Reconstructing the Sonic Environment :A Paradigm Study of Mariah Carey's Vocal-as-Space Technology

The history of popular vocal music has long been dominated by the “power-clarity-delivery” paradigm represented by Aretha Franklin. Since the 1990s, Mariah Carey, building upon the same technical foundation, has constructed a parallel “atmosphere-immersion-texture” paradigm. Through systematic deconstruction across dimensions of spectral features, dynamic control, vocal register division, multi-track harmony, and temporal design, this study proposes an operational definition of “vocal-embodied atmospherization” and demonstrates Mariah’s originality on the vocal-as-space path through the “load-bearing test.” Based on the broad penetration of her technical system among subsequent singers, this paper argues that this system constitutes a paradigm shift in the history of popular vocal music. Mariah and Aretha form a homologous bipolar structure: Aretha as the root pole, Mariah as the atmosphere pole. This study aims to re-evaluate Mariah’s position in popular vocal development from the perspectives of technical history and paradigm theory.