While James Packer might not have been cheating on Mariah Carey at the time their engagement disintegrated at the end of 2016 (in fact, it was Mariah stepping out with her favorite backup dancer, Bryan Tanaka), his inability to “act right” in a manner befitting someone of Mariah’s stature was certainly enough for her to not only ask for an inconvenience fee, but now, at last, pen a track that fittingly puts a cap on the entire relationship and breakup (though just ask Ariana Grande how that went for her). Just as Whitney Houston declared, “It’s not right, but it’s okay/I’m gonna make it away” (which, as we all know, she did not), so, too, does Mariah assure that she’ll be just fine alone. Specifically alone in expensive lingerie drinking expensive liquor, as the video delineates.
And sure, while she’s resigned herself to having her heart broken, that doesn’t mean she can’t reason, “Might as well down this Caymus bottle, I ain’t the type to play the martyr.” Because no, martyrs don’t chill happily alone (if by happily alone we mean it’s slightly inspired by Norma Desmond’s ivory tower goings-on) calling their exes little better than a valet for having to carry their own “tings” out of the house. Done playing the part of the distressed, constantly worrying lover, Mariah croons, “You took my love for granted/You left me lost and disenchanted/Bulldozed my heart as if you planned it/My prince was so unjustly handsome” (well, that last part was definitely not the case with Packer, but a writer must always embellish for the purpose of painting a portrait).
And just as Whitney had to say, “Things are gonna change/’Cause I won’t be your fool anymore/That’s why you have to leave/So don’t turn around to see my face/There’s no more tears left here for you to see,” Mariah condenses that message down to, simply, “Why don’t you get the fuck out?”
While many men have been shaking in their boots of late with the “rash of feminism” that’s been going around, the truth is, man-hating (what’s to love?) has long been in the mainstream, especially where Whitney is concerned (see: Waiting to Exhale). The only noticeable difference in the present, however, is that women actually have far more agency than they ever have before–and far more interesting distractions (even just downing a Caymus bottle is more interesting than what most blokes have to say) to pass their time than penis.
In addition to “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay,” tinges of Mariah’s own 2005 track, “Shake It Off” (because yes, Mariah had that title before Taylor Swift took over it), shine through in terms of cutting her losses with a softboy. Similar to “Boy I gotta shake it off/Gotta do what’s best for me/Baby and that means I gotta shake you off,” her declaration of independence in “GTFO” is especially palpable in the belittling, “Don’t mean to be rude, but take your shit and leave” and “I ain’t tryna be rude, but you’re lucky I ain’t kick your ass out last weekend.” That Mariah has the bravado to make Packer come across as the plebe in the scenario when considering he is a multibillionaire only serves to accent just how unaffected she is by losing someone so metaphorically worthless.
What’s more, she’s clearly transcended the need to even leave the premises herself when feeling neglected as she kept referencing in “Shake It Off” with lines like, “I really gotta get up of here and go somewhere” and “‘Cause I’ll be on my way/See I grabbed all my diamonds and clothes.” Now she knows that if she’s going to be the one to get emotionally left, then the guy in question better damn well get out of the house physically as well. Because she has plenty of auto-erotic business to attend to in his absence. That was the one point Whitney failed to make in her 1999 opus.
