(In 2018, Billboard staff released a list of their picks for each year’s biggest pop star, dating back to 1981. Read our entry on why Mariah Carey was our biggest pop star of 1991 below – with our 91 Honorable Mention runners-up, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars below – and the rest of our selection for each year to date can be found here.)

“I want to be here for a while,” Mariah Carey told the New York Times in September 1991, two days before the release of their second album, emotions. She was 21 years old, a self-described 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” may be a little in her face.) She wasn’t being ironic about sticking around, and you, the reader, are I wanted to wonder if she could succeed where others so often fail.

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Think, if you will, of a time when Mariah’s star power was far from assured, when coverage was practically enough for a year Just considered and doubted. Could she overcome the sophomore slump and build on the overwhelming success of her self-titled debut, which earned her a Best New Artist Grammy in February, propelling the then eight-month-old album to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, where it was…11 Spoiled for weeks? What did the label do differently this time? Was Tommy Mottola, then president of Sony Music and her alleged boyfriend, too ruthless and obsessed with influence?

The dramatic irony is delicious. She defied the wisdom of the record business and released her second album less than 18 months after her debut. emotions put Carey in the record books and reaffirmed her desire for creative control. (Carey is credited as co-producer and co-writer on each song.) Although it sold less than her self-titled song, emotions made Carey the first and only act to have her first five singles reach No. 1 on the Hot 100 when C+C Music Factory supported “Emotions” – her first major foray into club music, an area in which she excelled “90s” – topped the charts on October 12th.

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, reached the top 100 on the Hot 100 in March, just a month after her Grammys debut, where she wowed audiences and viewers at home with a powerful sound amazed rendition of “Vision of Love”. She owned the year with her softly curled hair and whistling vocal chops, which were showcased during the first-ever live televised performance of “Emotions” at the MTV Video Music Awards in early September.

In 1991 the Just published a letter from a smug, disbelieving reader who found it difficult to believe that Carey had a five-octave range, as the Gray Lady had described. Well, Linda Lister from Poughkeepsie, here’s Mariah’s performance of the profound classic “If It’s Over” from next year’s Grammys. Eat your heart out.

Honorable mention: Michael Jackson (Dangerous“Black or White,” $65 million contract extension with Sony), 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 guys from Philadelphia (Nathan Morris, Wanya Morris, Michael McCary and Shawn Stockman) wrote and recorded with Dallas Austin from Georgia. Until November ’91, Boyz II Men’s Cooleyhighharmony – was dropped by Motown after the caffeinated single “Motownphilly” started blowing up – was certified 2x platinum, buoyed by the marathon rise of its lead single (with a kinetic, color-blocked video) to No. 3 on the Hot 100. The You managed to combine their contemporary touch of doo-wop harmonies with real old-school ballads like “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday” to reconcile what made it a hit package.

Comeback of the Year: Amy Grant

The lines lit up as the song played. As popular as the song was, it also sparked controversy: callers were shocked and angry, according to KLTY Dallas’ director of program management billboard that listeners would say that 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 gentle, upbeat pop song with no explicit references to faith — caused offense among many Christian radio listeners. But it Was the No. 1 song in the country, the biggest solo hit from the religious singer-songwriter, who has been releasing music since the late ’70s and found herself in discord during her comeback when she wrote a cheerful love song about… her daughter. However, the controversy didn’t stop Grant for more than a minute and eventually became a turning point in the rise of one of the early ’90s’ most reliable pop radio hitmakers.

(Read more about our biggest pop star of 1992 here or return to the full list here.)

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