In promotion of Mariah Carey’s upcoming October release, The Rarities (her eighth compilation album–‘cause she knows how to milk the Lambily for their dough), the self-caricaturized (see: Mariah’s World) diva has decided to give us “Save the Day” featuring Ms. Lauryn Hill as its first promotional single. Of course, “feature” is perhaps too strong a word. Maybe “sample” is more appropriate. And if the lyrical content of the track has a decided neo-“We Are the World” feel, that’s because producer and songwriter Jermaine Dupri (whom Mariah parted ways with in 2014, in terms of him being her manager) intended it as a charity song when he first envisioned the track in 2011.
Apparently, even then he thought the state of the world was, well, shit. Lacking unity, or any sense of John Lennon’s sexistly utopian “brotherhood of man.” Of course, Dupri (and the rest of us) hadn’t seen anything yet with regard to just how “bad” bad could be. And, accordingly, Mariah figured there was no better time to dredge up the single (once rumored to have the likes of Mary J. Blige, Taylor Swift, Drake and, um, R. Kelly collaboratively attached to it) than this, our Pandemic Year of 2020. Or, our Particularly Racist Year of 2020.
However one chooses to look at it, the year can use any amount of “positivity” Mariah is willing to give. So it is that “Save the Day” is undoubtedly her version of Black Eyed Peas’ 2004 hit, “Where Is the Love?” Fittingly, then, MC opens with the lyrics, “We’re all in this together/You’re my only hope/And it’s too divided, too deep to understand/But if we don’t do it, tell me, who will?/Oh, we always say these words that don’t mean too much/I wonder, where is the love?” Yep, there it is, that question Black Eyed Peas asked with Justin Timberlake so long ago to which we still don’t have the answer. “Up my nose” might be the 80s reply, but right now, it’s less clear.
As the song builds and builds to a crescendo, the forever haunting “whoahs” and “la-la-las” of Lauryn Hill during The Fugees’ cover of Roberta Flack that launched her to fame are interpolated for dramatic effect. Speaking on the state of the world that has shone through as COVID-19 has turned each person and country more isolationist than ever (particularly the U.S.), Mariah croons, “When it comes to the world we live in/Isn’t it the time that we start rebuilding/All of the things that make me crumble/We all tend to forget that/We all ceasе to exist if we all live for oursеlves/If nobody bothers to find a solution.” And indeed, it seems no one has bothered to. With Congress choosing to infuse the USPS with 25 billion dollars before bothering to give the American people another stimulus boost, it’s entirely possible there won’t be many left in November to enjoy the supposed new “efficiency” of mail-in voting. And yes, that’s all politicians ultimately care about: securing their votes.
Votes that will supposedly make a change but in reality are just feeding the same ouroboros. Which is perhaps why Mariah wants to remind the masses that they ought only count on themselves in the power of joining together–in the common cause of self-preservation. Because, as the chorus posits, “If he won’t, and she won’t, and they won’t, then we won’t/We won’t ever learn to save the day.” It’s cute that Mariah still thinks we can, but such is the protective bubble of wealth to shield from reality and fortify that rich person’s luxury: optimism.
Meanwhile, Lauryn Hill is just here to offer some reassuring backup to kill us softly the same way life on this “capitalism above all” planet already does.
