Almost Home

"Almost Home" is a song by Mariah Carey recorded for the Disney film Oz The Great And Powerful. The song was Mariah's 17th top 40 hit and first to reach #1, breaking the record for longest wait between an artist's chart debut and first #1.

Mariah Carey has remained one of my favorite pop artists of all time since she launched her career in the early 1990s. With her early career centered mostly on ballads, she branched out into upbeat R&B-leaning pop in the late 1990s and remains primarily an R&B artist today - which was why a return to pure pop helped her end one of my chart's most infamous droughts ever.

When Jessica's Top 40 launched in 2003, Mariah placed in the first chart with her cover of Def Leppard's "Bringin' On The Heartbreak", an eventual #2-peaker. Two years later, her comeback album The Emancipation Of Mimi spawned the top 5 hits "We Belong Together" and "Don't Forget About Us". Its 2008 follow-up E=MC2 matched her early peak when "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time" turned out to be a surprise #2 hit. With the chart's 10 year anniversary approaching, Mariah had 16 top 40 hits but no #1s.

That was, until "Almost Home", her 17th top 40 hit.

"Almost Home" was released in late February 2013 as a single from the soundtrack to Disney's highly anticipated animated film Oz The Great & Powerful. Co-written and produced by Stargate, the production and songwriting team behind many of Rihanna's hits (who previously worked with Mariah on the single "Bye Bye"), the song differed from many of Mariah's more recent material by leaning less on R&B sounds and borrowing more from the electropop sound currently dominating mainstream top 40. Most fans and critics welcomed the song as an improvement over her previous single "Triumphant (Get 'Em)", which was largely criticized for her lack of presence on the song compared to its featured artists.

Expectations on my chart were low considering the poor performance of "Triumphant", which charted based on a dance remix and just barely cracked the top 20. However, "Almost Home" became one of Mariah's fastest impacting songs ever, which led to it becoming a serious #1 contender - this despite the song failing to become the major comeback hit I hoped it would be (although it reached the top 5 of the Globalchart thanks to strong personal chart support). "Almost Home" managed to become the song that broke Mariah's 10-year drought from the top spot, spending one week at #1 on April 14, 2013. It not only marked a first for one of my favorite artists of all time and one of the most infamously snubbed artists on JT40, but it also showed Mariah Carey can continue to impress me as she enters the third decade of her career.