Songoftheday 1/6/19 - I don't want another pretender to disillusion me one more time, whispering words of forever playing with my mind...

"Dreamlover" - Mariah Carey
from the album Music Box (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (eight weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 26

Today's song of the day is from Mariah Carey, who had just landed her sixth #1 pop hit in less than three years with her MTV Unplugged live version of the Jackson Five's "I'll Be There" in the summer of 1992. However, the success of her second studio album Emotions, despite selling in the millions and spinning off three top five pop hits including the #1 "Emotions", was in the conversation and obviously hanging over her head (though Emotions would be a massive hit in today's standards). In 1993, Carey released her third studio set Music Box, with producer and songwriter Walter Afanasieff dominating the record, running seven of the ten tracks. This included him producing the first single, though the blissful white-girl new jack of "Dreamlover" was written by Carey with Dave Hall (who had helmed Mary J. Blige's What's The 411? album) over the percussion sample from "Blind Alley" from proto-disco act the Emotions. The result was a breezy, upbeat track that still let Mariah's vocal range shine...

"Dreamlover" became Mariah's lucky seventh #1 pop hit in America in September of 1993, spending two months on top and tying Janet Jackson's "That's The Way Love Goes" for most weeks at #1 that year. The song spent four weeks at #2 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, and doubled that amount (eight weeks) on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio format list. The dance remixes, with re-recorded vocals by Mariah, helped the track top the Dance Club Play chart for a week as well. Internationally, the single took six weeks at #1 in Canada, and reached the top ten in New Zealand (#2), Portugal (#2), Australia (#7), the UK (#9), and the Netherlands (#9). It also hit the top-40 in Switzerland (#13), Iceland (#17), Belgium (#20), Ireland (#24), Sweden (#31), and Germany (#39). "Dreamlover" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Female Pop Vocal Performance, losing out to Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You".

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Here's Mariah debuting the song on the Arsenio Hall show in 1993...