| Saturday 11 February 2006 |
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Rolling Stone Q&A with Mariah Carey
As previously mentioned, Mariah appears on the cover of the February 23, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. In an exclusive interview, Mariah explains the creative process behind "Shake It Off" and the Grammy award-winning "We Belong Together", as well as what it is like to work with Jermaine Dupri. Below is an excerpt taken from the interview. Rolling Stone: Particularly, from "We Belong Together" and then to "Shake It Off" it's like a drastic change in mood, from like, this whole like, "I can't be without you, to like, I just gotta be without you." But, there definitely seems to be a mix, especially in the love songs, of a sense of empowerment and then a sense of like, mournfulness. Where does that stuff usually come from for you? Mariah: You know, I think it depends on the song. Like, the two songs you mentioned. When I went down to JD's for the first time for this record to Atlanta, I was like, "I wanna do a thugged-out ballad, let's do that."
And, that's when "Shake It Off" was born. So, it started with a beat and the "oooo, oooo's". And then, Jermaine was singing, "I gotta get away..." And I was like, "Ooookay". Then he started saying something about the Calgon commercial, and I was like, "I don't think I gotta get away is as strong as we could get." So, we ended up with "Shake It Off" and it became my freakin' anthem. It's like I look at the past. A lot of times it's stuff from the past. Sometimes it's like fairytale moments and sometimes it's complete "truth" like when we're talking about "Close My Eyes" or "Petals". Usually the songs that don't get released are more the complete "truth" moments.
I never used to collaborate on lyrics but I love collaborating with Jermaine, we work together really well because he has an approach... I was like, "Who's gonna know what Calgon is, Jermaine?" That's really from 1901 and he said, "No, we're going to bring it back." Bow Wow was out in the studio, I was like, "Bow Wow, do you know what Calgon is?" and he's like, "No, but wait a minute, Snoop said it in a rhyme one time." And it's true. It's fun to be able to mix elements that would normally be on a rap song into a song that I'm singing. I feel I've earned the right to do that at this point. It's like, no I don't wanna spend 36 hours figuring out whether to say like "I'd be labored dadada..." not that my big "biggest hits" from the past and so we had that, but the songs that I really took my time with, I tried to not repeat myself over and over and over again. Certain things obviously come back a lot but the question was, where are these songs based from. The answer is, maybe it's 80% real experience, 20% let's-figure-out-how-to-say-this-in-a clever-way. (Rolling Stone - Mariah Daily)
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