🎤 THE VOICE OF THE 90s? This week on The Insanely Dangerous Retropodshow, Dangerous Dave turns the volume up, attempts absolutely no whistle notes whatsoever, and takes a huge Dangerous Deep Dive into the incredible 1990s career of... MARIAH CAREY! From arriving seemingly out of nowhere in 1990 with Vision of Love to ending the decade with Heartbreaker, we're following Mariah through one of the most successful runs in 90s music. The albums. The number ones. The ballads. The R&B. The hip-hop collaborations. That extraordinary voice. And yes... Eventually we're going to have to mention that Christmas song. ⏰ WHAT HAPPENED WAY BACK WHEN? – 1990 First, Dangerous Dave fires up the Retropodshow time machine and heads back to 1990, the year Mariah Carey's debut album arrived. In music we're remembering Depeche Mode's “Enjoy the Silence,” Sinéad O'Connor's “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Madonna's “Vogue,” The Charlatans' “The Only One I Know” and MC Hammer's “U Can't Touch This.” At the cinema we're revisiting Goodfellas, Home Alone, Total Recall, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Edward Scissorhands. And on television it's The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Twin Peaks, Keeping Up Appearances, Law & Order and Dream On. Then Retro Headlines takes us back to Italia '90, Margaret Thatcher's resignation, the Channel Tunnel breakthrough, the arrival of Mr Bean, Hubble heading into space, Bartmania and more. 1990 was packed... And right in the middle of it, a new singer called Mariah Carey was about to become a superstar. 🎙️ DANGEROUS DEEP DIVE – MARIAH CAREY IN THE 90s Then it's time for the main event. Dave goes back before the fame to explore Mariah's early songwriting, demo recordings and the story of how her tape reached Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola. From there... It's album by album through the 1990s. 💿 MARIAH CAREY – 1990 What a way to start. Mariah's debut introduces that extraordinary voice to the world with Vision of Love, before Love Takes Time, Someday and I Don't Wanna Cry help turn her into an almost immediate chart phenomenon. But Dave also looks beyond the vocals to something that sometimes gets forgotten... Mariah Carey wasn't simply singing these songs. She was writing them. ⭐ Dangerous Dave Album Rating: 4.5/5 💿 EMOTIONS – 1991 Album number two pushes further into soul, gospel and R&B. The title track gives Mariah an opportunity to show off that ridiculous vocal range, while Can't Let Go and Make It Happen reveal different sides of her music. ⭐ 4/5 Then MTV Unplugged gives Mariah the opportunity to silence anybody wondering whether she could really reproduce those vocals live. Her performance of I'll Be There provides the answer. Yes. She bloody well could. 💿 MUSIC BOX – 1993 Then comes the album that turns Mariah into an even bigger global superstar. Dreamlover. Hero. Without You. Anytime You Need a Friend. Dave asks whether Music Box was perhaps a little too polished and safe... But when the songs are this strong, it's difficult to complain. ⭐ 4.5/5 🎄 MERRY CHRISTMAS – 1994 Sleigh bells incoming. Yes... It's time. ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU. Dave looks at why Mariah's Christmas monster has survived for decades, while also remembering Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), O Holy Night and the underrated Miss You Most (At Christmas Time). ⭐ 4.5/5 And Gaz would like to remind everyone that it isn't Christmas yet. 💿 DAYDREAM – 1995 Now things start changing. Daydream retains Mariah's enormous pop appeal while pushing further towards the R&B and hip-hop sounds she increasingly wanted to explore. There's Fantasy and its hugely important remix with Ol' Dirty Bastard. One Sweet Day with Boyz II Men. Always Be My Baby. And the beautiful Underneath the Stars. For Dangerous Dave... This is where Mariah reaches another level. ⭐ 5/5 🦋 BUTTERFLY – 1997 And then comes Dave's favourite Mariah Carey album of the decade. BUTTERFLY. More personal. More confident. More R&B. More hip-hop. And increasingly reflective of Mariah's own musical identity. Dave dives into Honey, Butterfly, My All, The Roof, Breakdown and Close My Eyes. This is the album where the superstar voice and the songwriter come together with a greater sense of freedom. ⭐ 5/5 And Dangerous Dave ranks... BUTTERFLY AS MARIAH'S BEST ALBUM OF THE 90s! 🌈 RAINBOW – 1999 Finally we reach the end of the decade with Rainbow. Heartbreaker with Jay-Z leads the way alongside Thank God I Found You, Crybaby with Snoop Dogg and Can't Take That Away. It may not quite reach the heights of Daydream or Butterfly... But it's another reminder of how far Mariah's sound had evolved since 1990. ⭐ 4/5 🏆 DANGEROUS DAVE'S TOP 10 MARIAH SONGS OF THE 90s After working through the decade, Dave somehow attempts to narrow the catalogue down to ten favourites. The countdown includes Emotions, Dreamlover, Hero, One Sweet Day, My All, Always Be My Baby, The Roof, Vision of Love and Fantasy... Before Dangerous Dave's number one goes to... 🍯 HONEY! For Dave, Honey represents everything that made second-half-of-the-90s Mariah so interesting — pop, R&B, hip-hop, songwriting, confidence and reinvention all coming together. And All I Want for Christmas Is You? That receives its own... Christmas Immortality Award! 🚧 DANGEROUS DETOUR – THE GREAT FEMALE VOICES OF THE 90s Why did the 1990s give us so many powerhouse female artists? Mariah Carey. Whitney Houston. Celine Dion. Janet Jackson. Toni Braxton. Madonna. Alanis Morissette. Shania Twain. And many more. Dave explores the era of enormous ballads, MTV, radio, the mainstream rise of R&B and the growing crossover between pop and hip-hop. It was a decade where a genuinely distinctive voice could become one of the biggest sounds on the planet. 📺 BACK IN THE ADS The Retropodshow heads back into the strange world of early-90s advertising as Dave remembers the loud, ridiculous and unforgettable style that made British adverts almost as memorable as the programmes they interrupted. Because sometimes... You can't remember what you watched on television last Tuesday. But you can remember an advert from thirty-five years ago word for word. 🥊 RETRO RUMBLE – MARIAH CAREY VS WHITNEY HOUSTON Oh dear. This won't cause any arguments. MARIAH CAREY VS WHITNEY HOUSTON! Two extraordinary singers collide over five rounds covering their voices, songs, albums, influence and 90s legacy. Whitney takes the vocal round for Dave thanks to that incredible tone, power and emotional delivery. But Mariah fights back through the depth of her 90s catalogue, album run, influence and sheer decade-long consistency. The final result... MARIAH CAREY WINS 4–1! Although Dave admits the score makes the battle look considerably easier than it actually was. Gaz immediately turns off the podcast's notifications. ⚠️ DANGEROUSLY UNDERRATED – THE ROOF From Butterfly... THE ROOF. Moody. Atmospheric. Personal. Sensual. And beautifully written. Dave argues that anyone who thinks Mariah Carey is simply about enormous notes should listen to The Roof. It's a song built around memory, atmosphere and emotion rather than vocal gymnastics. ⭐ 5/5 📼 ONE SEASON WONDER – NOWHERE MAN The year is 1995 and this week's One Season Wonder is the cult conspiracy thriller... NOWHERE MAN! Bruce Greenwood stars as photographer Thomas Veil, who leaves his wife at a restaurant for a few moments... Then returns to discover she apparently has no idea who he is. His identity disappears. His friends don't recognise him. His life has effectively been erased. And it might all be connected to one mysterious photograph. Paranoia, conspiracy and a cracking 90s premise. ⭐ 4.5/5 A proper forgotten One Season Wonder. 🧸 TOYBOX TIME MACHINE – TALKBOY Thanks to Home Alone 2, an ordinary-looking cassette recorder suddenly became one of the coolest gadgets a 90s kid could own. Record your voice. Change the playback speed. Pretend you're Kevin McCallister. And spend hours recording complete rubbish before annoying everybody in the house with it. TALKBOY! ⭐ 5/5 Peak 90s gadgetry. 🎧 GAZ'S RETRO RECORDS – 90s FEMALE SUPERSTARS Gaz is back in the record collection this week with five albums showcasing just how ridiculous the competition was for female artists during Mariah's decade. 🎬 Whitney Houston – The Bodyguard Soundtrack – 1992 Gaz begins with one of the biggest-selling soundtracks ever. Whitney Houston dominates with I Will Always Love You, alongside I'm Every Woman, I Have Nothing, Run to You and Queen of the Night. For Gaz, The Bodyguard captures Whitney at her most powerful — enormous songs, enormous vocals and one performance in particular that became inseparable from the 1990s. Gaz Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 🇨🇦 Celine Dion – Falling into You Next comes Celine Dion's blockbuster Falling into You. Because You Loved Me. It's All Coming Back to Me Now. All by Myself. This is peak 90s power-ballad territory. Subtle? Absolutely not. Does Gaz care? Absolutely not. Huge songs require a huge voice... And Celine had one. Gaz Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ 🔥 Janet Jackson – janet. – 1993 Then Gaz turns to Janet Jackson and her hugely successful 1993 alb
