Dreamlover

Dreamlover

Mariah Carey

“Dreamlover” is a Pop/R&B song that centers around the longing for a perfect lover.

It was released on July 23, 1993 as the first single from her third album Music Box. It charted at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and became the biggest hit of the year.

It samples “Blind Alley” by The Emotions, which had previously been sampled by rapper Big Daddy Kane in 1988 for his song “Ain’t No Half Steppin'”

In an interview with Fred Bronson, Mariah described the recording process:

I wanted to do something that had a happy feeling, something that was more open and released, and that’s really not Dave. It’s very anti what he’s about. So he said, ‘Oh, you want to do that happy stuff? All right, all right.’ He was not into doing it. Then we started listening to a lot of different and old loops and we used the ‘Blind Alley’ loop and I started singing the melody over it

Music executive Tommy Mottola, Carey’s fiancée at the time, didn’t like the initial outcome of “Dreamlover” so he had producer Walter Afanasieff change the instrumental. In an interview Afanasieff described the alteration:

Mariah and Dave did this loop thing which was new to us pop producers at the time. Their version of ‘Dreamlover’ was missing a lot of stuff. The spirit of the song was up, but it wasn’t hitting hard enough. I re-worked the drums, organ and keyboard. The organ and hi-hat part I changed made it a bit more swinging and a little bit more driving. I put a whole new shade of colors to it