Critical Reception
"Honey" garnered generally favorable response from contemporary music critics. David Browne from Entertainment Weekly described the importance the song held for Carey's musical transition. He wrote "You're prepared for a song on which Carey finally breaks free of her adult-contemporary chains and gets down." He felt "Honey" sounded as "anyone striking out on his or her own — caught between old and new habits and taking cautious baby steps into the future." Browne also commented that Carey showed a commendable vocal restraint in the song, "showing some admirable restraint, she nestles herself into the downy-soft beats of "Honey." Author Chris Nickson felt the single's importance was "well beyond its chart placing" and that the single was one of the most important songs in Carey's career, enabling her to transition into R&B and hip-hop. Nickson commented that before, Carey was seen as a pop singer with R&B tendencies, but "Honey" changed that idea, giving the singer "hip-hop credibility", and forced naysayers to "take another look." Rich Juzwiak from Slant complimented the song, calling it "awakening, both sensually and musically." Juzwiak concluded the review writing "Honey exemplifies the abrupt gear shifting that appreciating Mariah the artist requires. Its new pop brilliance doesn't always come easy, where detecting it depends on the audience's newfound ability to apply Carey's pop life to her pop music." "Honey" was nominated for two Grammy Awards at the 1998 ceremony, for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song. The song did not win either nomination, a typical trend of Carey's nominations at the Grammys.
"Honey" won many prestigious awards throughout the music industry in 1995 and 1996. The song was nominated at the 1998 Grammy Awards for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song. Additionally, the song won the BMI Pop Award for "Songwriter".
Read more about this topic: Honey (Mariah Carey Song)
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest.... It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)