[渣翻] Pitchfork Reviews: Daydream, 7.9/10

原文地址： https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mariah-carey-daydream/

On 1995’s Daydream, the spectacular pop vocalist fine-tuned her songcraft. The album redrew the boundaries of what a Mariah Carey song—and a pop song—was supposed to sound like.

在1995年的Daydream中，Mariah Carey这位优秀的流行唱将对她的歌曲创作进行了微调。这张专辑重新定义了她的作品——甚至是当时的流行乐，应该具有怎样的听感。

Mariah Carey pranced through a slow-motion trainwreck in Times Square last New Year’s Eve and there was neither shock nor disappointment. Her instrument has been notoriously temperamental for well over a decade in the best possible conditions, let alone live on stage in the December cold. Her short setlist was ambitious at best and begging for trouble at worst. Laid low by technical problems, a failure to prepare, or some combination of the two, she tried to remain a good sport. She probably never should’ve taken the gig, though Carey’s career has been characterized by desperation and mismanagement for much of this decade, and she’d been reduced to hawking failed buzz singles and C-grade reality shows well before self-destructing in front of millions of viewers.

去年在纽约时代广场的演出上，Mariah Carey在舞台上兴致高涨，却给观众带来了一出演出车祸，但这既不令人吃惊，也不令人失望。过去十年，她的倒嗓问题早已为大众所知，即使在最好的演出条件下也不能避免失误，更别说在12月的寒风中演出了。她的准备歌单总是野心勃勃，可是在实际演出中却失误频出。即使遇到技术问题，或是事前准备不充分，或是有时两者兼有而造成的演出事故，她也毫不在意，保持着开朗大度的态度。Carey这个10年的事业道路被贴上了“自暴自弃”“管理失当”的标签，她也沦落到沿街叫卖自己无聊流行曲，不停地上三流真人秀的地步，所以在她在数千万的观众面前失态以前，她最好趁早放弃举办现场演唱会。

No matter how she got there, Carey found herself in an ignominious position for one of the greatest pop stars of the last 30 years. She’s sold enough albums to afford a new chaise longue every day until the sun burns out; when “Despacito” finally fell out of the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 this summer after 16 consecutive weeks, it had only just managed to tie a record Carey and Boyz II Men set two decades ago with “One Sweet Day.” She may reject being called the “queen of Christmas,” but it’s a title she earned by co-writing the greatest contemporary holiday song in “All I Want for Christmas is You.” Her biggest hits have cumulatively spent well over a year on top of the charts. Her dominance gave her the reach she needed to become the most influential pop vocalist and writer of her generation.

不论她是如何沦落到如今的地步的，作为过去30年最出色的流行歌手之一，Carey也许会觉得这个地位不太光彩。她卖专辑所赚的钱足以让她每天买一个新的法式躺椅，在上面尽情躺到太阳晒屁股；今年夏天“Despacito”在公告牌榜上的16连冠，也不过是平了20年前Carey和Boyz II Men的合作曲“One Sweet Day”所创下的榜单记录。她总是很抗拒被称作“圣诞女王”，但是这确实是在她参与创作那首传世经典节日歌曲“All I Want for Christmas is You”后所赢得的名号。她的热单登顶的时长累积起来足足有一年多。她在流行乐坛的绝对统治地位，让她成为了那个时代最有影响力的流行歌唱家和创作者。

The critic Sasha Frere-Jones outlined the two linchpins of Mariah’s legacy in an astute 2006 piece in The New Yorker, published after she defibrillated her career with the release of “We Belong Together.” Frere-Jones called Carey’s 1990 debut single “Vision of Love” the “Magna Carta of melisma,” and while its influence has finally started to wane, it remains the gold standard for pop stars who care about the craft of singing. You can hear her ghost in Adele and Sam Smith, in Bruno Mars and Demi Lovato. It took Carey three and a half minutes to lay down the terms by which pop virtuosity is still defined: power, range, and versatility, all of which she possessed for the first decade of her career.

就在Mariah发行“We Belong Together”，为她的音乐事业力挽狂澜后，评论家Sasha Frere-Jones在2006年的《纽约客》中一篇专栏中，精准地指出了Mariah的流行影响力绵延至今的两个关键点。Frere-Jones将Carey在1990年发行的处女单曲“Vision of Love”称作是“花唱的规范”，尽管它的影响力随时间的推移逐渐减弱，但是它依旧是评判流行歌手唱功的黄金标准。听众在Adele，Sam Smith，Bruno Mars和Demi Lovato的演唱中都能听到她所带来的影响。这首只花了Carey三分半钟就写就的单曲为往后的精湛流行演唱技巧制定了标准：力量，音域和多变性，而以上三种可贵特质她在职业生涯的第一个十年就已拥有。

Her second stroke of genius was ultimately more impactful. Carey did more than any other artist to bridge the gap that once separated traditional pop and hip-hop and R&B. She fused genres and sounds that were otherwise distinct, encouraging future artists to find and meet her somewhere in the middle. The aftereffects trickled down through the teen-pop icons and R&B crossover acts of the late ’90s to the stars shaping contemporary music: Beyoncé, Kanye West, Drake. (And Claire Boucher, of course: “The first time I heard Mariah Carey it shattered the fabric of my existence and I started Grimes.”) When Taylor Swift taps Future and Ed Sheeran for a posse cut and Rihanna hops on a N.E.R.D. single to rap alongside Pharrell, they’re walking a trail Mariah helped blaze. Her fifth studio album, 1995’s Daydream, played host to some of her purest pop songcraft, but it also pushed the boundaries defining what a Mariah Carey song was supposed to sound like.

她的第二个天才闪光般的特质无疑具有更巨大持久的影响力。在试图将一度独立割裂的传统流行乐、嘻哈、R&B三种曲风融汇贯通的过程中，没有任何一位音乐人比她做出了更多的努力。她将从前听起来截然不同的音乐流派与声效融合，并以此激励后来的音乐人们继续在此道上与她一起勉力前行。这深刻影响到之后的音乐发展进程，从90年代晚期青少年流行偶像与R&B曲风相融，一直到如今塑造当下流行乐形态的巨星们：Beyoncé, Kanye West, Drake. (当然还有Claire Boucher，她曾经说：“第一次听到Mariah Carey的歌曲时，我震惊到像是被击碎了存在的实体，于是我创造了我的虚拟音乐人格Grimes”)无论是Taylor Swift联合Future与Ed Sheeran，合作发行End Game装出一副黑帮模样，还是Rihanna在N.E.R.D.的单曲中与Pharrell一同说唱，她们不过是循了Mariah辉煌的音乐事业足迹。Mariah的第五张录音室专辑，发行于1995年的Daydream，不仅展现了她最纯熟的流行乐创作技巧，而且将她的歌曲在听感上的可能性再度拓展。

In retrospect, Carey’s omnivorousness was hiding in plain sight: she’d gotten Carole King and members of C+C Music Factory to share space on the tracklist of 1991’s Emotions, and her ebullient 1993 smash “Dreamlover” sampled Stax-era soul via Big Daddy Kane. She had the diverse listening tastes you’d expect from someone who grew up in and around New York City with a classically trained opera singer for a mother and a black Venezuelan father. (”I’d get home from school, and she would have, like, five friends over who were jazz musicians,” Carey told Vibe in 1996, “and I’d end up singing ’My Funny Valentine’ at two in the morning.”) The album version of “Fantasy” would’ve represented another step towards the sound of hip-hop on its own: sampling Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” lent the song a laid-back bounce that wasn’t too far from G-funk.

回首往事，Carey对于多元曲风的广泛兴趣一直有目共睹：她与Carole King和C+C Music Factory的成员们合作，于1991年发行专辑Emotions，而她1993年发行的那首热情洋溢的热单“Dreamlover”则是经由Big Daddy Kane的帮助，采样了Stax（一个灵魂乐厂牌）时代的灵魂乐歌曲。她的音乐品味非常多样，就如同你想象中的那种女孩一样——在纽约城里或周边长大，妈妈是经过古典系统严格训练的歌剧歌手，爸爸是一位委内瑞拉黑人。（“我放学回家，就能看见我妈妈的五六位爵士音乐家朋友在家里聚会，”Carey在1996年的采访中对Vibe说，“聚会通常以我凌晨两点的一曲‘My Funny Valentine’作结。”原版“Fantasy”是其本身向嘻哈迈进一大步的有力标志：采样Tom Tom Club的“Genius of Love”一曲，这使“Fantasy”听起来有着类似G-funk的风格，弹性十足，轻松愉悦。

And yet everyone other than Mariah was still shocked when Carey worked with Puffy Combs and Ol’ Dirty Bastard on the “Fantasy” remix. Her label wasn’t exactly psyched: “Everyone was like ’What, are you crazy?’,” Carey told Entertainment Weekly in 1997. “They’re very nervous about breaking the formula. It works to have me sing a ballad on stage in a long dress with my hair up.” Puffy couldn’t believe it either: it “bugged [him] out” when she asked to work with O.D.B. “She talked about Wu-Tang and Notorious B.I.G. and Mobb Deep—everybody who’s hot,” Combs told Vibe in 1996. “It was like talking to one of my friends.” The surprise in his voice is palpable, even on the page.

当Carey与Puffy Combs和Ol’ Dirty Bastard合作发行“Fantasy”的混音版本时，除了Mariah之外的所有人都被震惊了。她的唱片公司并不支持她这样的做法：“所有人看我都像‘什么，你疯了吗？’”，Carey在1997年的采访中告诉Entertainment Weekly。“他们对于打破陈规非常恐惧。在他们眼里我就是应该穿着晚礼服梳着发型，端庄地站在舞台上唱成人抒情。”Puffy本人也对此感到难以置信：当她提出想与O.D.B.合作时，他吃惊到“眼珠都要瞪掉了”。“她谈到了Wu-Tang、臭名昭著的B.I.G.和Mobb Deep——全都是当时炙手可热的音乐人，”Combs在1996年Vibe的采访中说。“她谈到他们就像在谈论一个朋友一样。”即使是纸质的报道，他语气中的惊喜也是显而易见的。

Carey was the only one with the vision, and it paid off: the “Fantasy” remix is still lean and cool, like one of those Nestea commercials where beautiful people fall backwards into interdimensional pools when they take a swig. By stripping the original “Fantasy” down to its skeleton, Puffy created space to appreciate Mariah’s complex vocal runs; O.D.B.’s ragged, comic energy is the perfect contrast to her adolescent dreaming. Hearing it now, it’s one of those songs where you can imagine pop shifting in real time as it plays. And Carey knows she had the last laugh: “They laughed at me at the label when I played them my ’Fantasy’ remix with Ol’ Dirty Bastard,” she told Rolling Stone in 2006. “But you can’t explain to someone who didn’t grow up on hip-hop and who’s wanting to listen to the GoodFellas soundtrack exclusively that this is hot and it will be a classic.”

Carey在音乐上的远见无可比拟，她的努力也得到了回报：“Fantasy”的混音版本即使在今天也听起来简洁精炼、前卫时髦，就像雀巢Nestea的广告中一样，美女帅哥们大口喝酒，再向后倒向泳池，通向另一个维度的世界。Puffy在制作时只保留了“Fantasy”最精简的骨架部分，给听众留下空间尽情欣赏享受Mariah繁复的演唱技巧；O.D.B.粗糙滑稽的声音则与她在演唱中所呈现的少女怀春白日梦形成了鲜明的对照。听到这首歌，它能让你在聆听时想象与感受当下流行乐形态的演变。Carey深知自己笑到了最后：“当我在唱片公司里放‘Fantasy’的混音版给他们听时，所有人都在嘲笑我，”她在滚石2006年的采访中说到。“但是你没办法告诉他们，这首歌会大火，会成为流行经典，因为他们从小并没有接受过嘻哈文化的熏陶，他们除了《好家伙》的电影原声带之外什么都不想听。”

Daydream is at its most satisfying when Carey directly interfaces with R&B and hip-hop. “Underneath the Stars” is a tribute to ’70s R&B legends like Minnie Riperton complete with vinyl crackle, and it’s a display of the subtlety Carey’s detractors liked to claim she lacked. Gliding over a glistening Rhodes organ, she remembers an easy young love that slipped away. Lying with her lover on a warm summer night, she’s “a bundle of butterflies/Flushed with the heat of desire.” This is recurring imagery in the Carey discography, but it’s never rendered with more finesse than it is here. The accompanying vocal arrangement is delicate and imaginative; her whistle register is a garnish, not the main course. The final product is one of her greatest hidden gems.

在致力于直接与R&B与嘻哈风格融合的过程中，Daydream显然已经是最令人满意的成果。“Underneath the Stars”中点缀着旧时黑胶唱片所特有的噼啪声，这是对70年代R&B传奇歌手们，例如Minnie Riperton的致敬，这首歌也展现了Carey对于歌曲细节的把控与处理能力，她长期以来一直为缺少这种能力而饱受诟病。歌曲中闪耀着罗德管风琴的微光，一串旋律叮咚滑过，让她想起一段年少时期已逝爱恋的轻松自在。同她的爱人共同躺在温暖夏夜的星空下，她“So shy a bundle of butterflies(如此羞涩 一群蝴蝶带着欲望的温度振翅而飞)/Flushed with the heat of desire（扑扇着热的欲望）”。“蝴蝶”这一意象在Carey的音乐作品中是反复出现的，但是她别的作品中对于这一意象的运用都没有此处巧妙。伴唱和声的编排相当精致玲珑，别出心裁；她的哨音在此处也只是锦上添花，而非主菜。这首歌是她最优秀的冷门良曲之一。

She dipped into the opposite end of her range for “Melt Away,” a syrupy collaboration with Babyface that sounds like it could’ve been written for Toni Braxton. Carey’s voice is so rich during the song’s first verse that it tripped up some listeners: “A lot of people who wrote about the album thought that was Babyface singing at the beginning,” she laughed to Vibe. She’d come to lean on the sultry bottom half of her range as time and age made it tougher to reach the stratosphere, and “Melt Away” makes for an elegant early proof of concept.

她在“Melt Away”中转而探索了她音域的另一个极致，这首歌有Babyface参与合作，缠绵粘腻的旋律听起来像是这首歌本来是写给Toni Braxton的。Carey的声音听起来层次如此丰富，以至于误导了一些听众：“许多参与创作专辑的人都以为这首歌的开头部分是Babyface在唱。”在接受Vibe的采访时她笑道。随着她年岁日长，她演唱时变得愈加依赖于她的低音层，因为自身的嗓音条件使她再难冲击高音，“Melt Away”为这种转变思路开了先河。

Daydream also marked the start of Carey’s long, fruitful working relationship with the producer Jermaine Dupri. While the buoyant “Always Be My Baby” was a bigger hit—it was the third and final Daydream single to reach No. 1—it’s album cut “Long Ago” that now sounds like the shape of things to come. The songs have similar bones: there are moments in each where all you hear is Mariah singing over rock-solid piano chords, and the simplicity is almost surprising given her taste for the ostentatious. But “Long Ago” weds those chords to a rugged beat, and Mariah flows over it with the ease of someone with a genuine appreciation for hip-hop. (She could’ve gone even rougher: “I remember the first track we tried to do, she wanted to sing over Wu-Tang’s “C.R.E.A.M.,” Dupri told Genius last year.) Carey made this seamless blend of pop and hip-hop the core of Butterfly, and it served as the foundation for her late-career reinvigoration nearly a decade later.

Daydream同时也标志着Carey与制作人Jermaine Dupri长期的、卓有成效的合作的开端。尽管生动活泼的“Always Be My Baby”在当时成为了大热单曲（这是Daydream中第三首也是最后一首登顶单曲），但是现在看来，专辑中的“Long Ago”才是决定了两人今后合作发展态势的一首歌曲。这两首歌拥有相似的精髓：在这两首歌中你们都能听到Mariah在稳固的钢琴和弦伴奏下演唱，而伴奏的简洁恰好惊喜地衬托出她唱腔的华丽。但是“Long Ago”将这些钢琴和弦与粗犷的节奏相连结，Mariah在这样的伴奏下轻松自如地演唱，正是因为她对于嘻哈风格有着最真挚的热爱。（她本来还能变得更“嘻哈”一些：“我还记得我们合作的第一首歌，她甚至想在Wu-Tang的‘C.R.E.A.M.’的基础上创作演唱。”Dupri去年在接受Genius的采访时说。）Carey将流行与嘻哈无缝衔接，并将这样的风格代入了之后的专辑，使其成为Butterfly的精神内核。这样的风格也在将近10年之后，成为了她后期事业道路复兴的坚实基础。

Daydream is still interesting when Carey isn’t breaking new stylistic ground. She may have been showing off a newfound versatility on “Long Ago” and “Melt Away,” but she was also still near the peak of her powers as an athletic vocalist, and she put that athleticism to work powering daring arrangements and stunning modulations. “One Sweet Day” may be built around a killer hook, but that’s not what sticks with you on repeated listens—it’s the song’s ecstatic second half, in which Carey and Boyz II Men use that sturdy chorus as the foundation for gymnastic riffs and clusters of harmony. It’s not just showmanship, it’s an expression of communal grief that transcends lyrics and musical structure. (Carey wanted to write a eulogy after the producer David Cole, a collaborator and close friend, passed away in early 1995.) Their performance transforms an elegy into something joyous, a celebration of life and whatever might unite us after it. And while no other song on Daydream can match the emotive power of “One Sweet Day,” Mariah’s performances are uniformly strong no matter the context. “I Am Free” is a gospel workout, complete with an organ and the support of a mini-Mariah choir; dewy weeper “When I Saw You” is rescued by her melismatic belting; Ariana Grande would eat her ponytail for a ’50s waltz as potent as “Forever.”

尽管Carey并没有在属于自己的基础风格上作出突破，但是Daydream还是听起来非常有趣。她也许在“Long Ago”和“Melt Away”中呈现了那两年她在曲风多元化上的开拓，但是作为一位实力唱将，她仍然处在嗓音条件的巅峰期，于是她将这份魄力全情投入到专辑准备中，并做出了大胆惊人的编排与制作。“One Sweet Day”也许听起来像是围绕极动听的旋律徐徐展开，但是事实上这并不是让你一遍又一遍点开这首歌的主要原因——它如此悦耳的原因是，在这首歌感情充沛的后半部分，Carey和Boyz II Men以坚毅的副歌合唱打底，衬托出绚烂繁复的即兴与和声唱段。这首歌并不只是演唱技巧的炫耀，而是超越了歌词与音乐结构的，对于普世价值观中人类悲怮情绪的传达。（Carey想要以这首歌作为献给制作人David Cole的哀悼，他于1995年初去世，是Carey一直以来亲密的合作者与朋友）这首歌却将哀歌转化成为欢声笑语，对于生活的感恩，以及在经历暴风雨后仍然能携手前行的庆幸。尽管Daydream中没有任何一首歌能比“One Sweet Day”更有感染力，但是Mariah在这张专辑中的所有演唱都有如教科书一般无懈可击。“I Am Free”是她在福音曲领域的尝试，由管风琴伴奏，用Mariah自己的人声混声合成的“小型Mariah Carey唱诗班”伴唱；如泣如诉的“When I Saw You”幸好有她优美的花腔拯救；而如果Ariana Grande的那些50年代的充满华尔兹舞曲风格的歌曲能做到像“Forever”一样优秀的话，她应该会心甘情愿地剪掉她的标志性马尾。

The only Daydream ballad that’s an unequivocal failure is Carey’s cover of “Open Arms,” and that’s in part because it lacked Mariah’s pen. Carey came into her own as a writer on Daydream: she showed off her fabled vocabulary without leaning on the self-aware quirk of her later work, and almost every song is bolstered by at least one stunning piece of imagery. “When I Saw You” opens with a description of a lover that takes on cosmic significance: “Soft, heavenly eyes gazed into me/Transcending space and time.” (She touches on the power of “dawn’s ribbon of light” in the second verse.) The bridge of “Melt Away” opens with a “cloud of reverie” and ends with Mariah “rhapsodizing.” And she describes the love she feels throughout “Underneath the Stars” as “so heady and sublime,” a phrase that also happens to describe Carey’s lyrical stylings.

Daydream的一众芭乐曲中最大的失败毫无疑问是Carey对“Open Arms”的翻唱，但是这首歌的失败也只是因为它并非出自Mariah之手。在Daydream的筹备过程中，她成为了名副其实的词曲创作者：她展现了自己的虚构歌词创作能力，而不像她后期的作品那样，需要基于自己真实生活中的糟心事进行创作。每一首歌的歌词中都至少有一处绝妙的细节描写，为整首歌的氛围营造增光添彩。“When I Saw You”的开篇意蕴广阔，将爱人描写成一个充满神性的形象：“Soft, heavenly eyes gazed into me（你天使般的眼睛温柔地看着我）/Transcending space and time（超越了时间与空间）”（在第二段主歌中，她吟唱着“dawn’s ribbon of light（像是黎明时绸缎般的光芒）”，带给听众同样的触动）。“Melt Away”的桥段以“cloud of reverie（幻想的烟云）”开头，以“rhapsodizing（思潮汹涌）”结尾。在“Underneath the Stars”中，她把爱情的甜蜜描述为“so heady and sublime（如此惬意而舒爽）”，这一个短语同样可以用来形容Daydream时期Carey的词作风格。

Daydream wasn’t just transitional in a musical sense. We know now that it was the beginning of the end for Mariah’s innocence, a moment that has some gravity given we’re talking about a star who likes to refer to herself as “eternally 12.” Her marriage to former Sony Music chief Tommy Mottola was crumbling, and she would look back on their relationship later and reflect on how it was governed by abuse and control. She didn’t know it then, but her absolute commercial zenith would soon be in the rear-view mirror. The instability of Rainbow and the full-blown breakdown of Glitter weren’t far away. Only closer “Looking In” hints at the darkness looming on the horizon: “She smiles through a thousand tears/And harbors adolescent fears/She dreams of all that she can never be.” It’s a startling final statement, but you still leave Daydream with effervescence in mind—sweet, stirring, and dominant, a tour de force from one of the greats at the top of her game.

Daydream本身的过渡属性不只体现在音乐性上。我们现在都清楚，这张专辑是那个纯真无邪的少女Mariah消失的开始，这一刻也为我们去谈论一位总是称自己“永远12岁”的歌星提供了契机。那时她与前任索尼公司总裁Tommy Mottola婚姻摇摇欲坠，在之后回望往事，她也会反思这段关系如何在互相虐待和变态的掌控欲下走向崩溃。发行Daydream时她并不会知道，她巨大的商业价值即将一落千丈，成为后视镜中遥远而模糊的风景。她也不会知道，Rainbow中歌曲质量的参差不齐，Glitter的全方位溃败，就会出现在发行Daydream不久之后。只有结尾曲“Looking In”暗示着悄然而至的至暗时刻：“She smiles through a thousand tears（她笑着流下了眼泪）/And harbors adolescent fears（伴随着青春的恐惧）/She dreams of all that she can never be（她梦想着所有，却从未做到）”如此的结尾方式着实令人惊异，但是听众心中对Daydream的印象仍然是热情洋溢的——甜美可人、激情澎湃，同时又充满力量。Daydream是一位杰出的流行乐歌手在她的巅峰期为所有人倾情献上的音乐巨作。

注：本人非英专，翻译只是兴趣所在，如有错误请在评论区指出或私信我，理性讨论不撕逼不吵架。数字评分及乐评内容代表Pitchfork观点，不代表本人观点（星级和短评代表本人观点，两者之间没有必然联系）