High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Essential Mariah Carey is the third greatest hits album by American singer Mariah Carey. The album was released in January 2011 in the UK and Ireland as a repackage of her previous album Greatest Hits. In the US, it was released on May 8, 2012 as an entirely new greatest hits album as part of Sony`s The Essential series, and contains songs released during Mariah`s time at Columbia Records. It will replace some songs (featured on the original 2001 Greatest Hits release) with their extended club mixes, and others being completely removed in favor of tracks that had not been released as singles. Much of the artwork inside the album booklet is very similar to that of the Greatest Hits release.