Airplay: 33.416

Observer gives the album 4 Stars


Mariah Carey, e=MC² (Universal)
4 STARS

Buoyed by the career-defining international omnipresence of 2006's The Emancipation Of Mimi, these are fine times to be Mariah Carey. That nervous breakdown seems a very long time ago now. How she must chuckle to herself as she watches every single girl trot herself out in front of Simon, Randy and Paula on American Idol and behave as if they have been incubated on an exclusive musical diet of her peerless voice since day zero.

She's in carefully art-directed but none the less playful mode all over That Chick. The production is glossed to within an inch of its life, the mood is cheerfully upbeat - or 'festive' as Carey might put it herself - and the entire confection rings out with bold, sassy, brutally executed intent. Fans of her dog-whistling ballad mode will strain at the bit to find comfort here outside of the predictaballad 'Love Story' but for those who favour urban Mariah there's a glut of hard-nosed attitude: the almost Teena Marie-ish funk of the title track, a finely honed reggae lilt to 'Cruise Control', the freshly cut sample soul of 'Loving You Too Long' and the ballsy, straight-up hip-pop of 'Migrate'.

Each track is precision-tooled to sound as if it were born to be banging out of a Hummer in Miami on a sunny Saturday. With Mary J on autopilot, Whitney yet to re-appear, Christina locked in domesticity and Alicia gripped by a peculiar brand of faceless worthiness, Mariah is still the pack leader.

--Paul Flynn

Source: The Observer

Outside Lenny Kravitz' building where she shot the cover

look at'em Louboutin boots





Courtesy of MDJ

Looks like Marierz has been raiding Janet's closet!

PricelessHo said:

I have a feeling that 90% of what Mariah has on came off during that shoot.

PricelessHo said:

When I listened to snippets of Emancipation there were a few tracks that reminded me of Teena Marie. There are just tiny elements that made me think of her here and there. So I guess by 'title track' he meant 'That Chick' being that the album title has now changed? I love how it changed without much fan fair. One day it was the horrific 'That Chick' and the suddenly it was the theory of relativity.

JackieBlue said:

This review contradicts itself because it talks of the production being "glossed within an inch of its life" (which worries me) and than speaks of raw-Teena Marie funk, unless Mariah has got a band behind her she isnt pulling off any funk.

'Migrate' Producer is Danja

We are now able to confirm that the track produced by Nate "Danjahandz" Hills for E=MC² is Migrate ft. T-Pain.

"Danja" revealed his involvement with Mariah's new project back in June 2007 while interviewing for a radio station.

Click here for the full list of currently known titles, producers and featured artists on Mariah's new album.

Source: MariahDailyJournal

VoicesCarry said:

Naw, this is a pic from 03


[Edited 2/17/08 13:11pm]

roundables said:

I was referring to the Loubotin boots.

The song "Touch My Body" is alright. Catchy.

lots of people seem to be warming up to the song.

They had better have Mariah rerecord her vocals for the mixes. The tempo is 76 BPM, which means speeding up the vocals to club speed will sound ridiculous. The only alternative is slowing down the vocals, which will mean much higher BPM's unless the remixers want to make Mariah sound comatose.

i'm counting on new vocals, new dimensions. Morales was said to have worked on one of the new songs

CHR/RHYTHMIC
Taking Off:
#1 - MARIAH CAREY Touch My Body -- 1038 new spins (57 new stations)
Jump!:
#1 - MARIAH CAREY Touch My Body -- +1140 spins (85 stations playing)

CHR/POP
#35 (DEBUT) MARIAH CAREY Touch My Body -- 1164 spins (+1164 move) -- 10.727M Audience Impressions
Taking Off:
#1 - MARIAH CAREY Touch My Body -- 979 new spins (51 new stations)
Jump!:
#1 - MARIAH CAREY Touch My Body -- +1230 spins (117 stations playing)

URBAN
Taking Off:
#1 - MARIAH CAREY Touch My Body -- 570 new spins (37 new stations)
Jump!:
#1 - MARIAH CAREY Touch My Body -- +699 spins (63 stations playing)

URBAN AC
Taking Off:
#2 - MARIAH CAREY Touch My Body -- 20 new spins (2 new stations)
Jump!:
#9 - MARIAH CAREY Touch My Body -- +87 spins (27 stations playing)

PricelessHo said:

I am not tryinna hate on Mariah, LORD KNOWS im not...but Feedback really deserves this. Touch My Body doesnt impress me more than another American idol tune. And yes I know It's mariah and stuff...but this is so below her. it's nice..it's just sad to see Janet's hot hot tune not going #1 all over the place and THIS does. It doesnt CLICK!

paisleypark4 said:

Does anything make sense in music anymore? I know what you mean but I gave up long ago. I don't know if they're number one or what they sell or how many spins they get or don't get. I've heard mixed reviews on both songs so far when I thought it would have been the opposite. Sure, I want them to be successful but as long as I like Feedback and Touch My Body that's all that really matters.
[Edited 2/17/08 16:26pm]

paisleypark4 said:

i know where you coming from

JackieBlue said:

That's true. It all goes down to what you think fo it and not others.

more photos from the video

paisleypark4 said:

It's not like Feedback is exactly John Lennon's Imagine. It's got a better beat, but I mean really. Janet hasn't done any promo, and she hasn't done anything to mend fences w/ radio. Mariah did loads of radio interviews in big and small markets for years. I'm sorry it is fair. Mariah put work in and Janet didn't period.

PricelessHo said:

Well, Mariah could fart and Morales would remix it...business as usual.

roundables said:

As far as I know I have heard more radio interviews magazine shots for Janet than anyone else. She did promo for 20 YO with 2 BET access granted video promotions, the Music Awards and Oprah and lots of radio interviews..however...radio refused to touch So Excited...thus it fell.

Im just coming to the conclusion that uptempo tracks are not going to make it past #10 on the US charts (Mary J's Just Fine for example).

VoicesCarry said:

They'll always work together, Their work together is classic. Its some of her best material during from 1993-1997,

paisleypark4 said:

Janet has even scratched the surface on interviews. Mariah's behind was doing interviews w/ stations as small as ones in Knoxville, Tennessee. That's what I'm talking about. Janet's hitting the usual big stations, and she hasn't really hit all of them yet. And, she certainly didn't do enough promo for 20 YO, and that can be halfway chalked up to Virgin. However, that was then and this is now. Right now, Janet hasn't done a whole lot of promo. She needs to sit down and put in work doing those interviews w/ not just the Z100's but also the smaller market stations as well.And, it's really not an uptempo conspiracy. One of the dj's at Z100 said Feedback wasn't really getting a lot of requests so they decreased spins.

Airplay: 40.133

roundables said:

I wonder if Janet would ever have the guts to go on Wendy's show? Not. But we'll probably hear Mariah on The Experience again before the year is out.

I'm afraid its a sealed deal with Janet's new album simply - and I'm sad to say this - she doesn't have MTV on her side

After their public feud since 20 Y.O., her airplays haven't been the same(and we all know the reason why ).

Musically, both women are fuckin' around and putting a new level to blandness. I'm assuming that they ran out of ideas and thought "Fug it, we're pass proving ourselves, so why bother? Lets milk every gimmick we have right now coz this thing won't last long".

Frankly, I don't mind,,,I'd rather have an Ms.Carey/Ms.Jackson overkill in my screen than Beyonce or Dykicia Keys.

Harlepolis said:

This time it is different. MTV is supporting Janet Jackson. Check out the thread on her new album. The problem is that Jackson is not doing much promotion in support of her first single Feedback. Even her hardcore fans are admitting this.

what a gorgeous gorgeous review of the single and Mariah herself.
--

Jesus Christ, I love this woman

My favorite celebrity who ever existed, Mariah Carey, has unleashed her first single (the hilariously titled "Touch My Body") from her (equally hilariously titled) upcoming album E=MC², and it fits her like the tight jeans she (hilariously!) uses as imagery in the song. "Touch My Body" is as wonderfully ridiculous and ridiculously wonderful as Mariah herself (hear it here if you haven't yet). It's a pink, ruffled pillow of a track, snappy like T-Pain's "Buy You a Drank," mincing and minimal like co-writer The-Dream's own "Shawty Is Da $*+!," and obsequiously polite, bouncing with the tempered oomph of her own "Always Be My Baby."

A lot of people hate this track (check the scathing reception at ONTD, for example), and that doesn't surprise me one bit. Besides being lite enough to fit easily onto adult-contemporary radio in a few months (once the country's acclimated to it -- as is usually the case with AC radio, time makes the lite sound lite-r), it's more brazenly femme than anything off Mariah's wonderful (but overly safe) 2005 comeback smash, The Emancipation of Mimi. To love Mariah (like to really, really love her and not just appreciate her music) is to embrace the fact that she is the girliest visible woman on the planet. Excessive femininity, even via actual females, is regularly frowned upon, and yet in good times and bad, in multi-platinum success and utter floppage, Mariah has soldiered on, all music box-/butterfly-/rainbow-/glitter/charm bracelet/teddy bear-loving and pneumatic and high-voiced and eternally 12. She's so unwaveringly feminine that she makes being soft seem like an act of bravery.

That same seemingly paradoxical dynamic is going on lyrically in "Body" (though musically it's just plain soft, right down to the music-box twinkling that crops briefly up now and then, as though she can't stop stealing glimpses of that pretty little ballerina that guards her rings from Claire's). "If there's a camera up in here / Then it's gonna leave with me / When I do (I do)," she sings, effectively telling whomever she's singing to that she'll submit to his fantasy as long as he realizes that she's ultimately in control of it: she's never more sound like a Russ Meyer character come to life. Underlining that point are mentions in the chorus of her (considerable) curves, thighs that go on long enough to wrap around a dude's waist and interest in being wrestled and thrown around the bedroom. If that isn't the picture of a supervixen, I don't know what is. Even the title itself can be read as an assertion of her femininity. Instead of the more concise "Touch Me," she chooses to emphasize her anatomy, and considering how much of it her tits take up, that might as well be code for "Touch My Womanness." When she commands her object of lust, "Come on and give me what I deserve," I get the feeling that she's referring to her birthright.

"Touch My Body" is Mariah in (and busting out of) a nutshell. The estrogen-loading, the infatuation with detail (dig those glorious "Huh-oh" background vocals that coquettishly ricochet from speaker to speaker during the chorus), the eagerness to please (it's so listener-friendly, your mom could love it, even if the Wendy Williams reference is aimed to sail over her head). All of her is there, naked for the world. But of course it is -- how else is she supposed to show off her body?

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