E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)
E=MC² is the eleventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Mariah Carey, released on April 11, 2008, by Island Records, Def Jam Recordings and the Island Def Jam Music Group. The singer began recording the album in 2007 in Anguilla, after writing and composing most of its material during and after her 2006 Adventures of Mimi Tour. Carey worked with various songwriters and producers on the project, including Jermaine Dupri, Bryan-Michael Cox, Stargate, The-Dream, Tricky Stewart, Scott Storch and Danja.
The album revealed a more personal side of the singer, illustrated in its declarative theme of emancipation from her previous marriage, and from her personal and professional setbacks. It was meant to be a continuation, or a second part of her tenth studio album, The Emancipation of Mimi. Although it shared similar vocal production as well as an inclination to her signature pop and R&B ballads, the album also encompassed a variety of dance-oriented and uptempo styles. Carey collaborated with a number of artists on the album, including T-Pain, Damian Marley and Young Jeezy. Though considered by critics very similar to the formula its predecessor had been built on, E=MC² included other genres she had never explored, such as reggae, and her continued recording of gospel-influenced hymns.
E=MC² was generally well received by music critics, with many complimenting the record's broad genre influences, and musical and production styles. Some critics, however, felt that the album was too similar to The Emancipation of Mimi. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with opening week sales of 463,000 copies; the highest first-week sales of Carey's career. It also debuted at number one in Canada, and opened inside the top-five in Australia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Worldwide, the album has sold over 2.5 million copies.
Four singles were released to promote the album. The album's lead single, "Touch My Body", became Carey's eighteenth chart-topper on the Billboard Hot 100, tying her with Elvis Presley as the solo artist with the most number one singles in United States history, a record she has since surpassed. Additionally, it gave Carey her 79th week atop the chart, tying Presley for most weeks at number one. It achieved strong worldwide charting, peaking within the top five of the singles charts in Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. "Bye Bye" served as the album's second release. Although hailed by critics, and expected to have achieved large commercial success, the song stalled at number nineteen on the Hot 100, and managed to chart weakly internationally. The third single, "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time" failed to garner major success in any prominent music market. The fourth and final single "I Stay in Love" became her fourteenth chart topper on the Dance Club Songs chart.
Background and recording
In 2002, Mariah Carey signed a new record deal with Island Records and in 2005 she released her tenth studio album, The Emancipation of Mimi. It became the best-selling album of 2005 in the United States, and the second best-seller around the world, with over 12 million units sold. It earned a myriad of music industry awards, and brought Carey back to the top of pop music following her commercial decline in 2001. After completing The Adventures of Mimi Tour, she began working on material for her eleventh studio effort, the yet untitled E=MC². E=MC² was hailed as one of the most anticipated albums of 2008, with many critics weighing their opinions on whether Carey would be able to deliver significant success, following her achievements with The Emancipation of Mimi. Throughout 2007, Carey recorded the album in a studio built into her private villa in Anguilla, in the Caribbean. She described E=MC² as one of her most expressive albums, and one that she felt free on, and able to express herself through her music. In an interview with The Bryan Times, Carey spoke of her sentiments on the album "It's hard for me to sit here and talk about it without sounding like if I'm bragging if I'm in love with it, but I am I love with this album. I think that having the success with the last record allowed me to have more freedom...and just make records that I like. It's kind of a really fun record".Delays and release
The album was supposed to be released in late 2007, but Carey spoke about reason the album got delayed: "You can't really put records out in December if you want the whole world to have a chance to actually hear it, my fans all over the world are very important to me", adding that she also wants to put out a pair of singles before the album drops. In a separate interview, she elaborated further: "This happened to me with The Emancipation of Mimi, I started writing more songs, I was like okay let me get these done, then I wrote four more songs and you know how it goes, so now I'm like 22 songs in and clearly I have to cut some of those down". It was then reported that the album will be released in February 2008. However, the release was later pushed back yet again to April 2008.Prior to its release, the album's working title had been That Chick, which was also the working title of a song on the album that would eventually be titled, "I'm That Chick". As the release date drew near, the title was changed to E=MC², in reference to Carey's previous album, The Emancipation of Mimi. The title signifies " Emancipation of Mariah Carey to the second power". It is a word play on Albert Einstein's famous mass–energy equivalence formula and has been dubbed as the sequel and improved counterpart to The Emancipation of Mimi. In his review of the album, Alex Macpherson from The Guardian described his thoughts on its title, as well as its meaning:
It is worth pondering what the title of Mariah Carey's eleventh studio album could refer to. Emancipation, maybe, in a nod to her 2005 comeback album, The Emancipation of Mimi; or perhaps the energy of the original equation, a statement that Carey still has what it takes to party all night at the age of 37, even as she describes herself as "eternally 12". Then again, she could just be identifying herself alongside Einstein as a fellow genius. Either way, 'E=MC²' finds Carey loopier than ever, embracing her own larger-than-life image with gusto: Mariah Carey Squared indeed.
Carey expressed how she considered Mimi the "main course", and felt that the new album would be treated as "dessert". In an interview with NME, the singer described her choice on the album's title: "Basically, I'm freer on this album than I've ever been. Some of the songs on the last album were cool but maybe not quite as neat as this album." When questioned if the title represented Carey's interest in physics, she jokingly added "Einstein's theory? Physics? Me? Hello! I even failed remedial math. I could not pass seventh grade math even in the lowest class with the worst kids." The album's similarity to its predecessor is not only found in the title and music, but also in its artwork. In the album's cover art, she holds almost the exact pose as from her last album, only with different lighting and wardrobe. It features a black backdrop, with Carey completely naked, except for a large feathered shawl covering her body. Only her first name appears in large pink letters on the cover, with 'E=MC²' appearing in small white letters on the top. In describing the cover, Macpherson wrote "Carey is naked but for the world's largest feather boa, an accessory for which flocks of birds have surely given their lives."
Composition
Style and structure
Music critics compared E=MC² heavily to Carey's previous album, The Emancipation of Mimi, and felt it followed the same formula of ballads and dance-able tracks. Freedom De Luc of The Washington Post felt that after experiencing strong success for the first time in the 2000s with Mimi, Carey tried to create E=MC² with the same formula, although possibly a little improved: "Having found that winning formula of coquettish club bangers, emotional ballads and frisky, mid-tempo coos, the diva with the golden tone has eschewed radical experimentalism here for stasis. 'E=MC²' is mostly more of the same, then, with the '2' representing something sequential rather than exponential. Meet the new Mariah, almost exactly the same as the old... 'Mimi'!"Songs and lyrics
The first song on the album's track list is "Migrate", a song Carey wrote and co-produced alongside Danja, and features a rap verse from T-Pain. The song features the inclusion of Auto-Tune and several vocal manipulators, which are used heavily on both Carey and T-Pain's vocals. Lyrically, the song finds the singer during a night out, migrating from several locations: from the car to the club, from the bar to the V.I.P, from the party to the after-party, and finally to the hotel. According to Brian Hiatt from VH1, she "hops from my car into the club... from the bar to VIP... from the party to the after-party... afterparty to hotel" with T-Pain, who urges her to "bounce, bounce, bounce."The album's lead single, "Touch My Body", was written and produced by Carey, Tricky Stewart and Terius "The Dream" Nash. The song's hook is built around a piano melody and "circular keyboard line", and features "a stuttering mid-tempo beat that's accented by finger snaps and electronic synthesizers" as its instrumentation. Lyrically, the song describes the protagonist revealing several bedroom fantasies in which she would like to engage in, asking her lover playfully to "touch her body". According to Ben Ratliff from The New York Times, it's a "questionably sexy striptease: a goofy-sleazy tryst vignette", with Carey singing "If there's a camera up in here then I best not catch this flick on YouTube."
"Cruise Control", featuring reggae artist Damian Marley, is influenced by R&B and reggae, and finds her adapting to the genre by imitating Jamaican phrases, accents and styles of singing. "I Stay in Love" was released as the fourth and final single from the album. Written by Carey and Bryan-Michael Cox, is a mid-tempo "beat-driven" and "piano-laced" ballad, that is influenced by pop and R&B music genres. The song's instrumentation is derived from a piano melody, and is backed by a strong computerized drum-beat. Its lyrics find Carey as her most vulnerable; she describes old times she shared with her lover, and that even though "we said let go", and "inside she knows it's over", she still "stays in love with him". Featuring American rapper Young Jeezy, "Side Effects" describes Carey's abusive relationship with Tommy Mottola, her ex-husband. During the first verse, she discusses the pair's background, and how she was young and naive, and believed everything he preached to her. The lyrics read "Keepin' me there, under your thumb / Cause you were scared that I'd become much / More than you could handle," she confesses, and refers to herself as "Shining like a chandelier / That decorated every room inside / The private hell we built / And I dealt with it / Like a kid I wished / I could fly away." Sarah Rodman from The Boston Globe described it as "another look at her fractious marriage to Mottola", and wrote "Although the union ended in 1998, Carey is still suffering, including dreams of the 'violent times' and 'sleeping with the enemy'. Interestingly, her vocal approach here is almost emo, as she hits her rock-solid middle register and refuses to be held captive by the demons of her past." MTV News writer Jennifer Vineyard described the song in detail:
finally reveals a side of Mariah we don't see that often — her true self. The Mariah we usually see and hear is a glossy one. Psychologists might say her affect is 'off' — meaning her gestures and facial expressions don't match her mood. There's a reason for that, as she explains on 'Side Effects', which is the emotional abuse she says she suffered during her marriage to music mogul Tommy Mottola. Mariah, who is usually quite guarded, has alluded to the subject in songs like 'Petals', but never has she gone into such detail as she does on 'Side Effects', in which she refers to the marriage as a 'private hell that we built'. Even though it's been 11 years since they split up, she sings in a lower register that she's still 'wakin' up scared some nights... dreaming about the violent times'. Her emotional scars left her 'a little protective... a little defensive... a little depressed', which makes her 'fake a smile' as she 'deal with the side effects'. Even though it features Young Jeezy, it sounds like a rock power ballad.
"I'm That Chick" is a song Carey wrote alongside Norwegian duo, Stargate. It is a fast-paced song, which features a "care-free feel", and is influenced by soul, pop and disco music genres. The song incorporates a sample from Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall", and features a strong thumping bass-line and hand claps. Evan Sawdey of PopMatters described it as a "late-night disco-bass groove", and highlighted its production as the album's finest. "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time", the album's eventual third single, was written and produced by Carey and DJ Toomp. The song was described as a "mid-tempo", "party jam", that is influenced by pop, R&B and soul genres. Critics elaborated on the song's "soul" influence, with Melissa Ruggieri from The News & Advance describing it as a "soul-thumper", while Digital Spys Nick Levine called it a "nod towards classic soul". The song's title is derived from the popular line, "me love you long time", from the 1987 war film, Full Metal Jacket. Additionally, its hook and instrumentation is derived from sampling Mark DeBarge's Stay With Me. Critics also noted how "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time" "recalls" the melody riff and chord progression of the Hill Street Bluess theme song. The song's main source of production comes from its "lush keyboard work", and her usage of the "double voice", which she uses throughout the song's bridge. Carey described the effect as "layering her voice", so that the bridge would sound like a "swooning bank of a hundred Mariahs".
"Bye Bye" served as the album's thirteenth track, and also composed by Carey and Stargate. It is influenced by R&B and pop music genres. The song is built on an understated and simple piano-driven melody, that is decorated with a soft bass-line. Lyrically, the song was described by critics as a "larger than life anthem", and an "inspirational lighter-in-the-air ballad", and finds Carey remembering both her father, as well as any lost loved ones. While the verses are dedicated to him, the chorus was written in a third-person point of view, for her fans: "This is for my peoples who just lost somebody / Your best friend, your baby, your man or your lady / Put your hand way up high / We will never say bye / Mamas, daddies, sisters, brothers, friends and cousins / This is for my peoples who lost their grandmothers / Lift your hands to the sky / Because we won't ever say bye bye". While listing several forms of loss, Carey encourages to never let go, and always live with their memory, and put their hands up if they ever lost someone, 'cause we won't ever say bye bye'. Serving as the album's closing number, "I Wish You Well" was compared to the closing number on Mimi, "Fly Like a Bird". Similarly, "I Wish You Well" incorporates gospel influence into its melody of "rousing piano waltz", that "extends forgiveness to those who have wronged her in the past and is pretty much interchangeable with its predecessors." Extensively making use of the whistle register, she references Mottola in another light than "Side Effects": "'I Wish You Well's' message to Mottola is similarly striking. Accompanied by a piano and some multi-tracked backing vocals, Carey sings: "Still bruised, still walk on eggshells / Same frightened child, hide to protect myself / But you can't manipulate me like before." She then prescribes Bible study and says, "I wish you well."