Mariah Carey reflected on the making of her music video for “We Belong Together,” the second single off her 2005 album, The Emancipation of Mimi, for Vevo Footnotes. In chyrons that play around her video, she recalls writing the song with Jermaine Dupri and how gratifying it was to make a music video that carried over the story from a previous clip: “We Belong Together” continues the story of Carey (Mimi’s) love triangle with characters played Wentworth Miller and Eric Roberts in her “It’s Like That” video.
“I was excited to be able to tell a story that spanned over two music videos,” she said. “It was the first time I ever did that, and I knew we’d be able to bring them together despite the songs being sonically different. I also really loved the fashion choices, going from wearing a black two piece to wearing a wedding dress by Vera Wang.”
That dress has an interesting backstory, since it’s the same one she wore at her first wedding, to record exec Tommy Mottola in 1993. They divorced in 1998, long before Mimi’s 2005 emancipation, so it’s an interesting choice for her to revisit her past in the video, a fact she sort of shrugs off in the Footnotes. “Since I was going to do a scene with a wedding dress, rather than spend tons of money on a new dress, we just used the one I had lying around!” she wrote.
She also revealed that the production ran out of time while making the video, so they had to cut corners on filming locations. “We didn’t have time to shoot all the scenes on the original shoot day, so I ended up filming the scenes in the white kaftan and when I’m lying in bed when I was in London on a promo tour for the album,” she wrote.
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Ultimately, she wrote that the video was a positive experience. “I’m really happy that the label believed in me and let me have this big dramatic video, and I’m happier that it resonated with a lot of people who are still enjoying this song today,” Carey said.
Carey will be celebrating The Emancipation of Mimi further this year with a deluxe reissue of the record, which includes a cappella versions of songs, instrumentals, and unreleased cuts, among other rarities. “This album has some of my biggest hits to date, as well as some personal favorites that are very special to me,” she said in a statement.
