Vanishing (song)

Categorized in the gospel and traditional pop music genres, "Vanishing" is a ballad with a blues-inspired composition in which Carey's vocals are accompanied solely by an acoustic piano played by Richard Tee.

As a teenager in the mid- to late 1980s, American singer Mariah Carey began a songwriting partnership with drummer Ben Margulies.

[9] Carey described "Vanishing" as her favorite track on the album: "I enjoyed doing that because it gave me more freedom to sing and it was the most personal song to me.

[3] According to Andrew Chan, author of Why Mariah Carey Matters, the song "conveys romantic loss through metaphors of physical disappearance and occluded perception".

[24] Carey considered bolstering it with other sounds such as drums to make it more commercially viable but opted to "preserve the integrity of the song – leave it really simple".

[3] Jill Warren of The Indianapolis Star considered the composition haunting[26] and Melissa A. Jacques of the St. Petersburg Times said it evoked "spine-tingling emotion and spirituality".

[36] Similarly positive sentiments regarding Carey's vocal performance[37] and artistry on the song recurred in retrospective album reviews.

[40] Courier-Post contributor Jeff Hall considered the song her best work in 1993[41] and Vincent Stephens named it one of Carey's finest album tracks in a 2000 review for academic journal Popular Music and Society.

[8] According to Chan, "Vanishing" is the most beautiful ballad among her early recordings and its lyrics are unusually advanced compared to others in this period such as "Can't Let Go" (1991).

[44] Footage of the performance was included on 1991 video album The First Vision[45] and its audio was later released on The Live Debut – 1990, a 2020 digital extended play.