Songfacts®:

• This ballad was written by Mariah Carey and her longtime collaborator Walter Afanasieff. The song is about a summer love affair.
• Carey has been quoted as saying this was her favorite track on her Daydream album. In a 2025 interview with Audacy, she said that despite a decades-spanning catalog of chart-toppers and fan favorites, "Underneath the Stars" still holds a special place in her heart. "It's definitely one of my top five," she said.
• Released on April 5, 1996 as the sixth and final single from Daydream, "Underneath the Stars" received a limited number of pressings in the United States and failed to impact the US Hot 100.
• Carey performed "Underneath the Stars" during her 1996 Daydream World Tour, but because of its limited release and poor chart performance, she has rarely sung it since.
• Carey's March 7, 1996 performance of the song at the Tokyo Dome was later included on her 2020 The Rarities compilation album.
• Carey filmed a music video during her Daydream trek. It shows a day-in-the-life of Mimi on tour in England and France. as well as the songstress crooning the romantic lyrics in a lavender slip dress. Though never released at the time, the clip was later retrieved from the vaults and made available on November 13, 2020.
• Carey described this as having a "'70s type, Minnie Riperton-era vibe," referring to the "Lovin' You" hitmaker. She told the UK magazine Blues & Soul in 1995: "I wanted it to sound authentic so got a real Fender Rhodes-type sound. I just think we stretched in a lot of ways. In the past, just because of time we would write the song, music and melody together and I'll sing a bunch of different melodies over it and he'd [Afanasieff] go home and I'd write the lyrics and he'd work on the track. This time we worked together for the most part on every song we did from the inception of the idea to the completion of the track - except when I do my vocals which I do alone."
• Carey said Columbia Records didn't want to promote the single because they regarded it as a "passive R&B record" that didn't mean anything. The label even prevented her from including the song on her first compilation album, which she had meant to be a sampling of personal and fan favorites rather than a greatest-hits collection. Instead, Columbia put together all of her chartbusters and titled the 1998 album #1's.
• Despite the conflict over this song, Mariah was exerting more control over her career with Daydream by embracing her love of urban music, something the label - and her music mogul husband Tommy Mottola - refused to let her do before. The popularity of the hip-hop "Fantasy" remix, featuring Wu Tang Clan rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard, and the Jermaine Dupri-produced "Always Be My Baby," validated her instincts. So did the album sales: Within three months of its release, Daydream sold 5 million copies in the US. By 1998, it earned Diamond status for selling 10 million.