Songfacts®:

• In "Butterfly," Mariah Carey offers encouragement, letting a loved one know that they're ready to spread their wings and fly. It's a very personal song that she wrote for herself; she was on the outs with her husband, Tommy Mottola, and wondering if they would get back together. The lyrics reflect what she would have liked him to tell her: that he's ready to loosen control and let her make her own decisions.
  
  Carey's relationship with Mottola was complicated because he was her label boss. They ended up divorcing in 1998, a year after the song was released, with Carey claiming he was very controlling.
• Carey originally intended this to be a House record with dance producer David Morales titled "Fly Away (Butterfly Reprise)."
• "Butterfly" was not released as a commercial single in the US. In the UK it was Mariah's first release not to reach the UK Top 20 in over 5 years.
• In her 2020 memoir, The Meaning Of Mariah Carey, the singer recalled the moment the song first came to her. She was sitting in the master bathroom of her mansion trying to calm down after a threatening incident with her husband. Mottola had just tried to put her in her place in front of their guests by dragging a butter knife down her cheek (an act that inspired the song "Petals"). She wondered if she had the courage to leave for good when the lyrical idea popped into her head, confirming her decision: "Don't be afraid to fly. Spread your wings. Open up the door." She also started humming the melody as she was preparing to go.
• Mariah performed this on the November 15, 1997 episode of Saturday Night Live.
• The music video, shot in Savannah, Georgia, was partly inspired by the Tennessee Williams play Baby Doll, which details the dysfunctional marriage between a middle-aged man and a 19-year-old girl. The girl, nicknamed Baby Doll, sleeps in a crib and is spied on by her husband through a hole in the wall. Mariah recreates the scene in the video, where she lies on a crib-like daybed in the bedroom of a dilapidated house. At the beginning of the clip, a man leaves her home alone on a property surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Her only source of comfort is a wild horse, which she realizes she needs to set free. In the end, they help each other escape. Mariah, who co-directed the video with Daniel Pearl, told Entertainment Weekly: "It's about finding the strength to let something go."
• Butterfly, Carey's sixth studio album, debuted at #1 in the US - her fourth release to top the tally. She wouldn't land another chart-topping album until 2005 with The Emancipation Of Mimi.
• This was nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 1998 Grammy Awards but lost to Sarah McLachlan's "Building A Mystery."