1997: Mariah Carey, Butterfly
By Jaelani Turner-Williams
Nearly a decade after the balladeer innocence of her debut self-titled album and a line of saccharine follow-ups, on her sixth studio album Butterfly, icon and world-renowned vocal treasure Mariah Carey was repositioned into full independence. Preened with straightened, side swept blonde highlights far astray from the ringlet curls of her early-90s emergence, Butterfly was not only the soundtrack of Carey’s evolution, but a curtain call upon her marriage to record music executive Tommy Motolla.
Though Motolla was the maestro behind Carey’s early success--the story goes that she met her soon-to-be husband while ambitiously handing him a demo tape at an music industry party in the late-80’s--he was rumored to have later resented the singer for being just as determined without his tutelage. Reaching a breaking point in their marriage, Butterfly, in turn, was Carey’s unforseen breakthrough as an established act. Forgoing the pop-drenched sound of her early aughts, Carey deviated from her traditional audience, continuing her urban trajectory that was hinted towards on the Bad Boy remix of 1995 song “Fantasy” with the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard. While some mainstream artists set aside rap features for remix albums, Carey intentionally recruited a legion of Black artists who assisted with giving Butterfly its grit--Puff Daddy, Stevie J, Missy Elliott, Kelly Price, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and more.
The album had a rougher edge, but Carey’s tone on Butterfly wasn’t seething in resentment towards Motolla, it was instead reflective and melancholic, as though its hip-hop appeal was a defense for her vulnerability in the midst of the divorce. It was a vulnerability that I heard while living in a two-bedroom townhome with my mom, my second birthday being just five days shy of the album’s 1997 release. My mom was not only a single parent, but emotionally catonic following a lengthy child support dispute with my father, who was a revolving, impermanent presence throughout my childhood. Occasional family visits with my paternal side was inundated with awkwardness with me, the lovechild being in the room, while my half-brother--older by one year--was coddled, both of his parents celebrating their wedded bliss.
At home, my mom played Butterfly to pull through each weekend, house cleaning during early Saturday mornings, and unwinding on Sunday’s end, facing her solitude when she assumed I was asleep. Instead, I was awake, overrun with emotion as the piano-laden titular song swelled our townhome:
“I can't pretend these tears/Aren't over flowing steadily/I can't prevent this hurt from/Almost overtaking me/But I will stand and say goodbye/For you'll never be mine/Until you know the way it feels to fly.”
My father would visit sporadically, once overzealously coming to my mom’s townhome late during a weeknight, waking me up from my sleep. This haphazard eagerness seemed like he was overcompensating for broken promises of daddy-daughter playdates, ones that I intuitively knew would become cancelled when I didn’t hear from him. Heavily militarized from his time in the Army, I became a verbal punching bag when he would often yell at me unprovoked, even though I couldn’t tell you what it was for in the moment.
In a 1998 Rolling Stone article, Carey divagated away from promoting her album to ponder on her relationship with her own louche, absentee father. Forbidden to sing at the kitchen table prior to her parents’ divorce, Carey said that because of her father’s limitations, she was caused to tiptoe while barefoot well into her adulthood, because she’s had to tiptoe around fragments of hostility her whole life. No longer able to tiptoe around mutual acrimony with my mom, my father soon banished communication with me, briefly returning when I was fifteen years old, feigned with more irritation about being put on child support over a decade earlier, as though I was the judge. To survive the psychological warfare of my childhood, Butterfly was a haven of gentle, liberating refuge.
Also newly liberated was a then-27 year old Carey, who had moved forward with divorce proceedings, dismissing former managers and lawyers who were associates of Motolla to entirely detach herself from his proverbial grasp. Butterfly had a lingering message of ascension, leaving earthside troubles behind to arise into newfound freedom, especially heard on album deep cut “Close My Eyes” where the singer admits to growing up prematurely:
“I was a wayward child/With the weight of the world/That I held deep inside/Life was a winding road/And I learned many things/Little ones shouldn't know.”
Still, there were hints of in-betweenness towards love, as Carey bellowed on “The Roof” over a looped sample of “Shook Ones (Part II)” by fellow New York icons Mobb Deep. While the video shows the singer galavanting at a nighttime b-boy soiree with multiple suitors, visuals were intercut with Carey alone in a mirror and limo, transfixed in loneliness though enamored with options at the surface. Cautious towards men following severed communication with her father, with industry influence and being 20 years his junior, Motolla was disguised as Carey’s saving grace. Instead, her husband and business partner was fixated on dominance, from manipulating her social life and image, to dissuading her from pursuing an acting career.
Unconfined to Motolla’s overseeing eye following their divorce, Carey took their tumultuous love story to the big screen in her 2001 movie debut Glitter. While the movie was dismissed by critics for it’s rushed script and casting, the dynamic between Carey’s character, Billie Frank, and her love interest, Dice, took a turn for the worse following their serendipitous introduction at a nightclub. Dice, initially captivated with Frank’s voice, veered her into solo stardom, only to retract his decision by manipulating her contractual agreements and becoming verbally abusive. Riddled with guilt after they break up, Dice tries to reconcile with Frank through his songwriting, but is later murdered by a rival manager before Frank performs her first concert at Madison Square Garden.
In reality, Motolla lives (the shooting in Glitter was fictious)--and even got remarried to Mexican pop singer Thalía--intermittently facing his own regrets with mistreating Carey during her rise to fame. Carey’s metamorphosis still took shape, not only unchaining herself from her ex-husband’s authority, but from the past affliction of her father. Perhaps the two men were interchangeable.
The men I’ve had romantic and physical ties with seemed to shapeshift into the severed connection I’ve had with my father. I’ve noticed inklings of his moodiness and emotional manipulation in some of them, while others became avoidant when they were in the wrong. Rather than being forthright, one former partner of nearly two years discreetly moved in with his on-and-off girlfriend--an apartment where we’d hook up many times before his communication abruptly vanished. Shortly after I was born, my father rushed to the altar to marry the mother of his first child--my half-brother--only for my mom to find out through a mutual friend following the wedding. Patterns have a funny way of recurring until they’re broken.
In our earliest relationships, some of us experience an Oedipus complex--searching for parental acceptance in our subconscious, only to be critically stunted when a partner doesn’t nurture our growth. To ameliorate the pain, Carey threw her burdens into an album that was not only a cathartic stepping stone of her healing process, but arguably became her magnum opus, allowing her--and the repeated listener in myself—to float on.
Jaelani Turner-Williams is a freelance writer and homegirl based in Columbus, Ohio. With a concentration on social issues, literature, feminism, design and music criticism, Jaelani has written for various publications such as Bitch Media, NYLON, MTV News, Dwell and more. Post-COVID, she's running to the nearest Billie Eilish concert.