Touch My Body

Album: E=MC2 (2008)
Charted: 5 1
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Songfacts®:

  • "Touch My Body" was written and produced by Mariah Carey, along with the team responsible for Rihanna's international hit single "Umbrella": Christopher "Tricky" Stewart and Terius "The-Dream" Nash. Singer-songwriter Cri$tyle Johnson, who co-wrote Beyonce's I Am… Sasha Fierce cut "Scared Of Lonely," also contributed to the session. Johnson told the now-defunct website Mariah Daily Journal how she and the singer brought a beach vibe to the track: "We were looking at the beach and the breeze outside was so relaxing. Hence the line 'I want you to caress me like a tropical breeze.' The sun was setting and it just gave us a chill vibe. So that's how the song came about."
  • This became Carey's 41st song to appear on the Hot 100. Her run began almost 18 years prior to the release of "Touch My Body" with "Vision Of Love."
  • The video was directed by Brett Ratner, who told AllHipHop: "Mariah is musically at the top of her game and has never looked better. This will be our sixth music video we have collaborated on and definitely the best one yet visually, as well as musically. The video [for 'Touch My Body'] is the perfect combination of fantasy and comedy with Mariah looking more beautiful than she has ever looked, ever."
  • 65 different stations played "Touch My Body" five hours after its digital release to radio.
  • This is the first big hit to mention Youtube. Mariah is telling her lover that their rendezvous is a private affair, and sings, "If it's a camera up in here, then I best not catch this flick on Youtube."
  • When this hit #1 in the US, Mariah tied Elvis Presley for second place in career #1s with 18 - The Beatles are first with 20. Elvis did have 114 Top-40 hits, more than doubling both Mariah and The Beatles. Elvis accomplished the feat in 17 years, while Mariah took 19 (her first #1 was "Vision Of Love" in 1990). The Beatles had their 20 #1s over a 7 year span.
    Carey commented to the Associated Press: "I really can never put myself in the category of people who have not only revolutionized music but also changed the world. That's a completely different era and time. I'm just feeling really happy and grateful." She added that being in such company was gratifying not only because of her personal success but what it meant as an example for women and minorities. She said, "In my mind, the accomplishment is just that much sweeter. In terms of my ethnicity, always feeling like an outsider, always feeling different - for me it's about saying, 'Thank you Lord, for giving me the faith to believe in myself when other people had written me off'."
  • The computer nerd in the song's music video is portrayed by Jack McBrayer from the cast of the TV comedy 30 Rock.
  • Carey: "This is so amazing, to just feel like how fast 'Touch My Body' is exploding all around the world. I'm just so thankful because it's a song that I love so much and a song that really, you know, does express my personality. If you hear that song, you watch that video, you get a little bit of a glimpse into who I am as a person. I feel so close to that song, most of my really close friends - that's their favorite song, 'cause it's fun and it's cute, and it's not like, taking itself too seriously, you know what I mean? It's just like, you know, the 'touch my body' part is the sexy part and it is what it is but I love the humor in the song."
  • The album title is a play on German-Swiss physicist Albert Einstein's conception of the mass-energy relationship. The formula originated from Einstein's wonder at what light waves would look like to him if he moved as fast as they did. In 1905 he published four revolutionary papers including his special theory of relativity, in which Einstein expressed the mass-energy relationship using the formula E=MC2 where E=energy. C= speed of light, M=mass. This was all thought through by the physicist whilst working as a clerk in a Swiss patent office. Einstein worked out his theories on scraps of paper when his employer wasn't looking. His paper met with a mixed reception as the critics doubted a young patent clerk's views who had not been inside a laboratory since his university days. In Carey's case E=MC2 means the emancipation of Mariah Carey to the second power, a nod to her 2005 comeback album The Emancipation of Mimi.
  • Carey told Billboard magazine about the video: "That was a (director) Brett Ratner-and-me collabo. (laughs) I love Brett because he is like me. If I'm eternally 12 - because he's a little bit more naughty than I am - he's eternally 15. He has a great sense of humor, obviously, and he knows that I have a sense of humor and he feels that people don't recognize that about me. And I'll do stuff that I'm totally joking and they're like (uses mean girl voice), 'Why is she doing that? Why is she doing the treadmill with her high heels on?' I'm like, It's a freakin' joke! It's Cribs! Hello! It's a freakin' joke!"
  • Carey regarding the video: "When Brett Ratner said that he was gonna do this video with me, there was a writers' strike and he had some time and he was really feeling the record, the idea of Jack McBrayer came up and I was like 'that's amazing 'cause he is hilarious,' so the concept of the video is basically like he comes over as 'CompuNerd' to help me fix my computer and then he goes into fantasy land and I'm right there with him. I love adding the element of humor because why take this so seriously? They're videos!"
  • This song broke the record for the highest opening week download tallies in US chart history. It moved 286,000, surpassing the 277,000 digital sales by Rihanna's "Umbrella" in its debut week. The record was broken by T.I. featuring Rihanna's "Live Your Life" in October 2008, which sold 334,000 digital downloads in its debut week.
  • This was used in the 2010 comedy, Get Him To The Greek, starring Russell Brand.
  • Carey performed this in the March 15, 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live.

Comments: 6

  • Carrie from Roanoke, VaShe looked lovely when she performed on SNL, but the song still doesn't match the quality of her earlier work in the '90's. That was her golden age.
  • Reza from Shiraz, Irani loved her more before her music was astounding then
  • Leslie from Prospect Heights, Ilshe peformed this on saturday night live.
  • Hotelmotel from Hoppingbetweensidesofbc, BcTaco wrote: "this song is gay"

    Liar
  • Stacie from Chicago, IlHer old music is better.
  • Jennifer from Clifton Park, Nyi think this song is very good! its one of my favoite songs even though the video is not very appoitae. i think she should do more songs like this one!
see more comments

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