On The Road Again: Mariah Carey "The Emancipation Of Mimi (2012 Reissue, Platinum Edition, SHM-CD, Japan, Island Records, UICY-20361)"

sábado, 31 de mayo de 2025

Mariah Carey "The Emancipation Of Mimi (2012 Reissue, Platinum Edition, SHM-CD, Japan, Island Records, UICY-20361)"

The Emancipation of Mimi is the tenth studio album by American R&B singer Mariah Carey, released through Island Records in the United States on April 12, 2005. The album was considered Carey's "comeback album" by critics and became her highest-selling release in the US in a decade. In composing the album, Carey collaborated with many songwriters and producers throughout 2004, including Jermaine Dupri, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Twista, Nelly, Pharrell Williams, and James "Big Jim" Wright, many of whom appeared as featured guests on select tracks.

Carey opted to use her personal nickname 'Mimi' in the title, revealing a more intimate side of the singer, as seen in the album's declarative theme of emancipation from her personal and commercial setbacks. Although it has similar vocal production to her previous works and an inclination towards her signature ballads, the album encompasses dance-oriented and uptempo styles in keeping with its celebratory motif. The Emancipation of Mimi garnered critical acclaim, with praise towards its production, Carey's vocal performance, with critics noting the theme of independence and lack of restraint, dubbing the album a "party" record.

The album garnered eight nominations at the 48th Grammy Awards, including for Album of the Year, and won three awards, including Best Contemporary R&B Album. It became Carey's first album since Butterfly (1997) to debut at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling over 404,000 copies in its first week and becoming the country's best-selling album of 2005. Internationally, it topped the charts in Greece, and reached the top-five in Canada, Denmark, France, and Japan, and was the world's second best-selling album of the year. The Emancipation of Mimi has sold over 10 million copies worldwide making it one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century. "It's Like That" became one of her highest-charting songs in years, reaching the top twenty in several countries. "We Belong Together" accumulated 14 weeks at number one in the US, and was later hailed "song of the decade" by Billboard. It reached number one in Australia, number two in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and achieved top-five positions in several European countries. To promote the album, Carey embarked on her sixth concert tour, entitled The Adventures of Mimi, starting on July 22, 2006, and ending on October 28, 2006.

The Emancipation of Mimi is widely credited with reviving Carey's career and redefining the idea of a pop comeback. Critics have since reassessed it as one of her strongest works, praising its confident embrace of her R&B identity and diva persona. Its 20th anniversary in 2025 prompted renewed reflection on its influence, both musically and personally, in Carey's trajectory.

In 2001, Carey had experienced critical, commercial, personal, and professional struggles, following the poor reception to her debut film Glitter (2001). The picture was panned by critics and earned less than eight million dollars at the box office. After posting a personally expressive letter on her official site, Carey checked into a hospital in Connecticut because of an "emotional and physical breakdown". Following the film's and soundtrack's poor performance, Virgin Records America bought out Carey's unprecedented $100 million recording contract. The company paid her $28 million to part ways. Carey flew to Capri, Italy, after her two-week hospitalization. During her five-month stay, she began to write a new studio album, using experiences she had gone through in recent months as inspirational themes. After being signed by Island Records and starting her own imprint, MonarC Entertainment, Carey released her intended "comeback" album Charmbracelet. Critics deemed it a strong improvement over Glitter, but not something that would re-establish her popularity as in the early stages of her career.

After enduring three years of "carping" from critics, Carey planned her return to music. On November 18, 2004, she revealed on her website that the name of the album would be The Emancipation of Mimi. While Carey was recording the album, Island Records executive L.A. Reid had learned that close friends referred to the singer as "Mimi". He had told Carey, "I feel your spirit on this record. You should use that name in the title, because that's the fun side of you that people don't get to see – the side that can laugh at the diva jokes, laugh at the breakdown jokes, laugh at whatever they want to say about you and just live life and enjoy it." Carey explained that Mimi is a "very personal nickname" only used by those in her inner circle, and thus the title meant she was letting her guard down and inviting her fans to be that much closer to her. She thought that naming her album The Emancipation of Mariah Carey would be "obnoxious".

The Emancipation of Mimi was released by The Island Def Jam Music Group for download and as a CD in Mexico on April 12, 2005. On April 4, 2005, the album was released in Australia and New Zealand. In the United Kingdom, The Emancipation of Mimi was distributed through Mercury Records. The following day, the album was made available in Canada through the Universal Music Group. On April 12, 2005, it became available in France, Japan, and the United States, and was released on May 11, 2005, in China. On British and Japanese versions of the album, "Sprung" and "Secret Love" were included as bonus tracks.

A reissue of The Emancipation of Mimi, subtitled Ultra Platinum Edition, was released on November 15, 2005, accompanied by the reissue's lead single "Don't Forget About Us". The reissue was released in two versions. The first was a CD with four bonus tracks: "Don't Forget About Us" (co-written and co-produced by Carey with Jermaine Dupri), the album's only single; "Makin' It Last All Night (What It Do)", featuring Dupri; the "We Belong Together" remix, featuring American rappers Styles P and Jadakiss; and a new version of the 2006 single "So Lonely" by Twista (which originally featured Carey), in which she sings an additional verse. The second version of the album was a limited-edition set of the CD and a DVD, which includes the videos from The Emancipation of Mimi that had then been released ("It's Like That", "We Belong Together", "Shake It Off", and "Get Your Number"), along with the then-recently filmed video for "Don't Forget About Us". The album became the first domestic release of the video for "Get Your Number", which had previously been released only in Europe. "Sprung" and "Secret Love" were later included as bonus tracks in the 2020 digital reissue of Ultra Platinum Edition.

Carey began a promotional tour in support of the album, beginning on April 2, 2005, at the German Echo Awards. Two days later, she performed "It's Like That" on the game show Wetten, dass..?. In the UK, the singer filmed a two-part appearance on the British music program Top of the Pops, performing the album's first three singles. Carey launched the stateside release of the album on Good Morning America with an interview and a five-piece outdoor concert.Taking place in Times Square and attracting the largest crowd to the plaza since the 2004 New Year's Eve celebration, the concert featured the first three singles from the album in addition to "Fly Like a Bird" and "Make It Happen" (1991). During the following week, she performed "We Belong Together" at the 2005 BET Awards, and appeared at the annual VH1 Save the Music special, which was broadcast live on April 17. Throughout May, Carey performed "We Belong Together" on the Late Show with David Letterman (May 5), The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (May 11), The Ellen DeGeneres Show (May 13) and on The Oprah Winfrey Show (May 24).

During the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards, Carey performed at the National Hotel in South Beach. Accompanied by Dupri, she sang "Shake It Off" and the official remix version of "We Belong Together". She was a headlining performer at the 2005 Fashion Rocks, in Monaco. On November 15, 2005, Carey performed "Shake It Off" and her newly released single from the album's re-release, "Don't Forget About Us", during half-time of the Thanksgiving game between the Detroit Lions and the Atlanta Falcons. On November 22, 2005, she opened the 33rd annual American Music Awards with "Don't Forget About Us". Two months later, she placed as the featured performer at the Times Square Ball drop on New Year's Eve in New York. At the 48th Grammy Awards, on February 8, 2006, Carey returned to the Grammy stage for the first time since 1996. Her performance began with a pre-taped video in which she discussed the importance of God and religion in her life. She then came to the stage, and sang a shortened version of "We Belong Together", followed by "Fly like a Bird". The performance induced the only standing ovation that night, and earned praise from critics.

Sixteen months after the release of the album, Carey announced her first headlining tour in three years, named The Adventures of Mimi: The Voice, The Hits, The Tour after a "Carey-centric fan's" music diary. Beginning on July 22, 2006, and ending on October 28, the tour spanned forty stops, with thirty-two in the US and Canada, two in Africa, and six in Japan. The tour featured the singer's long-time friend Randy Jackson as the musical director. In an interview for the Associated Press, Carey described the tour's direction, as well as the music she would perform:

With this tour, I'm going to be working on some different arrangements for some of the older songs, to ... give it a little more life to them. That's not to say they're going to sound totally different and to freak anybody out ... I love re-singing songs to different music. I genuinely want to tour with these new songs, as well as older hits. These new songs mean so much to me, this time of my life has been so wonderful for me, and I want to experience that with my fans.

The tour received a generally mixed reception from critics who praised the singer's vocal performances but called the show's excesses, such as the singer's frequent costume changes and pre-filmed clips, distracting. In Tunis, Carey played to 80,000 people during two concerts. Midway through the tour, she booked a two-night concert in Hong Kong, scheduled for after her Japanese shows. The performances were cancelled after tickets went on sale; Carey's then-manager Benny Medina said the cancellation was because the concert promoter refused to pay the agreed compensation. The promoter blamed poor ticket sales (allegedly, only 4,000 tickets had sold) and "Carey's outrageous demands". Medina later disputed the promoter's ticket sales figure, saying that 8,000 tickets had been sold. He said Carey would have performed as long as she was compensated, regardless of attendance. Carey ultimately sued the promoter, claiming one million in damages for the concert's abrupt cancellation.

The Emancipation of Mimi is credited with revitalizing Carey's career following a period of personal struggles, professional setbacks, and underperforming albums, prompting public speculation that her career was in decline. Due to the album's success, several outlets have called The Emancipation of Mimi one of the greatest musical comebacks of all-time. The Guardian and Time ranked it among the greatest comebacks in music history. In 2025, Ebony writer Emanuel Okusanya credited the album with not only reviving Career's own career, but redefining "what a comeback could look like in pop music". According to Tom Breihan of Stereogum, the album cemented Carey’s legacy "as one of pop’s all-time titans". Despite being widely regarded as a comeback album, David Lehmann of Vibe argued that this categorization largely undermines the main intent and themes behind the project. In 2025, Carey revealed that she initially disliked hearing critics and fans refer to The Emancipation of Mimi as her comeback album, maintaining that she had never "left". However, she eventually accepted the label. Kenny Williams Jr. of Grammy.com said the record served as a reminder that Carey has always been "in full command of her artistry", embodying "a woman reclaiming her power in real-time". The writer attributed the album's success to a "rich ... balance between the familiar and the fresh".

The album ushered a shift in Carey's artistry and public persona, which Lehmann attributed to her accepting that she had already undergone several years of public humiliation. Lehmann and Okusanya agreed that, after decades in the industry, the album finally allowed her to embrace her diva persona in a light-hearted manner, less concerned with global pop stardom "and more oriented toward her own identity as an R&B diva with a confidently absurd sense of humor". Critics observed that her diva transformation and artistic liberation were supported by a glamorization of her wardrobe that had been sparse in her 1990s attire. Additionally, Lehmann said The Emancipation of Mimi finally allowed her to pivot her identity to that of an R&B singer, in contrast to the pop star she had heavily been promoted as during the 1990s. He and Julianne Escobedo Shepherd of Pitchfork suggested that Carey's shift in musical direction likely encouraged younger listeners who had grown up hearing her pop music to rediscover her work as adults. Writing for the Houston Chronicle, Joey Guerra said the album "refocused her energies and found a perfect balance of her pop sensibilities and love for hip-hop". Some commentators have suggested that Carey's decision to collaborate with rappers and hip-hop artists on the album strengthened her presence in the urban music market, in turn preventing her from reverting to the pop and R&B ballads that had defined much of her 1990s output.

Although the album achieved commercial success comparable to her 1990s output, The Emancipation of Mimi allowed Carey to reestablish herself on her own terms rather than being measured solely against her earlier achievements. Despite initially receiving lukewarm reviews, fans immediately celebrated the album. In retrospect, its commercial success contributed to a critical reevaluation, with many reviewers reassessing it as one of Carey's strongest works. Guerra noted that the album was initially overlooked by awards bodies but emphasized that, more importantly, Carey succeeded in "proving her critics wrong and solidifying her place in pop royalty". Journalist Ed Gordan asserted that the album helped prove that she had triumphed above her naysayers. Its 20th anniversary in 2025 has prompted millennials to reflect on the album's emotional impact. Bianca Betancourt of Harper's Bazaar wrote that, with hindsight, the album "seems to symbolize the life of a woman liberated from the constraints of critique". Vibe named it one of the "50 Greatest Black Albums Of The Modern Era", with writer Jessica “Compton” Bennett crowning it "thee R&B soundtrack of" 2005, whose singles "truly took hold of the culture, the zeitgeist, and quite frankly, the world" by dominating weddings, reunions, proms, and parties.

Some critics have suggested that The Emancipation of Mimi set a precedent for increasingly ostentatious album titles, as noted in its successors E=MC2 (2008) and Me. I Am Mariah…The Elusive Chanteuse (2014). Although her subsequent albums have yet to match the commercial success of Mimi, Carey’s once-mocked diva persona has been largely reembraced by fans and critics self-aware.

Track listing

The Emancipation of Mimi – Japanese Platinum Edition