The Emancipation of Mimi evokes feelings of nostalgia

The summer of 2005 was one of the best summers I’ve ever had. I had just finished my favorite year of school (third grade was all that and a bag of chips), and I was ready for watching sunsets at 9 p.m., Detroit Tigers games, sleeping over at friends’ houses and gluing my eyes to a TV day-in and day-out — all staples of a classic summer in the suburbs of Michigan.

I was also looking forward to seeing what the summer hits were going to be after a lackluster selection from 2004’s summer. Hoobastank’s “The Reason” and Alicia Key’s “If I Ain’t Got You” were, and still are, great songs to belt out at the top of your lungs in your car, but the rest of the hits at the time just fell flat for me. I needed something that would be synonymous with this summer, something that would send waves through the world of pop. Little did I know that Mariah Carey was making another album that year.

My mom is a Mariah Carey enthusiast, to put it lightly, so when The Emancipation of Mimi came out in April 2005, she was over the moon, to say the least. Her copy of the album found a comfy home in the CD player of her Ford Explorer for that entire summer. That album was in the CD player for months on end and never left, and The Emancipation of Mimi became the soundtrack to both of our lives that summer. Any activity we drove to, whether it be grocery shopping or a trip to the city, was accompanied by the soothing voice of Mariah Carey. I lost count of how many times I had heard that album from start to finish by mid-June, but I couldn’t get enough of it.

This album set a new bar for what an artist’s comeback album should be. Her last album, 2002’s Charmbracelet, was disappointing at best, leading fans and critics alike to say her time in the spotlight was over and that she needed to bow out with dignity. However, this album was a colossal pop hit, showcasing an older, more mature Mariah Carey who still had that same sparkle in her voice when she first started her music career. This album debuted at No. 1 on the pop charts and nearly achieved gold status the week it premiered. For an artist who was seemingly losing her place in the world of music and starting to fade away, Mariah Carey silenced the haters with this album.

Starting as a ’90s R&B megastar, her roots are perfectly meshed with the evolving pop sound of the time. Songs like “Joy Ride” and “Mine Again” are more akin to that ’90s R&B sound, complete with a slow-moving beat and long, drawn-out notes from Carey. Meanwhile, songs like “Your Girl” and my favorite track on the album “Say Somethin’” have a genuine pop sound that was characteristic of chart-toppers at the time, complete with a hard-hitting snare and a bumping bassline. Carey showed that she could find success in both genres and proved that she was an artist who could adapt to the changing sounds of music.

But without a doubt, her most impressive songs are the ones where Carey mixes her R&B prowess with her new pop sound to create a match made in heaven. “Shake It Off” is a fantastic song with a chopped-up beat that synergizes with Mariah Carey’s trademarked “whistle tone” and powerful voice that sings to your soul. This album also had Carey’s biggest hit of her career, “We Belong Together.” With a beat that puts hip-hop drums together with a soulful R&B piano and Carey’s sultry background vocals, this song, which spent 14 weeks at No. 1, is a testament to the new Mariah Carey. Fifteen years into her career, Carey was still finding paramount success and connecting to audiences with this sorrowful song.

For my mom, this album meant the return of one of her favorite artists, and she couldn’t have been happier about it. She loved the R&B aspects of the old Mariah Carey that she fell in love with in the ’90s, and the fact that it was performing so well commercially made her overjoyed. I can still picture her really getting into her impromptu karaoke sessions that were more along the lines of an imaginary concert at Madison Square Garden considering the amount of passion she put in.

As for me, I loved the modern twist on an old genre, the way Carey was able to mix a bit of the old with a bit of the new and really make this album appeal to a newer and older crowd. I had heard a few Mariah Carey songs here and there growing up, mostly because of my mom, and they were usually a hit or miss, but this album was something really special. Carey’s voice was something that astounded me at the time, especially when it was mixed the production on this album. The Neptunes’ production was essential to the success this album had, as well as a large majority of the other pop hits of the time, but that’s a different story for another time.

Mariah Carey turned me, a casual fan, into a fanatic, and my mom, a fanatic, into a worshipper with this album. I got my wish of having some great summer jams that year, since there were some great hits in addition to The Emancipation of Mimi. Whenever I listen to this album, I become 10-year-old me, sitting in the back of my mom’s black Explorer on the way to pick up some batteries at Best Buy. It was one of the better summers I’ve had in my life — the summer of Mariah Carey.

Spencer Lee is a junior majoring in narrative studies.  His column, “Spencer’s Soapbox,” runs every Tuesday. He is also the chief copy editor of the Daily Trojan.