I remember Say Somethin' leaking in December 2004 and it was being reported by several outlets as the first single. I listened and thought "oh....."
Then a few weeks later I heard a song on B96 and I didn't know it but it was unmistakably Mariah's voice. And THAT time it was like "...oh! what is THIS?" And that song was It's Like That.
You could feel an electricity in the air in those opening months of 2005. Mariah was looking relaxed, confident, the single sounded focused and I remember a lot of very anticipatory press. You just knew that this album was going to be different. That it was going to be right.
That first week, Hits Daily Double was expecting opening sales of 250k, and all throughout the week the predictions went higher and higher She spent basically the entire Summer of 2005 in the Top 5 of the album chart. I remember thinking, before the era began, that if she ended up between 2-3 million copies it would be considered a good commercial comeback. And with the early momentum, We Belong Together might even beat It's Like That and peak in the top ten!
Also, I was reading an article from 1996 about how record labels were gaming the charts, and this moment happened
Quote:
The latest trick that record labels have been accused of is replacing the bar codes on older catalogue albums with those of new albums whose sales they want to boost. Soundscan denies that this happens intentionally. Charlie Davin, the singles buyer at Tower Records in Greenwich Village, said: "I've heard stories of bar codes being switched around, but when I've priced my product and that happens we send it back to the record label. I wouldn't put a Fugees single on the racks when it was coming up as a Mariah Carey single."
She spent basically the entire Summer of 2005 in the Top 5 of the album chart. I remember thinking, before the era began, that if she ended up between 2-3 million copies it would be considered a good commercial comeback. And with the early momentum, We Belong Together might even beat It's Like That and peak in the top ten! 
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or MC/E=MC2, hard to choose.