emotions” — her first major foray into club music, an area where she excelled in the '90s — topped the chart on Oct. 12.
Between release cycles for Mariah Carey and Emotionsthere was never a moment when Carey wasn't on your radar — in clubs, on the radio, on your Walkman, on your TV, on the covers of magazines like New York and Jet. “I Don't Wanna Cry,” the tear-jerking fourth single from the self-titled LP, topped the Hot 100 in March, just a month after her Grammys debut, where she wowed the crowd and viewers at home a powerful rendition of “Vision of Love.” She owned the year, with her soft curls and vocal punches on display in the first live televised performance of “Emotions”, at the MTV Video Music Awards in early September.
In 1991, the Times published a letter from a smug, skeptical reader he had it was hard to believe that Carey possessed a five-octave rangeas the Gray Lady had described. Well, Linda Lister, of Poughkeepsie, here she is Mariah's rendition of the soulful classic “If It's Over,” from next year's Grammys. Eat your heart out.
Honorable Mention: Michael Jackson (Dangerous“Black or White,” $65 million Sony contract extension), Garth Brooks (Ropin' the Wind“The Thunder Rolls”, “Shameless”), Color Me Badd (CMB“I Wanna Sex You Up”, “I Adore Mi Amor”)
Rookie of the Year: Boyz II Men
They were teenagers, the three singers and their producer, and none of them had made an album before. In about six weeks, the four kids from Philadelphia (Nathan Morris, Wanya Morris, Michael McCary and Shawn Stockman) wrote and recorded with Georgia's Dallas Austin. By November '91, Boyz II Men's cooleyhighharmony — stormed out of Motown after the caffeinated single “Motownphilly” started blowing up — was certified 2x platinum, boosted by his first single's marathon climb (featuring a kinetic, color-blocked video) to No. 3 on the Hot 100. That they could balance their modern twist on doo-wop harmonies with real old ballads like “It's So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday” made them the total package.
Comeback of the Year: Amy Grant
The lines lit up when the song played. As the song was requested, it also caused controversy: Callers were upset, angry, with the head of program management at KLTY Dallas saying Bulletin board that listeners would say the song “reminds me too much of the old life I came out of”. It was April 1991, and Amy Grant's “Baby Baby”—a soft, upbeat pop song with no explicit references to faith—was the trigger for many Christian radio listeners. But this it was the No. 1 country song, the biggest solo hit for the dedicated singer-songwriter, who has been releasing music since the late '70s and had entered a comeback frenzy by penning a soulful love song about… her daughter. It didn't stop Grant for more than a minute though, the controversy ultimately becoming a blow to the rise of one of pop radio's most reliable creators in the early '90s.
(Read about the best pop star of 1992 here or go back to the full list here.)
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/mariah-carey-best-pop-star-1991-1235824806/
