Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together”

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing each single #1 single within the historical past of the Billboard Hot 100, beginning with the chart’s starting, in 1958, and dealing my approach up into the current.

Mariah Carey was cooked. This was the favored notion, to the purpose that there even was a preferred notion. Mariah had dominated the pop charts for all the ’90s, and she or he’d quietly reinvented herself a couple of instances over the course of the last decade. In the primary few years of the brand new century, although, Mariah had flamed out in a really seen approach. Back-to-back albums had flopped resoundingly. I don’t keep in mind Mariah’s downfall being particularly surprising. Mariah was a pop singer, and pop singers’ careers tend to finish. But when Mariah got here again, that was notable.

Mariah Carey spent a couple of years wandering round in the dead of night, going by bitter splits with two totally different file labels. Virgin, the second of these labels, needed to pay tens of tens of millions to get Mariah to go away. But then, impulsively, Mariah was again. Mariah Carey didn’t simply return after these wilderness years. She stormed again in with certainly one of her all-time largest hits. A full decade and a half after she scored her first #1 hit, Mariah spent nearly the whole summer season of 2005 on prime of the Hot 100. Virgin Records realized a pricey lesson: You ought to by no means rely Mariah Carey out. Case in level: Through a convoluted journey that we’ll finally cowl on this column, Mariah Carey has the #1 tune in America proper now.

The Mariah Carey comeback was a full-on historic phenomenon, and it virtually appeared to occur out of nowhere. But Mariah didn’t return with a loud, show-offy assertion smash. Instead, she bought there with “We Belong Together,” a lovelorn sigh of a ballad that by no means demanded consideration. Mariah had adjusted her model to fulfill altering instances, however her updates had been all refined, canny tweaks. As a tune, the Mariah Carey comeback smash “We Belong Together” is fairly good. As an instance of a longtime pop star assembly the second, it’s a masterpiece.

In February of 2000, the overblown ballad “Thank God I Found You” grew to become Mariah Carey’s fifteenth Hot 100 chart-topper. If she’d by no means ascended to #1 once more, Mariah would’ve nonetheless had a completely insane hitmaking run. For a superb 5 years, “Thank God I Found You” actually seemed prefer it would be her final dominant hit. After Mariah completed the album cycle for 1999’s Rainbow, she left Columbia Records, the label run by her ex-husband Tommy Mottola. She signed a five-year cope with Virgin Records for a reported $100 million. And then: Glitter.

Mariah Carey had needed to make a film for a very long time, and Tommy Mottola had all the time dissuaded her. She bought her likelihood when she bought out of her Columbia contract, however the manufacturing of her cinematic debut was chaotic and stuffed with compromise, and the ensuing film was an all-time historic bomb, the sort of factor that looks as if it was made with the precise intent of profitable Razzies. The movie’s launch was much more messed-up than its manufacturing, and the picture of Mariah doing a strip-tease for a shocked Carson Daly on Total Request Live grew to become extra infamous than something within the film itself. Months earlier than the movie’s launch, Mariah was hospitalized for what her handlers referred to as “a physical and emotional breakdown.”

Mariah’s fall was dramatic, however there was context behind it. For one factor, Tommy Mottola was, by most accounts, actively working to sabotage Mariah’s Glitter period. “Loverboy,” the primary single from Mariah’s Glitter soundtrack, needed to be reworked on the final minute when Mottola grabbed the Yellow Magic Orchestra pattern that Mariah had deliberate to make use of for the unique model of Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Real.” (“Loverboy” nonetheless peaked at #2. It’s a 4.) Also, this was the height Us Weekly period, when the tabloid press was making it very, very exhausting for celebrities to be susceptible weirdos in public. When Mariah seemed like she was slipping, the sharks circled.

After Glitter tanked, Virgin spent tens of tens of millions to purchase Mariah Carey out of her contract. Mariah then moved on to Island, and 2002’s Charmbracelet, the primary album that Mariah recorded for her new label, appeared to barely exist. The Glitter soundtrack and Charmbracelet each went platinum, so Mariah nonetheless had her followers, however she barely even gave the impression to be in dialog with the pop mainstream anymore. The solely charting single from Charmbracelet was the self-serious ballad “Through The Rain,” which peaked at #81. During that stretch, Mariah’s solely massive hit wasn’t actually her personal. In 2003, Mariah sang the hook on Busta Rhymes and his Flipmode Squad’s “I Know What You Want,” and that tune reached #3. (It’s a 7.)

After Charmbracelet got here and went, Island Records may’ve pulled the plug on the entire Mariah Carey experiment. Instead, the label doubled down on her. Mariah went into her 2005 album The Emancipation Of Mimi with a unique angle. Despite the title, Emancipation isn’t actually a file about overcoming battle. Instead, it’s an album stuffed with laid-back, breezy get together songs. Mariah recorded with tons of individuals whose work has appeared on this column: Kanye West, Twista, Nelly, the Neptunes, Snoop Dogg. Mariah had messed round with dance and rap for years, however she’d all the time balanced these tracks out with swollen middle-of-the-road ballads. On Emancipation, she removed the old-timey ballads utterly, changing them with midtempo lopes that had been extra in step with the pop second.

While Mariah Carey was engaged on The Emancipation Of Mimi, LA Reid took over as head of Island Records. Reid was an R&B man who understood Mariah’s attraction, and he inspired her to maintain moving into that path. When Reid heard what Mariah had been doing, he advised that she file some extra songs along with her “Always Be My Baby” collaborator Jermaine Dupri. Presumably, that suggestion wasn’t pushed by musical chemistry alone. Dupri had been one of many fundamental inventive forces on Usher’s Confessions, the most important album of 2004, and he’d co-written and co-produced three of that LP’s 4 #1 hits. Soon, alongside Mariah, Dupri made one other blockbuster.

Mariah Carey flew all the way down to Atlanta for a few classes with Jermaine Dupri. In the primary of these classes, they wrote and recorded two songs, and each grew to become singles. In the second session, Mariah and Dupri made what would turn into the primary two singles from The Emancipation Of Mimi. First, they recorded “It’s Like That,” a smooth and winding membership observe with party-up exhortations from Dupri and from Fatman Scoop. “It’s Like That” was the no-more-drama sign. It was catchy and speedy with out being too thirsty, and it discovered Mariah sounding joyous and unbothered. The tune got here out in January 2005, and it peaked at #16.

But the actual hit from The Emancipation Of Mimi was the second single from that second Mariah/Dupri session. Mariah and Dupri co-wrote the ballad “We Belong Together” with Mariah’s common collaborator Manuel Seal and with Johntá Austin, an Atlanta native who’d hosted a children’ information present on TBS when he was eight years outdated and who actually needed to turn into a singer. In the late ’90s, a teenage Austin co-wrote songs for artists like Coolio, SWV, and Tyrese. Austin caught round lengthy sufficient that he finally did launch a singing profession, although none of his songs ever charted. (As a visitor, Austin bought to #9 by singing on Bow Wow’s 2006 single “Shortie Like Mine.” It’s a 5.)

“We Belong Together” has a storyline that we’ve heard 1,000,000 instances. Mariah Carey’s narrator has damaged up with somebody, and she or he regrets it deeply. She longs to be again along with this individual, and she will be able to’t consider how badly she messed every little thing up: “Guess I didn’t know you, guess I didn’t know me.” She tries to maneuver on, however every little thing retains reminding her of what she’s misplaced. She pleads to get again collectively, however as with so many of those songs, we don’t know whether or not she’s actually saying these items or whether or not we’re simply listening to her ideas. Either approach, Mariah doesn’t appear to consider that there’s a reunion on her future. She appears like she’s already misplaced, like she is aware of her plea will go nowhere.

Musically, “We Belong Together” additionally sounds acquainted. It’s pure mid-’00s R&B consolation meals. Mariah co-produced the observe with Jermaine Dupri and Manuel Seal, they usually lean exhausting on the tropes of the second: The tender and tinkly piano intro, the thrives of acoustic guitar, the easy drum-machine beat. As on Usher’s Confessions, Jermaine Dupri makes use of the spaced-out 808 programming of Atlanta rap — the artificial handclaps, the lawn-sprinkler hi-hat hisses — and combines them with the melodic craving of R&B. The entire factor sounds acquainted, however there’s sophistication in that observe, too. Some of the sophistication is within the familiarity.

On the second verse of “We Belong Together,” Mariah sings about encountering breakup songs at any time when she activates the radio. In the method, she sings lyrics from a few throwback ’80s breakup jams. First: “Bobby Womack’s on the radio/ Singing to me, ‘If you think you’re lonely now.’” That’s a direct reference to soul nice Bobby Womack’s 1981 single “If You’re Lonely Now,” a #3 R&B hit that didn’t cross over to the Hot 100. (Bobby Womack’s highest-charting single is 1974’s “Lookin’ For A Love,” a canopy of a tune that he first recorded in 1962 along with his group the Valentinos. “Lookin’ For A Love” peaked at #10; it’s an 8.)

Mariah sings that “If You’re Lonely Now” is “too deep,” so she switches the station, solely to be confronted by one other ’80s R&B heart-ripper. This time, it’s “Two Occasions,” the 1988 hit from Babyface and LA Reid’s outdated band the Deele. (“Two Occasions” peaked at #10. It’s a 7.) It’s a fleeting second, Mariah Carey singing together with these two breakup songs. The songs themselves are particular, however the feeling is common — that factor the place you’re unhappy and the universe appears to deliberately remind you, time and again, that you simply’re unhappy. Because of these two strains, the writers of “If You’re Lonely Now” and “Two Occasions” — Bobby Womack, Patrick Moten, Sandra Sully, Babyface, Darnell “Dee” Bristol — bought songwriting credit on “We Belong Together.” I ponder if Mariah threw that “Two Occasions” line in there as a sort of salute to her new label boss LA Reid.

But the actual sharp factor about “We Belong Together” is the way in which that Mariah Carey sings it. The tune has not one of the syrupy bombast of her ’90s ballads, and she or he hardly ever goes heavy on the melisma that she helped introduce to the pop charts within the first place. Instead, Mariah skates over these 808s like a rapper. Where she would possibly’ve as soon as stretched out a single syllable to 14 totally different notes, she makes use of a single word to cram in a complete lot of syllables. Younger R&B stars like Usher and Beyoncé had mastered that hybrid sing-rap model, however that model hadn’t existed when Mariah arrived. On “We Belong Together,” she makes it sound straightforward.

There’s no massive key change on “We Belong Together,” and the beat stays static all through. But Mariah makes the tune dramatic by cranking up the fireplace in her supply. She sings her personal backups, and people backups are calm and placid all through the observe. By the top, although, her lead vocal has turn into fiery and determined, and you may hear the distinction between the softly sighing backups and the depth of that lead: “When you left, I lost a part of me! It’s still so hard to be-lieve! Come back, baby, please!” Mariah recorded the entire observe in a single in a single day session earlier than flying again to New York within the morning. Years later, she instructed Andy Cohen that she sang so exhausting on the outro as a result of LA Reid was on his option to the studio and she or he was urgently making an attempt to complete the observe earlier than he bought there.

Mariah Carey filmed the “We Belong Together” video with director Brett Ratner, who’d already made her movies for “Heartbreaker” and “Thank God I Found You” and who was in between After The Sunset and X-Men: The Last Stand. Ratner had additionally accomplished Mariah’s “It’s Like That” clip, and the “We Belong Together” video finishes the story launched in “It’s Like That” — one of many few instances that we bought a payoff to a type of movies that ends in a “to be continued…” teaser.

As the “We Belong Together” clip opens, Mariah Carey is about to marry Eric Roberts, the skeezy ’80s character actor who had a weirdly prolific run as a villain in ’00s music movies. As a wealthy older white man who’s about to marry Mariah Carey, Roberts is clearly speculated to remind us of Tommy Mottola. Making that connection all of the extra express, Mariah’s wedding ceremony gown within the “We Belong Together” clip is the one which she wore when she truly married Mottola 12 years earlier.

Instead of marrying Eric Roberts, although, Mariah escapes with brooding Prison Break star Wentworth Miller, who exhibits as much as the marriage in a black swimsuit and sneakers. At the time, Miller was just about unknown; Prison Break truly had its collection premiere — additionally directed by Brett Ratner — whereas “We Belong Together” was sitting at #1. As the video ends, Mariah and Miller drive off collectively, with Mariah’s long-ass practice dragging behind their fancy just-married convertible.

Naturally, “We Belong Together” additionally bought a rap remix. Mariah Carey’s “Heartbreaker” collaborator DJ Clue used the pianos from the unique observe on a tougher beat, and Mariah re-recorded her vocals, switching the lyrics up barely. DJ Clue does his headache-inducing echo-drenched ad-libs all around the remix, whereas the Lox’s Jadakiss and Styles P give a few their back-and-forth tag-team verses. (The Lox’s highest-charting single, 1998’s “Money, Power & Respect,” peaked at #17. Jadakiss and Styles additionally rapped on Jennifer Lopez’s #3 hit “Jenny From The Block” in 2003. Mariah Carey doesn’t know her, however that tune is a 7.)

Mariah Carey launched “We Belong Together” as a single in March of 2005, and her album The Emancipation Of Mimi adopted a month later. The single constructed slowly, however it rose to #1 in June. Other than a fast one-week break for a tune that’ll seem on this column quickly, “We Belong Together” held the #1 spot till mid-September. “We Belong Together” isn’t a massively resonant tune for me personally, however the single’s lengthy stretch at #1 was an vital time in my life. While “We Belong Together” was sitting atop the charts, I moved to New York and began knocking down $400 per week writing a music weblog for the Village Voice web site. It was a contract gig, however I handled it prefer it was a full-time job, and it will definitely grew to become one. That signifies that I began making my residing as a music critic when “We Belong Together” was the #1 tune in America. As I noticed it, a part of my mission as a critic was to concentrate to songs like “We Belong Together,” to take them critically.

In phrases of pure statistics, “We Belong Together” was a leviathan. Thanks to the Boyz II Men collab “One Sweet Day,” Mariah Carey already held the file for the longest-reigning #1 hit in historical past, however “We Belong Together” threatened that file. Mariah Carey even blocked herself from the #1 spot. In July, Mariah adopted “We Belong Together” with “Shake It Off,” one other tune that she recorded with Jermaine Dupri. “Shake It Off” in the end peaked at #2 behind “We Belong Together.” (It’s a 6.)

“We Belong Together” rose to #1 through the period when Billboard was factoring in iTunes single gross sales, however the tune saved the highest spot for therefore lengthy as a result of radio saved it in heavy, heavy rotation. The tune by no means appeared to dominate the dialog the way in which different unstoppable hits had accomplished, probably as a result of it was so unassuming. But “We Belong Together” was an absolute juggernaut at radio. It stayed at #1 on the Billboard airplay chart for longer than any tune since No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak.” At the top of the ’00s, Billboard named “We Belong Together” the #1 tune of the last decade. By the time “We Belong Together” lastly fell out of the #1 spot, The Emancipation Of Mimi was triple platinum. Mariah Carey’s comeback wasn’t accomplished but, both. She’ll return to this column quickly.

GRADE: 7/10