#1 [url]

Jan 29 14 5:07 PM

mcfan wrote:

The truth of the matter is, it all comes down to how Mariah has been perceived throughout her career: while her debut and Emotions was received well by R&B radio, by 1993 she was way marketed in a more Pop-oriented way. Then when she started making R&B music again she started being received quite well again. Radio won't play songs their listeners don't want to hear and that was especially true in Mariah's heyday (not now that it's all about politics). Those songs you mentioned were probably received poorly because Mariah's image went towards another direction at the time. In any case her history with R&B radio is not to be dismissed like you did. It's probably more consistent than her history with CHR who abandoned her as soon as she changed her image and never really embraced her again until she had a HUGE album. Look how fickle it has been since 1997.   

I don't think things from the 90s are exactly relevant at this point, anyway. Let's look at her Urban airplay peaks post-Rainbow, though probably only the last 5-10 years are truly relevant.

Wikipedia doesn't list her R&B Airplay peaks for most songs. Do you have that information? I'd love to see the peaks for her songs on that chart, and more so separating Urban and Urban AC.