The record feels as ambitious in scope today as it was back then. She always had that, because you can’t teach that. Clubs were like, ‘This is Mariah?’ It was like, ‘Oh, shit, mama can sing a club hit.’ I had never even heard Mariah like that. Now, with the remix, you really hear her emotions of what’s going on because she’s more naked in the track. “The original ‘Dreamlover’: It’s cute, it’s like, ‘Hold my hand and then let’s take a walk in the park,’” Morales says. It was a taste of the Carey to come, the one who would be fully realized four years later with “Honey,” the first track off the Butterfly album. Carey’s delivery went from the wistful wanting of a blissful love in its original incarnation to sensual desire, a yearning for a lover that manifested in this new take. The remix delivered a 180 turnaround in tone and mood. Mariah Carey and Megan Thee Stallion Headline LA Pride 2023 And when I first heard ‘Dreamlover’ the original, to be honest, I hated it. And that original just didn’t lend itself to it at all. “My job was to make a dance record, you know what I mean? For the clubs. “When they asked me to remix the record I was like, ‘I can’t do nothing with this,’” Morales says when we speak by video call. It dared to take pop and make it darker, dancier…even dirtier. Yet David Morales’ reinterpretation of “Dreamlover” was an altogether different beast than the original. They didn’t spin commercial records, and they definitely didn’t play records by pop stars. Trade was a gay club – or “queer” by today’s standards, although that word was then yet to be reclaimed – but its music was worlds away from the fluffy songs found in the clubs of Soho. “As a joke I said, ‘Listen, the only way this will happen is that she will have to resing the song.’ I never in a million years would think that would actually happen. A Mariah Carey remix? In Trade? It was, as Carey might describe it herself, “a moment.”

Dark darker yet darker 10 hours