Oh, Mariah.
In her heyday, Mariah Carey was famous for “sampling” songs, meaning — as Maurice White once told me — eating the whole buffet.
Mariah turned White’s song, Best of My Love, into her “Emotions.” (You hear it below.) The Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” became her “Fantasy,” and so on. Some samples were cleared. She was also sued for plagiarism and settled many times.
It turns out in that back in 2005, Mariah covered a 1975 record called “Here Comes That Feeling Again” by the Dynamic Superiors. The original song was co-written by Motown greats Eddie and Brian Holland, aka as Holland-Dozier-Holland. Mariah called it “When I Feel It,” after changing a few words and adding her own.
Guess who didn’t ‘feel it’? The Hollands. Mariah couldn’t get her version cleared, so the song languished for 20 years.
But now finally a deal has been struck, and “When I Feel It” is released today on the 20th anniversary edition of “The Emancipation of Mimi.” Mariah sounds great because she’s singing a real R&B as opposed to one of her yodeling scat hop hop inventions.
The two records are very similar. I hope this sparks an interest in the Dynamic Superiors, too. Someone should do a podcast of all the R&B staples there were used to make “new” records, like Alicia Keys with “Empire State of Mind” and Beyonce with “Crazy in Love.”
