Rolling Stone
By Stephen Holden
Rating: 3/5 stars

With a voice that could stop a truck, a husband (Sony Records chief Tommy Mottola) who runs the store and only the hottest songwriting and producing collaborators going (Walter Afanasieff, C&C Music Factory and Babyface), Mariah Carey is the closest thing to a sure bet in pop music right now. And at 23, she has years to go before having to face a generation gap in taste.

Every song on Music Box, an album dominated by huge soaring ballads, has been written and arranged as a potential home run: Imagine and album containing four or five cuts with the commercial aspirations of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You." One of the likeliest contenders is a remake of Harry Nilsson's 1972 chart topper, "Without You," in which Carey dips into her lower register and is accompanied by backing singers (including herself) magnified to sound like a mighty gospel chorus.

Carey's singing has undergone some subtle but strategic stylistic shifts. The success of last year's Unplugged EP, with its hit remake of the Jackson Five ballad "I'll Be There," has encouraged her to try to sound a little more like a wailing street kid and a little less like Houston. The effect is liberating.

Some of the songs appear to be strongly influenced by other hits. "Hero," with its message of self-sufficiency, aims for the inspirational grandeur of "Greatest Love Of All," while "Just To Hold You Once Again" and "All I've Ever Wanted" chase the tail of "I Will Always Love You." If the album has a weakness, it likes in Carey's lyrics, which are made up entirely of pop and soul cliches.

Music Box would be an exercise in bombast if Carey didn't infuse these greeting-card sentiments with a sustained passion that enhances the record's wedding-album feel. Her singing, trimmed of some of the frills that seemed gratuitous in the past, measures up to the forever-and-a-day sentiments and their glittering, gift-wrapped surroundings. In fact, Music Box is so precisely calculated to be a blockbuster that its impact is ultimately a little unnerving.

---

All Music Guide
By Ron Wynn
Rating: 4/5 stars

Mariah Carey has been stung by critical charges that she's all vocal bombast and no subtlety, soul or shading. Her solution was to make an album in which her celebrated octave-leaping voice would be downplayed and she could demonstrate her ability to sing softly and coolly. Well, she was partly successful; she trimmed the volume on Music Box. Unfortunately, she also cut the energy level; Carey sounds detached on several selections. She scored a couple of huge hits, "Hero" and "Dreamlover," where she did inject some personality and intensity into the leads. Most other times, Carey blended into the background and let the tracks guide her, instead of pushing and exploding through them. It was wise for Carey to display other elements of her approach, but sometimes excessive spirit is preferable to an absence of passion.