Two decades after the release of her landmark album The Emancipation of Mimi, Mariah Carey sets the record straight about what the project truly meant to her career. In an exclusive interview, the 56-year-old music icon revealed her frustration with the album being labeled a “comeback” when it dropped on April 12, 2005.
“At the time, it annoyed me when they called it a comeback album,” Carey admitted. “But now I’m just like, ‘Oh yeah, my comeback album.’ It’s like, how many comebacks do I have to have?” While she once bristled at the description, the five-octave vocalist now acknowledges it as “somewhat accurate,” especially as new generations discover the Grammy-winning work.
The album, which sold six million copies in the U.S. and 10 million worldwide, marked a creative resurgence for Carey following a period of personal and professional challenges. Its lead single “We Belong Together” became one of her signature hits, though as she explained in Vevo’s Footnotes series, it was one of the last tracks written for the project with collaborator Jermaine Dupri.
Carey also shared behind-the-scenes details about the album’s visuals, including her decision to reuse the Vera Wang wedding dress from her 1993 marriage to Tommy Mottola in the “We Belong Together” video. “Rather than spend tons of money on a new dress, we just used the one I had lying around!” she quipped. The clip served as the second chapter in a narrative arc that began with “It’s Like That,” marking her first time connecting multiple music videos into one storyline.
Twenty years later, The Emancipation of Mimi remains a touchstone in Carey’s legendary catalog – whether fans consider it a comeback or simply another jewel in her unparalleled career. As the Songbird Supreme herself put it: “If people know the album, then they usually are fans of the album. But not everybody knows that album… people can discover various songs and kind of get to know the feeling.”
