In another life called the 90s, the novelty of e-mailing (still presented with a hyphen back then) and its time and space-transcending abilities felt worthy of creating a romantic song in its honor. One that Britney Spears saw fit to take on in her trailblazing status as the representative for a generation. In her new stead as the Jane Austen of millennials advocating for effusive, ardent love letters in the form of e-mails. Tacked on as something of an after-thought in terms of placement on her debut, …Baby One More Time (filled with many other tracks that don’t exactly stand the test of “evergreen-ness”), Britney famously addressed the song’s presence on the album in a 1999 interview during which she asserts, “Everyone has been doing e-mails… Everyone can relate to that song.” She seems to need to reassure herself about it by adding, “That’s a really nice song.”
Well, sure. Depending on one’s ear for pop balladry. Not everyone can get on board with a sappy, dawn-of-the-millennium love song. Even then, when people weren’t as jaded as they are now. In the present, “E-Mail My Heart” mostly gets by based on “campy” or “ironic” senses of humor. Or on the odd respect for the fact that it comes off like something of a lark that should never have happened. But the truth is, Spears really was tapping into a new medium with the earnestness of a twentieth century girl. In fact, e-mail had already been possible since the 1960s, with it made more and more pervasive to the “commoner” as the personal computer and internet (then Internet) evolved. By the mid-90s, even non-“geeks” were starting to get on board. After all, if the “World Wide Web” could bestow people with Pam and Tommy’s sex tape, then it must surely be everything and more. A gateway into an entirely different world. For Britney, still “that innocent” in 1998 while recording …Baby One More Time, that didn’t infer sex the way it did for so many (male) internet users. Instead, she wanted to imagine a realm where the romantic could be more easily (and expediently) expressed.
Perhaps she was even semi-aware of the greater chance that a Cyrano de Bergerac gambit could occur with this method of communication. And maybe that was part of the turn-on. Not really knowing for certain if the person behind the composition was who you thought. Regardless, Spears urges suitors worldwide to, “E-mail my heart and say our love will never die.” While she herself is endlessly apologetic (in something of a precursor to “Everytime,” wherein she sang, “I may have made it rain/Please forgive me/My weakness caused you pain/And this song’s my sorry”). That much is clear in her sincere declaration and demand, “I’m sorry, oh so sorry/Can’t you give me one more chance/To make it all up to you?” Apparently, one of the ways she wants to do that is by not bothering him on the telephone anymore (“You don’t answer when I phone/Guess you wanna be left alone”). Enter the convenient, not-as-invasive e-mail. It can be “opened,” or not. And the rejection of a phone that keeps ringing and going to voicemail is far less stinging than an unanswered e-mail.
“Coming on the line” a.k.a. getting online was also less common as it is now. More of a once-a-day “event” as opposed to an all-day occurrence. Hence, Britney hoping he’ll “open this letter that I’ve sent a hundred times” any moment now. And even the fact that she still refers to an e-mail as a “letter” is indicative of how people actually tried during the “early days” of its mass use to sound more profound in this written form. To translate the art of romantic letter-writing into the digital era.
Britney alludes to the then-advanced act of adding an attachment to the e-mail with, “Here’s a picture of us two, I look so good on you.” But maybe not good enough to generate the forgiveness she’s hoping for. Cut to 2022, when emails are the thing everyone wants to avoid, and the connotation of them has zero to do with Austenian romance and everything to do with the 24/7 workplace atmosphere society has created by allowing for constant “availability.” And so, where once it was encouraged, even welcome, to send e-mails, it is now deemed an anxiety-inducing burden to find a new message in one’s inbox.
Enter the title of Sabrina Carpenter’s fifth studio album, emails i can’t send. The cover of which features Carpenter sitting on her bed looking at us in a combination of disgust and horror with a computer placed in front of her on the bed. Clearly, she’s written a draft (or twenty) she’s found too shameful in its pure, unfiltered honesty to ever actually send (that’s, indeed, how she came up with the concept for the record). In short, the very thing Britney was rallying for in her late 90s deep cut.
What’s more, when Eric Foster White penned (yes, penned) the track for Spears, he meant it as “an update to a succession of songs (‘Please Mr. Postman,’ ‘Dial My Heart’) that tied popular forms of communication with a love interest.” Never could he have dreamed it would serve as both a piece of pop music ephemera and a testament to just how much the e-mail has evolved into something far more psychologically rife and far less “puppy love”-oriented. A source to get everything out in “word vomit” and then show it to no one. Just delete it altogether, possibly.
To the point of this dilemma, funnily enough, the dangers of e-mails and their contents getting out unwantedly were already made clear in 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding, when Jules (Julia Roberts) decides it would be a good idea to save a draft of the e-mail she’s written under the guise of being Kimmy’s (Cameron Diaz) father, Philip (Walter Wallace), asking Michael’s (Dermot Mulroney) boss to fire him so he can persuade him to work at his company instead—again, Cyrano de Bergerac shit. Even though Jules knows it poses a great risk to exposing her nefarious plan to break up the couple if she opts to “save as draft,” she does it anyway. And she’s right to be afraid. For, naturally, Philip has all of his e-mails from the drafts sent without so much as a second glance. E-mail my heart this missive is not as it sends Michael into a rage over the phone with Kimmy, assuming she’s put her dad up to this fuckery once his boss calls to tell him about the e-mail he received.
Who knew e-mails could be so life-altering? Britney, that’s who. And now, in her own modern way, Carpenter, who can only say the things she truly feels by writing them down in Gmail Drafts and not saving them. Not, at least, until she’s rewritten them in song format so that her thoughts and emotions become much “safer” to convey.
