E=MC²: Mariah Carey's Dessert
E=MC²: Mariah Carey's Dessert
Revisiting her 2008 victory lap.
I gave you Emancipation on Friday, today you get Emancipation=Mariah Carey to the second power: E=MC², which was released on this day in 2008.
Though my memory of this release day is a bit less clear re: the weather, I do remember the day quite well. My high school had built-in activity periods to even out our rotating schedule so on Tuesdays and Fridays, we didn’t start class until 9:30am. While we were supposed to be at school, doing activities or enjoying the freedom of the period, some… didn’t. I was a goody-goody in this sense during high school and aside from sneaking out to Dunkin Donuts once, I was almost always there. On E=MC² day though, I already had my driver’s license, and decided I needed my copy ASAP. I’d pre-ordered the album on iTunes and downloaded it that morning so it was on my iPod already, including the iTunes pre-order-only bonus track “4real4real,” but I needed a copy in my hands.
On my drive to school (I went to all-boys Catholic high school about 12 miles from my parents’ house) I made a slight detour to Best Buy (I think)and picked up the deluxe edition of the album. What made it deluxe was not extra tracks, but the packaging (it was a digipak as opposed to a plastic CD case), a poster, and sticker covers for my iPod. I still remember sitting in the cafeteria carefully placing the front sticker on my iPod before activity period ended that morning (Found this shot of it on Depop, although yes, mine are still filed away somewhere…).
Mariah called this E=MC², released in 2008 as Emancipation’s follow-up, the dessert to Emancipation’s dinner. She was doing a victory lap. Best selling album of 2005, 8 Grammy nominations and 3 wins. The longest-running number one song on the Hot 100 since a record she set in 1996. She had nothing to prove, but decided to deliver a stellar record anyway. She even referenced Emancipation’s pose for this album cover to make it clear that this was something of a companion piece.
E=MC² is more of a patchwork of ideas as opposed to Emancipation’s well-blended soul backbone and upbeat hip hop & R&B tracks. Among the genres she explores, Mariah touches on contemporary R&B/pop (The-Dream & Tricky Stewart’s incredibly timely “Touch My Body”), reggae (“Cruise Control” with Damian Marley), retro R&B (“I’m That Chick,” which was also the album’s working title), and gospel (the fantastic, bare-bones closer “I Wish You Well”).
The album became her highest selling first-week sales ever, and notched her 18th number one single, “Touch My Body,” which broke her tie with Elvis and made her the solo artist with the most number ones on the Hot 100 ever. It also caught the ear of Aretha Franklin, whose tongue-and-cheek live covers of the song have become iconic. Mariah not only wrote about them in her 2020 memoir, but when she jumped in on a 2023 TikTok trend surrounding “Touch My Body,” she mimicked Aretha’s stabbing choreography during the “I will hunt you down” line.
From there though, things floundered. Mariah surprise-married Nick Cannon, and the label started choosing safe, albeit wrong, singles to follow “Touch My Body.” The attempt at recapturing “We Belong Together” and “One Sweet Day” in “Bye Bye” failed to rekindle those successes from a chart perspective. An official remix featuring Jay-Z and unofficial one featuring Akon and Lil’ Wayne failed to drum up excitement for the track.
The very timely and upbeat “Migrate,” which opened the album and featured T-Pain, was not chosen as a single despite Mariah’s hopes that it would. “I’ll Be Lovin’ You Long Time” was choosen as the third single, and given a verse by T.I. to broaden appeal. It’s a great, summery record, but also failed to achieve any significant success.
Despite the direction it took after release, in the lead-up she did some great promo for the album, including a set of MTV vignettes that featured acoustic snippets of album cuts.
The MTV promos also included a few skits featuring Snoop Dogg as the voice of her dog, and Mariah poking fun at herself.
I also had a day off the day she performed on Good Morning America in Times Square, 10 days after the album’s release. Despite a little oversleeping, I managed to get there and see her clearly from behind the stage.
Afterwards I walked up to Virgin Records a few blocks north of GMA in Times Square and picked up an import copy of the “Touch My Body” single, which you can see between my feet in the cringe-worthy photo below. On my way home, a guy on the train with a camera asked if he could take a photo of me and I said yes, as long as he sent it to me after. I can’t believe I’m actually showing this to you, because it highlights how chaotic and awful my fashion sense could be at just shy of 18 years old. And yes, I am aware of how pale my legs were (and still are).
And though it’s never been officially released (even, disappointingly, being excluded from the MC30 reissues in 2020), Tony Moran did an amazing remix of “I’m That Chick” that, as the kids say, went platinum on my iPod.
Stream and purchase E=MC²
Oh! One last thing: be sure to pre-order a copy of The 97’s inaugural zine celebrating the 10th anniversary of Mariah’s Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse. I’m contributing a few pieces, and if you use code ‘heavenly’ when you pre-order, you get $2 off, and I get a lil’ commission. Writing takes time and it would be nice to get a little coin for it once in a while!
