No man I’ve loved has loved Mariah Carey as much as me. Even my best efforts to convert the most rigid nonbelievers — apparently, they exist — have proved futile.
Yet when I filled in the prompts on my Hinge profile last year, I still caught myself testing potential suitors to see if they were up for the challenge: “I’ll fall for you if … your favorite Mariah Carey song is a deep cut,” I had written, attempting to connect with other “lambs,” the nickname for those who are considered her biggest fans.
The subculture of intensely devoted fandom spans a range of interests and idols, from Potterheads (“Harry Potter” die-hards) to Swifties (Taylor Swift lovers) to Trekkies (“Star Trek” buffs). Sports fandom can be extreme too, which is about all I can say about that, because it’s definitely not my scene.
Since age 8, my favorite extreme sport has been observing the chart-topping highs and “Glitter” movie lows of my vocal M.V.P., rooting for vocal victory after vocal victory, watching her routinely prove people wrong. I keep score, too. Have since 1990. As of last year, she has landed in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 charts 19 times. How about those stats?
Regarding my past Hinge profile: It wasn’t that if you answered anything other than a song from her career opus, “Butterfly,” you were dead to me. But I figured a mutual appreciation for Mariah seemed like a good place to start given my difficult, suicidal teen years, when my identity was so steeped in everything Mariah simply because she helped me get through them.
For a time, I looked for fellow fanboys, bent on finding someone to date who experienced the same self-esteem bolster I did from the pop icon. That never happened exactly as I imagined.
Instead, I dated guys who fell into various categories of Mariah fandom that always came short of eclipsing mine: the casual “I know the No. 1s” listener, the “I miss ‘Vision of Love’ Mariah” advocates, the ones who didn’t even know she wrote her own lyrics.
Looking back at why dating Mariah stans was once important, it’s because my fandom began as a manifestation of self, a vital escape from the precarious conditions of my real world at the time: My parents were divorcing just as I was beginning to come to terms with being gay. All-consuming, unironic fandom during those formative teen years was self-preservation, the ability to access joy during an otherwise joyless time.
So, in my early 20s, I sought a romantic partner as Mariah-obsessed as me. If we shared in this fandom together, if we both found salvation in her songs about perseverance, like “Hero,” “Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme)” and “Make It Happen,” I’d be understood.
When I was 21, I had a not-big-on-Mariah boyfriend. I truly thought I was doing him a favor by buying him the “Charmbracelet” CD as a Christmas gift — not exactly the subtlest way of suggesting he finally make the leap to lambdom.
He’d already found his own musical refuge in Tori Amos, and his attempts at opening up my mind to anything beyond Mariah didn’t pay off until after we’d broken up. Eventually, I came around to Tori. But despite my steadfast (OK, pushy) efforts, he never did become the kind of Mariah fan I wanted him to be — an impossible feat for any partner, it turns out.
Now, in my late 30s, a 26-by-40-inch canvas featuring a giant gesticulating Mariah hangs in my new place. My fandom is still far from a secret. But I have learned the personal value this level of worship can hold in a romantic relationship, when a partner can’t share in its many pleasures and in the deepest history and layers of its creation. Just as it did when I was a struggling kid trying to find himself amid scary personal tumult, it still provides me with agency and a sense of individuality.
Though it began as a lifesaving fantasyland I cultivated decades ago, that oasis is a place I return to even now, sometimes paying no mind to the fact that adulthood has grounded its mythology. I still let myself be comforted by the cushy schmaltz of “Hero.” And when I’m feeling especially lighthearted around friends, I do what I sometimes did as a kid: I “sing” one of her songs while wrapped in a blanket, as if it were one of Mariah’s Swarovski gowns, mimicking every inflection, coo and run, hand flip and flail, a remote controller as my mic. That’s a familiar place, and it’s comforting, and it’s me. It always has been.
In my experience, convincing a romantic partner that something you like is something they should like has been exhausting and financially wasteful (just ask that now ex-boyfriend for whom I bought that “Charmbracelet” CD). But enjoying something without approval from others can be empowering. For me, it’s sovereignty.
While I’ve moved on from the worst parts of my teenage years, I still carry this with me like a security blanket, knowing full well we are conditioned to suppress or sometimes fully abandon the parts of ourselves we nurtured with intense devotion in our younger years. In relationships, I’ve sometimes asked myself, How much fandom is too much fandom?
But when I saw Mariah in Detroit last year during the Caution World Tour, I was a proud lamb in my tour T-shirt, my very adult body suddenly transformed into my 14-year-old self when she emerged onstage. Slipping out of my grown-up reality, I experienced a nostalgic rush that made me recognize that there is power and autonomy in that still being my special thing.
That’s not to say I haven’t tried to convince a partner who merely tolerates her that, say, she deserved Grammy nominations for “Caution,” or that the “Glitter” soundtrack is actually great. I have, which has resulted in a fair share of mock skepticism and “Oh baby, you’re cute” eyebrow-raising glares. And I’ll be the first to admit I do derive simple pleasures from that kind of Mariah-inspired playfulness.
But I’m not the same fandom-for-fandom person I once was. I see the value in letting my intense devotion be my intense devotion, a sacred belief system that speaks to me in a way it may never speak to someone I love. If that can’t be shared, that’s fine by me. It’s good to know that whomever I’m with romantically, this steady, long relationship — with Mariah and her “Butterfly” deep cuts — will forever linger on as the protective utopia it has always been, where I can return to the person I was no matter what. In a way, it’s like going home again.
Chris Azzopardi (@chrisazzopardi) is a journalist based in Michigan. He is the celebrity interviewer and editor for Q Syndicate, the L.G.B.T.Q. wire service.
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