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We take a tour through Mary J. Blige’s discography, exploring how her willingness to share her own stories helped her fans heal too.
For three decades, Mary J. Blige has been releasing music that isn’t afraid to speak openly about trauma, healing and hope. And for three decades, her fans have been right there with her, caught up in her vulnerability and the sheer talent she has.
With 13 albums to go through, let’s take a look at what listeners could take away from the music she put out as she worked through her own struggles. Obviously, we could fill several pages with her breathtaking talent, but we’ve picked a few lyrics for each album.
Right from the start, Blige showed that she wasn’t afraid to be open and honest. Coming out with her genre-defining blend of R&B and hip hop on her 1992 debut album, she quickly rose up the charts. All the while, she was in a turbulent relationship with K-Ci, whose duet with her on “I Don’t Want to Do Anything” rocked fans’ worlds.
When Blige put out her sophomore album in 1994, she was coming out of the haze of an abusive relationship and was struggling with depression and addiction. She put to words everything that she was going through, and what followed was a career-defining album that gave her listeners permission to admit to themselves that they, too, deserved better.
In the 2021 “My Life” documentary about that album’s release, Blige admitted that the album was “a cry for help.” And fans heard it for what it was and recognized that same cry in themselves.
Where “My Life” was an album packed with vulnerability and hope, 1997’s “Share My World” was Blige’s way of letting fans know that happiness was worth the work they were putting in to get there. With a little time and distance from the heartbreak that propelled “My Life” and with the support of her fans that came with success, she took listeners with her on her journey to healing.
Building on the turn toward healing that Blige had laid out in “Share My World,” “Mary” marked a turning point in the artist’s career. The 1999 album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, proving her doubters wrong and, in so doing, proving the thesis of this album: that she wasn’t going to stay down. And her listeners drew from her call to power and passion.
When Blige picked out the title for her next album, she absolutely meant it. In a Rolling Stone article, the producers of the 2001 album, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, described “No More Drama” as Blige “putting her foot down,” and listeners definitely got the message. In the journey of healing, this was the stage of defiance.
When “Love & Life” came out in 2003, Rolling Stone described Blige as having the heart of “an old-fashioned blues singer” who knows the strength of “joy pulled from the jaws of despair.” This album put that attitude on full display and taught anyone listening that healing can be an act of determination and bravery.
As Blige taught a generation to let go of drama and find joy, her next album, “The Breakthrough,” focused on introspection and on controlling what is controllable. She admitted to Essence that she had used her music to face her own demons, including being molested as a child.
“I want other women to know that something like that can happen to you, and you can still grow to be happy and you can still break through to the other side,” she said.
And her fans absolutely picked up on that message. “The Breakthrough,” released in 2005, is about freedom and hope as much as it is about facing what happened, and her listeners loved every second.
By the time Blige released “Growing Pains,” she knew that she had found success and knew that her albums were connecting with people. And so, she told Target before the 2007 release of “Growing Pains,” she wanted to put something out “for the love of my fans.” Considering how much of healing can be about finding community, that message seemed to build on everything else she taught her listeners on top of being a gift for them.
With “Stronger with Each Tear,” Blige showcased the depths of her talent. The 2009 album was as diverse as her life experience, allowing fans to come with her on a journey of introspection and confidence. Once again, she reminded her listeners that strength comes from not letting anyone keep you down.
In 2011, seventeen years after “My Life” came out, Blige put out her tenth album and made it, in her words, a “sequel” and “extension” of that career-defining sophomore album. It was her way of telling her fans that, yes, heartbreak and hardship happen; but after all these years, she and her listeners had been on a journey that told them they could handle whatever comes.
If you thought you knew what to expect from a new Mary J. Blige album when “The London Sessions” came out in 2014, you were in for a pleasant surprise. And yet, even while she was experimenting with new sounds and styles, one thing remained the same: she felt real in a way that anyone listening could feel in their bones in each song.
After 13 years, Blige saw her marriage falling apart, even as she came up on 25 years of her music career. The trauma that came from losing something precious that had helped her through previous pain was raw and present throughout the 2017 album she put out at the time, “Strength of a Woman.” And as she told NPR, “I’m not going to be broken,” giving her fans another rallying cry for their own battles.
In Blige’s first album after her messy divorce, fans were blessed with not only the hope and healing that she had been delivering for a while but also the raw emotion that allowed her listeners to connect with her so deeply each time she went through it. Last year’s release, “Good Morning Gorgeous,” is, as Mic put it, “heartbreak medicine.”
The thing about Mary J. Blige is that she’s so talented and so consistently good that we can’t possibly have hit every favorite moment or moving lyric. But, hey, if this little look back gives you an excuse to remind yourself of your own favorites, go on. Enjoy the journey.