Mariah Carey: Carry On

Mariah Carey’s voice is technically impossible and she knows it, but she never sounds like she’s bragging. Just uses those five octaves like they’re obvious. The early albums especially—’Vision of Love,’ the entire 1995 run—are built on this architecture where everything serves the song and the range just enables it. She got less interesting after that but those records held up. Not many pop stars built on a gimmick age as gracefully.