title: Vignette (literature)

text: As vignettes are often brief and do not allow for elaborate plot or character development, many writers craft vignettes to be part of a larger story or idea. For example, Sandra Cisneros’ "The House on Mango Street" is the length of a novel but is a collection of individual vignettes. Each vignette explores common themes, motifs and characters that contribute to an overall plot. In Ernest Hemingway’s collection of short stories "In Our Time", individual vignettes integrate into an overarching narrative rather than acting as brief, isolated descriptions. Charles Dickens’ collection of vignette sketches "Sketches by Boz", although not contributing to a broader plot, explore common themes relevant to the Victorian era such as social class, adding a sense of depth and continuity.


title: Vignette (literature)

text: Vignettes also appear in other creative forms such as web series, television shows, and films. For example, the web series "High Maintenance" uses vignettes to explore the lives of a different set of characters in each episode. This series uses the vignette style to vividly portray themes of the human condition, such as boredom and loneliness. Movies and television shows also use vignettes to reveal more details about the inner world and past lives of characters. The Netflix series "Orange is the New Black" uses flashbacks that act as vignettes to explore each character’s past in more vivid detail. The 2018 Western anthology film "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is composed of six short films that act as vignettes. In the 1989 romantic comedy "When Harry Met Sally", director Rob Reiner weaves the fictional plotline with real-life vignettes of elderly, married couples telling the stories of how they met.


title: Vignette (literature)

text: Vignettes are also used in psychological research "(see also: Vignette (psychology))". In research, vignettes act as short descriptions about a hypothetical situation, to which survey participants respond with their perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and how they would react to the given situation. The wording of these vignette scenarios are experimentally controlled by the researcher, and different versions of the vignette may be randomly assigned to different participants. These vignettes may be based on previous research findings, or based on real-life examples. A potential limitation of using vignettes in psychological research is that individuals may respond differently to these fictional scenarios than their real-life response. Vignettes can also be used to provide a fictional example of a psychological concept. Vignettes have primarily been used by North American psychologists and in surveys.


title: Vignette (literature)

text: Writers of vignettes include Margaret Atwood, Alice Walker, Ernest Hemingway, Sandra Cisneros, William S. Burroughs, and Tim O'Brien.


title: Vignette (literature)

text: Margaret Atwood is a Canadian writer whose works explore gender and identity. Written as a series of seven short vignettes, Margaret Atwood’s "The Female Body" shows how perceptions of the female body differ between men and women. Only four pages in length, this series of vignettes highlights how the female body may be objectified.


title: Vignette (literature)

text: Alice Walker is an American writer whose works are known for their insight into African-American culture. Alice Walker’s two-page vignette "The Flowers" depicts a young African-American girl discovering the body of a lynched man while walking in the woods. This vignette provides an insight into themes of racial violence and slavery, as well as commenting on the loss of childhood innocence and the coming of age.


title: Vignette (literature)

text: Ernest Hemingway is noted for his novels and short stories, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. "In Our Time" is Hemingway’s collection of short stories. The collection features untitled vignettes, which are fragmented yet integrated into an overarching narrative. The vignettes act as critical aspects of the overall stories rather than inconsequential descriptions. The writing style of "In Our Time" consists of succinct, declarative sentences characteristic of the Modernist period. "In Our Time" explores World War 1 and its aftermath, depicting themes such as masculinity, adaptation, maturity and responsibility.


title: Vignette (literature)

text: Sandra Cisneros is a Latina American writer, known for her bestselling novel "The House on Mango Street". Written as a non-linear and fragmented collection of vignettes, "The House on Mango Street" explores Latin-American identity through the eyes of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago."The House on Mango Street" is a novel-length work consisting of individual vignettes that frame an underlying story. The vignettes in this novel contain succinct and readable phrases. They are written in a poetic style, containing imagery and metaphors, experimenting with rhythm and rhyme. "The House on Mango Street" explores themes such as coming of age, identity, class, gender, innocence, family and friendship.


title: Vignette (literature)

text: William S. Burroughs was an American writer known for his experimental novels that provide insight into themes of sexuality and drug addiction. His works were part of the Beat Movement. His experimental novel, Naked Lunch, is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes. Burroughs himself stated that the vignettes have "“no real plot, no beginning, no end," and that the vignettes can be read in any order: "Start anyplace you want. Start in the middle and read your way out. In short, start anywhere." "Naked Lunch" explores themes of drug use, homosexuality, violence, and paranoia. Due to its fragmented and non-linear narrative structure, "Naked Lunch" may be difficult to follow, and Meagan Wilson (2012) describes it as "a labyrinth of incoherent narrative fragments." The novel's publisher, Olympia Press, referred to the novel as "the great secret novel of the Beat Generation", and the novel gained a strong underground following.


title: Vignette (literature)

text: Tim O'Brien is an American novelist whose works depict American experiences of the Vietnam War. His collection of short stories "The Things They Carried" contains related vignettes that describe sentimental objects that soldiers took with them to the war in Vietnam. As well as objects, the vignettes depict emotions the soldiers experienced during the war, such as terror and homesickness. "The Things They Carried" blurs the lines between fact and fiction as the first-person narrator has the same name as the author (Tim O'Brien). Each vignette explores themes such as loss, displacement, memory, trauma, and the nature of truth. O'Brien's writing style in "The Things They Carried" is informal, colloquial, and straightforward. Some stories are told in first person from the perspective of protagonist Tim, while others are told in a more detached third person omniscient point of view.


title: 2014 California gubernatorial election

text: The 2014 California gubernatorial election was held on November 4, 2014, to elect the Governor of California, concurrently with elections for the rest of California's executive branch, as well as elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.


title: 2014 California gubernatorial election

text: Incumbent Democratic Governor Jerry Brown ran for re-election to a second consecutive and fourth overall term in office. Although governors are limited to lifetime service of two terms in office, Brown previously served as governor from 1975 to 1983, and the law only affects terms served after November 6, 1990.


title: 2014 California gubernatorial election

text: A primary election was held on June 3, 2014. Under California's nonpartisan blanket primary law, all candidates appear on the same ballot, regardless of party. In the primary, voters may vote for any candidate, regardless of their party affiliation. The top two finishers — regardless of party — advance to the general election in November, even if a candidate manages to receive a majority of the votes cast in the primary election. Washington is the only other state with this system, a so-called "top two primary" (Louisiana has a similar "jungle primary"). Brown and Republican Neel Kashkari finished first and second, respectively, and contested in the general election, which Brown won. He won the largest gubernatorial victory since 1986, "despite running a virtually nonexistent campaign."


title: 2014 California gubernatorial election

text: A certified list of candidates was released by the Secretary of State on March 27, 2014. The primary election took place on Tuesday, June 3, 2014, from 7am to 8pm.


title: 2014 California gubernatorial election

text: Brown won easily, by nearly twenty points. He outperformed his majority margin from 2010. As expected, Brown did very well in Los Angeles and in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kashkari conceded defeat right after the polls closed in California.


title: Australia's big things

text: The big things of Australia are large structures, some of which are novelty architecture and some are sculptures. There are estimated to be over 230 such objects around the country. There are big things in every state and territory in continental Australia.


title: Australia's big things

text: The big things have become something of a cult phenomenon, and are sometimes used as an excuse for a road trip, where many or all big things are visited and used as a backdrop to a group photograph. Many of the big things are considered works of folk art and have been heritage-listed, though others have come under threat of demolition.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a communist party in the United States. Originally a group in the Communist Party USA that supported Leon Trotsky against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, it places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. The SWP publishes "The Militant", a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928. It also maintains Pathfinder Press.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The SWP traces its origins back to the former Communist League of America (CLA), founded in 1928 by members of the CPUSA expelled for supporting Russian communist leader Leon Trotsky against Joseph Stalin. Concentrated almost exclusively in New York City and Minneapolis, the CLA did not have more than 100 adherents in 1929. After five years of propaganda work, the CLA remained a tiny organization, with a membership of about 200 and very little influence.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: As early as December 1933, a Trotskyist splinter group called the Communist League of Struggle (CLS), headed by former Socialist Party youth section leader Albert Weisbord and his wife Vera Buch, approached Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party of America seeking a united front hunger march of the two organizations followed by a general strike. This suggestion was dismissed as "poppycock" by SP Executive Secretary Clarence Senior, but the seed of the idea of joint action had been planted.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Early in 1934, some French Trotskyists of the Communist League conceived of the idea of entering the French Socialist Party (the "Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière" or SFIO) in order to recruit members for the Trotskyists, or so some critics have charged. The group retained its identity as a factional organization inside the SFIO and built a base among the party's youth section, continuing their activity until popular front action between the SFIO and the mainline Communist Party of France made their position untenable. This tactic of "entering" the larger social democratic parties of each country, endorsed by Trotsky himself, became known as the "French Turn" and was replicated by various Trotskyist parties around the world. In 1934, the Communist League of America merged with the American Workers Party led by A. J. Muste, forming the Workers Party of the United States.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Throughout 1935, the Workers Party was deeply divided over the "entryism" tactic called for by the "French Turn" and a bitter debate swept the organization. Ultimately, the majority faction of Jim Cannon, Max Shachtman and James Burnham won the day and the Workers Party determined to enter the Socialist Party of America, though a minority faction headed by Hugo Oehler refused to accept this result and split from the organization.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The Socialist Party was itself beset with factional disagreements. The party's left-wing Militant faction sought to expand the organization into an "all-inclusive party"—inviting in members of the Lovestone and Trotskyist movements as well as radical individuals as the first step towards making the Socialist Party a mass party. Although there were no mass entries at this time, several radical oppositionists did make their way into the party, including former Communist Party leader Benjamin Gitlow, youth leader and ex-Jay Lovestone supporter Herbert Zam and attorney and American Workers Party activist Albert Goldman. Goldman at this time also joined with YPSL leader Ernest Erber to establish a newspaper in Chicago with a Trotskyist orientation, "The Socialist Appeal," later to serve as the organ of the Trotskyists inside the Socialist Party.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: In January 1936, just as the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party was expelling the Old Guard for their factional organization and alleged "violation of party discipline", James Cannon and his faction won their internal battle in the Workers Party to join the Socialist Party, when a national branch referendum voted unanimously for entry. Negotiations commenced with the Socialist Party leadership, with the admissions ultimately made on the basis of individual applications for membership rather than admission of the Workers Party and its approximately 2,000 members as a group. On June 6, 1936, the Workers Party's weekly newspaper, "The New Militant," published its last issue and announced "Workers Party Calls All Revolutionary Workers to Join Socialist Party".


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Although party leader Jim Cannon later hinted that the entry of the Trotskyists into the Socialist Party had been a contrived tactic aimed at stealing "confused young Left Socialists" for his own organization, it seemed that at its inception the entryist tactic was made in good faith. Historian Constance Myers notes that while "initial prognoses for the union of Trotskyists and Socialists were favorable", it was only later when "constant and protracted contact caused differences to surface". The Trotskyists retained a common orientation with the radicalized Socialist Party in their opposition to the European war, their preference for industrial unionism and the Congress of Industrial Organizations over the trade unionism of the American Federation of Labor, a commitment to trade union activism, the defense of the Soviet Union as the first workers' state while at the same time maintaining an antipathy toward the Stalin government and in their general aims in the 1936 election.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Cannon went to Tujunga, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, to establish another new newspaper, "Labor Action," targeted to trade unionists and Socialist Party members and aimed at winning them over to Trotskyist views while Shachtman and Burnham handled the bulk of the faction's activities in New York. Norman Thomas attracted nearly 188,000 votes in his 1936 Socialist Party run for President, but performed poorly in historic strongholds of the party. Moreover, the party's membership had begun to decline. The organization was deeply factionalized, with the Militant faction split into right ("Altmanite"), center ("Clarity") and left ("Appeal") factions, in addition to the radical pacifists led by Thomas. A special convention was planned for the last week of March 1937 to set the party's future policy, initially intended as an unprecedented "secret" gathering.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Prior to the March convention, the Trotskyist Socialist Appeal faction held an organizational gathering of their own in Chicago, with 93 delegates gathering on February 20–22, 1937. The meeting organized the faction on a permanent basis, electing a National Action Committee of five to "coordinate branch work" and "formulate Appeal policies". Two delegates from the Clarity caucus were in attendance. James Burnham vigorously attacked the Labour and Socialist International, the international organization of left-wing parties to which the Socialist Party belonged and tension rose along these lines among the Trotskyists. United action between the Clarity and Appeal groups was not forthcoming and an emergency meeting of Vincent Dunne and Cannon was held in New York with leaders of the various factions including Thomas, Jack Altman and Gus Tyler of Clarity. At this meeting, Thomas pledged that the upcoming convention would make no effort to terminate the newspapers of the various factions.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: There was no action to expel the Trotskyist Appeal faction, but pressure continued to build along these lines, egged on by the Communist Party's increasingly vehement denunciations of Trotsky and his followers as wreckers and agents of international fascism. The convention passed a ban on future branch resolutions on controversial matters, an effort to rein in the activities of the factions at the local level. It also banned factional newspapers, establishing a national organ instead.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Constance Myers indicates that three factors led to the Trotskyists' expulsion from the Socialist Party in 1937: the divergence between the official Socialists and the Trotskyist faction on the issues, the determination of Altman's wing of the Militants to oust the Trotskyists, and Trotsky's own decision to move toward a break with the party. Recognizing that the Clarity faction had chosen to stand with the Altmanites and the Thomas group, Trotsky recommended that the Appeal group focus on disagreements over Spain to provoke a split. At the same time, Thomas, freshly returned from Spain, had concluded that the Trotskyists had joined the Socialist Party not to make it stronger, but to capture it for their own purposes.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: On June 24–25, 1937, a meeting of the Appeal faction's National Action Committee voted to ratchet up the rhetoric against the American Labor Party and Republican nominee for mayor of New York Fiorello LaGuardia (a favorite son of many in Socialist ranks) and to reestablish their newspaper, "The Socialist Appeal." This was met with expulsions from the party beginning August 9 with a rump meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York, which expelled 52 New York Trotskyists by a vote of 48 to 2 (with 18 abstentions) and ordering 70 more to be brought up on charges. Wholesale expulsions followed, with a major section of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL) leaving the party with the Trotskyists.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The 1,000 or so Trotskyists who entered the Socialist Party in 1936 exited in the summer of 1937 with their ranks swelled by another 1,000. On December 31, 1937, representatives of this faction gathered in Chicago to establish a new political organization—the Socialist Workers Party.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The October 2, 1937 issue of the "Socialist Appeal" included a convention call from the so-called "Left Wing" to "All Locals and Branches of the Socialist Party", accusing the NEC of the party of having "betrayed the principles of socialism" by withdrawing the party's candidate for mayor of New York in favor of LaGuardia and for having ordered "the bureaucratic expulsion of all the revolutionary members of the party who oppose and obstruct this sell-out policy". A convention was called by four Socialist Party State Committees, the NEC of the YPSL and the organized Left Wing organizations of Chicago and New York, originally slated for Thanksgiving weekend, November 25–28, in Chicago, but it was soon postponed until December 31 "in order to provide adequate time for discussion by the membership" of important questions.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: In December 1937, an agenda was published by the Convention Organizing Committee naming Cannon as the primary reporter on the Trade Union question, Shachtman on the Russian Resolution, Goldman on the Spanish Resolution, Canadian Maurice Spector on the International Resolution, Burnham on the Declaration of Principles of the new organization and Abern on Party Organization and Constitution. The gathering was to conclude with the election of a new National Committee.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: On December 31, over 100 regular and fraternal delegates gathered in Chicago, where they were greeted by a speech of welcome delivered by Chicago leader Albert Goldman, a labor attorney. As editor of the Trotskyist movement's ongoing theoretical magazine, "The New International", Shachtman delivered the first official report to the gathering, dealing with the political situation in the United States. He declared: It is entirely inconceivable that American imperialism can succeed in resisting the inexorable tendencies that are pulling it into the vortex of the coming world war.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: If the working class is unable to prevent the outbreak of war, and the United States enters directly into it, our party stands pledged to the traditional position of revolutionary Marxism.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: It will utilize the crisis of capitalist rule engendered by the war to prosecute the class struggle with the utmost intransigence, to strengthen the independent labor and revolutionary movements, and to bring the war to a close by the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of proletarian rule in the form of the workers state.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The convention devoted a full day to discussion of the labor movement's problems and the role of the new organization in the unions, with Cannon delivering the primary report. While criticizing the "reactionary role which the AFL leadership has played", Cannon declared that "our party...takes a clear-cut position in favor of the earliest and completest possible unification of the AFL and the CIO, and also the hitherto unaffiliated Railroad Brotherhoods".


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The 1940 split in the SWP followed an internal factional debate over the party's internal government, the class nature of the Russian state and Marxist philosophy and other questions. The SWP experienced many other factional conflicts and splits in its history, but this was the largest and foreshadowed many features of those to come.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The majority faction, led by Cannon, supported Trotsky's position that the Soviet Union remained a "workers' state" and should be supported in any war with capitalist states, despite their opposition to Stalin's government. The minority faction, led by Shachtman, held that the Soviet Union should not be supported in its war with Finland. One of its leaders, James Burnham, held in addition that the Soviet Union had degenerated so far that it deserved no defense whatsoever. Like this debate, most later factional disputes within the SWP centered on different attitudes toward revolutions in other countries.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The opposition faction alleged that Cannon's leadership of the SWP was "bureaucratic conservative" and demanded the right to its own publications to express its views outside the party. The majority faction said this was contrary to Lenin's concept of democratic centralism and that disagreements within the SWP should be debated only internally. Similar disagreements over the SWP's internal government have surfaced in most later faction fights, with most later opposition factions raising similar demands and accusations. Despite this, most of these later factions claimed political descent from Cannon and the SWP majority, not from earlier opposition factions and splinter parties.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The minority faction led by Shachtman eventually split away almost 40% of the party's membership as well as its youth organization, the Young People's Socialist League, forming the Workers Party.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: A number of members were imprisoned under the Smith Act of 1941, under Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, including Cannon (see Smith Act Trials). Those imprisoned included the main national leaders of the SWP and those members most prominent in the Midwest Teamsters. With Roosevelt's decision to increase the power of the FBI during this time, the arrests were made swiftly.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The party put into practice the so-called Proletarian Military Policy of opposing the war politically while attempting to transform what they saw as an imperialist war into a civil war. The party lost a number of its members while sailing in extremely perilous convoys to Murmansk. Problems caused by some experienced leaders' imprisonment and many others' enlistment in the armed forces meant that the editorship of "The Militant" passed through a number of hands during the war.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The SWP was active in supporting labor strikes that occurred despite the wartime "no-strike pledge" and protests against racist discrimination during the war, such as A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement. The Post Office refused to mail some issues of "The Militant" and threatened to cancel its third-class mailing permit, citing objections to its articles calling for violent overthrow of the government. The SWP said it was being persecuted for opposing racist discrimination.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: After the war, the SWP and the Fourth International both expected that there would be a wave of revolutionary struggles like those that accompanied the end of the previous war. Indeed, revolutions did occur in Yugoslavia, Albania, Korea and China, to name only those that resulted in the overthrow of capitalism, but contrary to Trotskyist expectations they were headed by Moscow-oriented "Stalinist" parties.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The largest strike wave in United States history, involving over five million workers, occurred with the end of the war and the wartime pledge made by many union leaders not to strike for the duration, but this did not mean there were not many strikes during wartime as there were many wildcat strikes during this period as well as strikes officially called by the United Mine Workers of America. There were also protests by GIs demanding rapid demobilization after the end of the war, sometimes called the going-home movement. The SWP participation in this upsurge led to a brief period of rapid growth for the SWP immediately after the war.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The end of the war also saw the reorganization of the Fourth International in which the SWP played a major role. As part of this process, moves were made to heal the breach with Shachtman's supporters in the Workers Party (WP) and for the two groups to fuse. This eventually came to nothing, but some SWP members who supported the views of Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman grew dissatisfied with what they saw as the SWP's ultra-leftist attitude towards revolutionary policies. Eventually, they left the SWP in a state of demoralization and some joined the WP.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Meanwhile, a faction within the WP called the Johnson-Forest Tendency, named for C. L. R. James (known as Johnson) and Raya Dunayevskaya (Forest), was impatient with the WP's caution and felt the situation could rapidly become pre-revolutionary. This led them to leave the WP and rejoin the SWP in 1947. This tendency had moved further away from the "orthodox Trotskyism" of the SWP, producing tension. For example, they continued to hold the position that the Soviet Union was a "state capitalist" society. By 1951, their presence in the SWP was ever more anomalous and most left to form the Correspondence Publishing Committee. Dunayevskaya and her supporters eventually formed the News and Letters Committees in 1955 after splitting with James, who was deported from the United States to Britain, where he continued to advise the Correspondence Publishing Committee, which split again in 1962, with those loyal to James taking the name Facing Reality.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The brief postwar wave of labor unrest gave way to the conservatism of the 1950s, the reform of previously radical labor unions and McCarthyism. The SWP's attempt at entryism into the growing civil rights movement, which continued uninterrupted out of World War II, could not fully offset these trends and the SWP experienced a period of decline and isolation.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The party also had a number of splits over these years. One saw the departure of the faction of Bert Cochran and Clarke, who formed the American Socialist Union, which lasted until 1959. That 1953 opposition supported some of the positions of Michel Pablo, the Secretary of the Fourth International, although Pablo disagreed with their wish to dissolve the Fourth International.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The next, smaller split was that of Sam Marcy's Global Class War faction, which called within the SWP for support of Henry Wallace's Progressive Party presidential run in 1948 and regarded Mao Zedong as a revolutionary leader. This faction ended up leaving the SWP in 1958 after supporting the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a position contrary to that of the SWP and other Trotskyist tendencies. It went on to form the Workers World Party.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Meanwhile, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s the remaining members of the SWP clung to its firmly held beliefs and grew older. Consequently, the party membership shrank over these years from a postwar high in 1948 until the tide began to turn in the early 1960s. The Cuban Revolution signaled a change in the SWP's political direction as it embarked on pro-Castro "solidarity work" through the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The result was a small accretion of youth to the party's ranks. In the same period, longtime SWP leader Murry Weiss won another group of youth from the Shachtmanites as they joined the Socialist Party of America. Many of the new recruits were drawn from the student movement, unlike those who had led the party since the 1930s; as a result, the party's internal culture began to change.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Despite such growing signs of an end to the isolation the group endured during the McCarthyite period, it experienced a new split in the early 1960s. A number of small oppositional groups developed within the party. One of the key issues was the Cuban Revolution and the SWP's response to it. Cannon and other SWP leaders such as Joseph Hansen saw Cuba as qualitatively different from the Stalinist states of Eastern Europe. Their analysis brought them closer to the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI), from which the SWP had split in 1953. The SWP successfully negotiated a reunification of the ISFI and the International Committee of the Fourth International, leading to the creation in 1963 of the reunified Fourth International. Two sections of the ICFI, including Gerry Healy's Socialist Labour League, rejected the merger and turned against the SWP leadership, working with opponents within the party.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The most important faction opposing the SWP leadership's new line was the Revolutionary Tendency (RT), led by James Robertson and Tim Wohlforth, which rejected the SWP's "capitulation" to Pabloism and opposed joining the USFI. It was critical of the Castro government, arguing that Cuba remained a "deformed workers' state". However, a split developed within this faction between groups headed by the two men. Nonetheless, both the RT and the Reorganized Minority Tendency split to form the Spartacist (see Spartacist League) and the American Committee for the Fourth International respectively, with the latter becoming aligned with Healy's SLL.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: In the aftermath, the Seattle branch also left to found the Freedom Socialist Party after protesting the alleged suppression of internal democracy, as did Murray and Myra Tanner Weiss.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The SWP supported both the civil rights movement and the black nationalist movement that grew during the 1960s. It particularly praised the militancy of black nationalist leader Malcolm X, who in turn spoke at the SWP's public forums and gave an interview to "Young Socialist" magazine. After his assassination, the SWP had limited success in forming alliances with his followers and other black nationalists. But these movements were part of the radicalization that aided the SWP's growth.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The SWP provided a political ideology for African Americans seeking equality in the early 20th century. Black nationalists were in favor of socialist policy and ideas. During the 1960s, the SWP had begun selecting African American candidates on their presidential ticket. The SWP hoped to change American values and ensure each citizen had equal rights under the law. "Many black nationalists turned to the Socialist Workers Party because the SWP proposed that its black members collaborate with other militant African Americans," according to a group of historians studying the public service of African Americans. The SWP expanded the ideas of nationalism to African Americans and arguably expanded black nationalism for generations.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Like all left-wing groups, the SWP grew during the 1960s and experienced particularly brisk growth in early 1970s. Much of this was due to its involvement in many of the campaigns and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. The SWP advocated that the antiwar movement should call for the immediate withdrawal of all American troops and focus on organizing large, legal demonstrations for this demand. It was recognized by friend and foe alike as a major factor influencing the direction of the antiwar movement along these lines. One of the leaders of the antiwar movement at this time, along with Dave Dellinger and many others, was Fred Halstead, a World War II veteran and former leader of the garment workers union in New York City. Halstead was the 1968 presidential candidate of the SWP and visited Vietnam in that capacity.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The SWP was also increasingly outspoken in its defense of the Castro government and its identification with that government. A new leadership led by Jack Barnes (who became national secretary in 1972) made identification with Cuba an ever-greater part of the politics of the SWP throughout the 1970s.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The party also published many of Trotsky's works in these years through its publishing house, Pathfinder Press. Not only were the better-known writings reprinted, many for the first time since the 1930s, but other more obscure articles and letters were collected and printed for a wider audience than they had when first distributed. The expansion of the press also allowed the SWP to host "Intercontinental Press", the FI magazine that moved from Paris to New York in 1969, which later merged with "Inprecor".


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The growth of labor militancy in the early 1970s affected the SWP and currents developed within it urging a reorientation of the party toward this militancy. One such current was the Proletarian Orientation Tendency, which included Larry Trainor, and eventually dissolved.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Another tendency developed called the Internationalist Tendency (IT). The IT posed a greater challenge to the group's leadership as it agreed with the Fourth International's advocacy of guerrilla warfare as a "tactic on a continental scale" in Latin America. But despite tensions between the SWP and the rest of the international, when the former expelled the IT, the International refused to side with the tendency. The IT disintegrated over the next few months, some of its supporters finding their way back into the SWP.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The international tensions developed further when the SWP and its co-thinkers established the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency in 1973 in order to contribute to the debate for the . It argued for a reversal of the Latin American guerrilla war orientation adopted at the . This period was the peak of the SWP's growth and influence. The party continued its involvement in the movement against the war in Vietnam, which peaked in 1970–71. The SWP also supported Chicano nationalism, including the Raza Unida Party. It helped organize protests demanding legal abortion through the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition. With the mid-to-late 1970s decline of these movements and the end of the 1960s–1970s youth radicalization, SWP membership and influence went into decline.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: In 1978, the SWP leadership decided that the key task was for party members to make a turn to industry. This turn entailed party members getting jobs in blue-collar industries in preparation for, the SWP leadership projected, increasing mass struggles. The 1977–78 coal miners' strike and developments like Steelworkers Fight Back were among the events pointed to in arguing for this change in policy. Party members sought to get jobs in the same workplaces in order to work as organized "fractions", doing "communist political work" as well as union activity.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: As a result, many members were asked to move and change jobs, often out of established careers and into low-paying jobs in small towns. Many of the older members with experience in trade unions resisted this "colonization program", which upset their established routine in the unions, as did some of the younger members.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Opposition to the "turn to industry" developed within the SWP. This opposition was not homogeneous and was itself beset by differences among different factions.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: A further factor in the growing divisions within the SWP was the move by Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and others in the leadership away from the Trotskyist label. In 1982, Barnes gave a speech, later published as "Their Trotsky and Ours: Communist Continuity Today," in which he rejected Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, arguing that it failed to sufficiently distinguish between the democratic and socialist tasks of a workers' revolution. Barnes argued that anticapitalist revolutions typically began with a "workers' and farmers' government" that initially concentrated on bourgeois-democratic measures and only later moved on to the abolition of capitalism.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Barnes also argued that the Trotskyist label unnecessarily distinguished leftists in that tradition from leftists of other origins, such as the Cuban Communist Party or the Sandinista National Liberation Front. He argued that the SWP had more in common with these organizations than with many groups calling themselves Trotskyist. The SWP has continued to publish numerous books by Trotsky and advocate a number of ideas commonly associated with Trotskyism, including Trotsky's analysis of Stalinism.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The opposition factions continued to support the theory of permanent revolution and the Trotskyist label: they anticipated that the SWP leadership was reassessing its place in the Fourth International. While declaring their support for the Cuban and the leftist Nicaraguan governments, they were more critical of the Castroist and Sandinista leadership. They also continued to oppose the "turn to industry".


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: One opposition group rallied around the Weinsteins on the West Coast (with supporters elsewhere too) while a second group rallied around George Breitman and Frank Lovell. Together they formed an opposition bloc on the SWP's National Committee, but in 1983 both groups were expelled. The opposition factions, having split from the SWP, formed new organizations. The Weinstein group formed the San Francisco-based Socialist Action. The Breitman-Lovell group after a time formed the Fourth Internationalist Tendency. Both groups described themselves as "public factions" of the SWP and set the task of recapturing the SWP to their understanding of Trotskyism. Another group, mainly in Los Angeles, had been close to Breitman, belonged briefly to Socialist Action, and left to join the "regroupment" organization Solidarity.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: This was the most recent split or major faction fight in the SWP. The organization has experienced an unusually long period of internal peace since, although it has declined steadily in both its membership and its political influence within the American left. Numerous recent expulsions—sometimes of long-standing SWP veterans—have contributed to the membership decline. In 2003, the party sold its major headquarters building in New York City for $20 million and moved to another location in Manhattan. Party leaders Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters subsequently sold their West Village condominium for $1.87 million.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The SWP's most high-profile and controversial campaign in the late 1980s and early 1990s was its Mark Curtis Defense Committee, established after Curtis, an SWP activist and trade union organizer, was charged and convicted on burglary and rape charges in 1988. The party claimed that Curtis had been framed by police for his role in defending immigrant workers. Curtis was eventually paroled, but he was later arrested in Chicago on prostitution-related charges and then expelled from the SWP.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The SWP now focuses much of its energy on raising awareness about socialist ideas by running political candidates for office, holding weekly Militant Labor Forums and distributing "The Militant", a socialist weekly, as well as Pathfinder books, many of which feature Barnes's speeches and writings. SWP members are present in a handful of trade unions and take part in such activities as promoting Cuban solidarity, joining striking workers' picket lines, actions against racism and police brutality, opposing US imperialist wars, defending the Bundy family, speaking out against attacks on democratic rights, and promoting the creation of a broad-based labor party.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: On November 5, 2022, during the California abortion proposition debate, Betsey Stone announced the SWP's opposition to the constitutional amendment in "The Militant", arguing that "we need to fight to make abortion rarer by changing the social conditions that have led to its widespread use".


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: Due to legal constraints, the SWP ended its formal affiliation with the Fourth International in the 1940s. It remained in close political solidarity with the Fourth International. The SWP broke formally with the Fourth International in 1990, though it had been increasingly inactive in the Trotskyist movement since Barnes's 1982 speech "Their Trotsky and Ours", which some view as signaling a break with Trotskyism. The SWP action followed the 1985 World Congress and the SWP closed Intercontinental Press in 1986. The SWP's international formation is sometimes called the Pathfinder tendency because they each operate a Pathfinder Bookstore which sells the publications of the SWP's publishing arm, "Pathfinder Press".


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: In 1986, the party won a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a result of years of spying and disruption. It was also found that Herbert Hill of the NAACP, a former SWP member, was an informant on the party after he left in the 1940s.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The SWP has run candidates for President since 1948. It received its greatest number of votes in 1976, when its candidate Peter Camejo received 90,310 votes.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: In the presidential election of 2004, the SWP ran Róger Calero for President and Arrin Hawkins for Vice President. Both candidates were constitutionally unqualified for the positions (under Article II, section 1) because Calero is not an American citizen and Hawkins was 29 years old, with the minimum age being 35 (this had been done before, notably by running 31-year-old Linda Jenness in 1972). James Harris and Margaret Trowe, the SWP's ticket from 2000, stood in on the ballot in some states where Calero and Hawkins could not be listed. The two tickets combined received over 10,000 votes. They were on the ballot in 11 states and the District of Columbia, more than any other socialist candidates. The vote total does not reflect the actual vote because of the unqualified status of the candidates. County clerks (in some states) and statewide Secretaries of State have discretion in reporting votes for ineligible candidates. The same situation obtained in 2008.


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The Church Committee report of 1976 stated that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had investigated the SWP since 1940 and, in 1961, initiated a COINTELPRO program against it. The FBI said it had targeted the SWP because of its support for "such causes as Castro's Cuba and integration problems arising in the South". Under the COINTELPRO operation the FBI collected information about SWP members' political views, conducted up to 92 break-ins of the SWP's offices, and interfered in elections to damage the campaigns of SWP candidates. FBI officials testified to the Church Committee that the SWP has "not been responsible for any violent acts nor has it urged actions constituting an indictable incitement to violence".


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: A 2016 study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Business Case Studies used public records to study the sale of the assets of the Anchor Foundation, "a private 501(c)(3) foundation associated with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a small radical organization." The study noted, "The case raises issues under the tax rules covering private foundations of 'disqualified persons,' fiduciary duty of care, excessive compensation, disclosure of contributors, political expenditures, and disclosures in the Form 990s."


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: The study reported, "The key event in this case is the sale of 410 West Street. In June 2003, about three years after part ownership was donated to the Anchor Foundation, 410 West Street was sold by 406 West Street Realty Corp (signed for by Jack Barnes) and Anchor Foundation (signed for by Norton Sandler) for $20 million to 410 West LLC (City of New York, 2003). The 410 West LLC is a private company with no apparent relationship to the SWP (New York State, 2003)."


title: Socialist Workers Party (United States)

text: According to the paper, there was a rapid depletion of assets while the compensation for Barnes and Waters saw manifold increases. The study added, "One interesting component of the 2003 West Street transaction was the 'Finder’s Fee & Supervisory Services' for sale of 410 West St that was paid to Jack Barnes ($475,000) and Mary Alice Waters ($263,735), for a total finder's fee of $738,735, 3.7% of the sale price (Anchor Foundation 2004 Form 990).”


The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, or NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS), is a tool used by healthcare providers to objectively quantify the impairment caused by a stroke. The NIHSS is composed of 11 items, each of which scores a specific ability between a 0 and 4. For each item, a score of 0 typically indicates normal function in that specific ability, while a higher score is indicative of some level of impairment. The individual scores from each item are summed in order to calculate a patient's total NIHSS score. The maximum possible score is 42, with the minimum score being a 0.


title: National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale

text: While administering the NIHSS it is important that the examiner does not coach or help with the assigned task. The examiner may demonstrate the commands to patients that are unable to comprehend


text: verbal instructions, however the score should reflect the patient's own ability. It is acceptable for the examiner to physically help the patient get into position to begin the test, but the examiner must not provide further assistance while the patient is attempting to complete the task. For each item the examiner should score the patient's first effort, and repeated attempts should not affect the patient's score. An exception to this rule exist in the language assessment (Item 9) in which the patient's best effort should be scored.


text: Some of the items contain "Default Coma Scores", these scores are automatically assigned to patients that scored a 3 in item 1a. Be careful, the NIHSS is fluctuent depending on the time


text: Level of consciousness testing is divided into three sections. The first LOC items test for the patient's responsiveness. The second LOC item is based on the patient's ability to answer questions that are verbally presented by the examiner. The final LOC sub-section is based on the patient's ability to follow verbal commands to perform simple task. Although this item is broken into three parts, each sub-section is added to the final score as if it is its own item.


text: Scores for this item are assigned by a medical practitioner based on the stimuli required to arouse patient. The examiner should first assess if the patient is fully alert to his or her surroundings. If the patient is not completely alert, the examiner should attempt a verbal stimulus to arouse the patient. Failure of verbal stimuli indicates an attempt to arouse the patient via repeated physical stimuli. If none of these stimuli are successful in eliciting a response, the patient can be considered totally unresponsive.


text: The patient is instructed to first open and close his or her eyes and then grip and release his or her hand


text: Assesses ability for patient to track a pen or finger from side to side only using his or her eyes. This is designed to assess motor ability to gaze towards the hemisphere opposite of injury. This item is tested because conjugated eye deviation (CED) is present in approximately 20% of stroke cases. CED is more common in right hemispheric strokes and typically in lesions affecting the basal ganglia and temporoparietal cortex. Damage to these areas can result in decreased spatial attention and reduced control of eye movements.


text: Assess the patient's vision in each visual fields. Each eye is tested individually, by covering one eye and then the other. Each upper and lower quadrant is tested by asking the patient to indicate how many fingers the investigator is presenting in each quadrant. The investigator should instruct the patient to maintain eye contact throughout this test, and not allow the patient to realign focus towards each stimulus. With the first eye covered, place a random number of fingers in each quadrant and ask the patient how many fingers are being presented. Repeat this testing for the opposite eye.


text: Facial palsy is partial or complete paralysis of portions of the face. Typically this paralysis is most pronounced in the lower half of one facial side. However, depending on lesion location the paralysis may be present in other facial regions. While inspecting the symmetry of each facial expression the examiner should first instruct patient to show his or her teeth (or gums). Second, the patient should be asked to squeeze his or her eyes closed as hard as possible. After reopening his or her eyes, the patient is then instructed to raise his or her eyebrows.


text: With palm facing downwards, have the patient extend one arm 90 degrees out in front if the patient is sitting, and 45 degrees out in front if the patient is lying down. If necessary, help the patient get into the correct position. As soon as the patient's arm is in position the investigator should begin verbally counting down from 10 while simultaneously counting down on his or her fingers in full view of the patient. Observe to detect any downward arm drift prior to the end of the 10 seconds. Downward movement that occurs directly after the investigator places the patient's arm in position should not be considered downward drift. Repeat this test for the opposite arm. This item should be scored for the right and left arm individually, denoted as item 5a and 5b.


text: With the patient in the supine position, one leg is placed 30 degrees above horizontal. As soon as the patient's leg is in position the investigator should begin verbally counting down from 5 while simultaneously counting down on his or her fingers in full view of the patient. Observe any downward leg drift prior to the end of the 5 seconds. Downward movement that occurs directly after the investigator places the patient's leg in position should not be considered downward drift. Repeat this test for the opposite leg. Scores for this section should be recorded separately as 6a and 6b for the left and right legs respectively.


text: This test for the presence of a unilateral cerebellar lesion, and distinguishes a difference between general weakness and incoordination. The patient should be instructed to first touch his or her finger to the examiner's finger then move that finger back to his or her nose, repeat this movement 3-4 times for each hand. Next the patient should be instructed to move his or her heel up and down the shin of his or her opposite leg. This test should be repeated for the other leg as well.


text: Sensory testing is performed via pinpricks in the proximal portion of all four limbs. While applying pinpricks, the investigator should ask whether or not the patient feels the pricks, and if he or she feels the pricks differently on one side when compared to the other side.


text: This item measures the patient's language skills. After completing items 1-8 it is likely the investigator has gained an approximation of the patient's language skills; however it is important to confirm this measurement at this time. The stroke scale includes a picture of a scenario, a list of simple sentences, a figure of assorted random objects, and a list of words. The patient should be asked to explain the scenario depicted in the first figure. Next, he or she should read the list of sentences and name each of the objects depicted in the next figure. The scoring for this item should be based on both the results from the test performed in this item in addition to the language skills demonstrated up to this point in the stroke scale.


text: Dysarthria is the lack of motor skills required to produce understandable speech. Dysarthria is strictly a motor problem, and is not related to the patient's ability to comprehend speech. Strokes that cause dysarthria typically affect areas such as the anterior opercular, medial prefrontal and premotor, and anterior cingulate regions. These brain regions are vital in coordinating motor control of the tongue, throat, lips, and lungs. To perform this item the patient is asked to read from the list of words provided with the stroke scale while the examiner observes the patient's articulation and clarity of speech.


text: Sufficient information regarding this item may have been obtained by the examiner in items 1–10 to properly score the patient. However, if any ambiguity exist the examiner should test this item via a technique referred to as "double simultaneous stimulation". This is performed by having the patient close his or her eyes and asking him or her to identify the side on which they are being touched by the examiner. During this time the examiner is alternating between touching the patient on the right and left side. Next, the examiner touches the patient on both sides at the same time. This should be repeated on the patients face, arms, and legs. To test extinction in vision, the examiner should hold up one finger in front of each of the patient's eyes and ask the patient to determine which finger is wiggling or if both are wiggling. The examiner should then alternate between wiggling each finger and wiggling both fingers at the same time.


text: The NIHSS was designed to be a standardized and repeatable assessment of stroke patients utilized by large multi-center clinical trials. Clinical researchers have widely accepted this scale due to its high scoring consistency, which has been demonstrated in inter-examiner and in test-retest scenarios. Clinical research use of the NIHSS typically involves obtaining a baseline NIHSS score as soon as possible after onset of stroke symptoms The NIHSS is then repeated at regular intervals or after significant changes in patient condition. This history of scores can then be utilized to monitor the effectiveness of treatment methods and quantify a patient's improvement or decline. The NIHSS has also been used in a prospective observational study, to predict 3 month outcomes of patients with undernutrition during hospital stays directly after a stroke.


text: NIHSS has gained popularity as a clinical tool utilized in treatment planning. Tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), a type of thrombolysis, is one of the main options for treatemnt of acute ischemic strokes (the type of stroke caused by blood clots that are preventing blood flow within a cerebral artery). The effectiveness and risk of tPA is strongly correlated with the delay between stroke onset and tPA delivery. Current standards recommend for tPA to be delivered within 3 hours of onset, while best results occur when treatment is delivered within 90 minutes of onset.


text: Since the NIHSS has been established as a quick and consistent quantifier of stroke severity, many physicians have looked to NIHSS scores as indicators for tPA treatment. This rapid assessment of stroke severity is targeted to reduce delay of tPA treatment. While some clinical trials have used minimum and maximum NIHSS scores to determine eligibility for acute treatment such as tPA, guidelines such as those from the American Heart Association / American Stroke Association urge against NIHSS scores being used as the sole reason for declaring a patient as ineligible for tPA treatment.


text: In an effort to produce a complete neurological assessment the NIHSS was developed after extensive research and multiple iterations. The goal of the NIHSS was to accurately measure holistic neurological function by individually testing specific abilities. NIHSS total score is based on the summation of 4 factors. These factors are left and right motor function and left and right cortical function. The NIHSS assesses each of these specific functions by the stroke scale item listed in the chart below.


text: The Modified NIH Stroke Scale (mNIHSS) is a shortened, validated version of the mNIHSS. It has been shown to be equally, if not more, accurate than the longer, older NIHSS. It removes questions 1A, 4, and 7. This makes the mNIHSS shorter and easier to use. The mNIHSS predicts patients at high risk of hemorrhage if given tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) and which patients are likely to have good clinical outcomes. The mNIHSS has also recently been shown to be taken without seeing the patient, and only using medical records. This potentially improves care while in the emergency room and the hospital, but also facilitates retrospective research.


text: The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale has been repeatedly validated as a tool for assessing stroke severity and as an excellent predictor for patient outcomes. Severity of a stroke is heavily correlated with the volume of brain affected by the stroke; strokes affecting larger portions of the brain tend to have more detrimental effects. NIHSS scores have been found to be reliable predictors of damaged brain volume, with a smaller NIHSS score indicating a smaller lesion volume.


text: The NIHSS places 7 of the possible 42 points on abilities that require verbal skills; 2 points from the LOC questions, 2 points from LOC commands, and 3 points from the Language item. The NIHSS only awards 2 points for extinction and inattention. Approximately 98% of humans have verbal processing take place in the left hemisphere, indicating that the NIHSS places more value on deficits in the left hemisphere. This results in lesions receiving a higher (worse) score when occurring in the left hemisphere, compared to lesions of equal size in the right hemisphere. Due to this emphasis, the NIHSS is a better predictor of lesion volume in the strokes occurring within the left cerebral hemisphere.


text: The NIHSS has been found to be an excellent predictor of patient outcomes. A baseline NIHSS score greater than 16 indicates a strong probability of patient death, while a baseline NIHSS score less than 6 indicates a strong probability of a good recovery. On average, an increase of 1 point in a patient's NIHSS score decreases the likelihood of an excellent outcome by 17%. However, correlation between functional recovery and NIHSS scores was weaker when the stroke was isolated to the cortex.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: E=MC² is the eleventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Mariah Carey. It was released in the United States on April 15, 2008, by Island Records. The singer began recording the album in 2007 in Anguilla, after writing and composing most of its material during and after her 2006 Adventures of Mimi Tour. Carey worked with various songwriters and producers on the project, including Jermaine Dupri, Bryan-Michael Cox, Stargate, The-Dream, Tricky Stewart, Scott Storch and Danja.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: The album revealed a more personal side of the singer, illustrated in its declarative theme of emancipation from her previous marriage, and from her personal and professional setbacks. It was meant to be a continuation, or a second part of her tenth studio album, "The Emancipation of Mimi" (2005). Although it shared similar vocal production as well as an inclination to her signature pop and R&B ballads, the album also encompassed a variety of dance-oriented and uptempo styles. Carey collaborated with a number of artists on the album, including T-Pain, Damian Marley and Young Jeezy. Though considered by critics very similar to the formula its predecessor had been built on, "E=MC²" included other genres she had never explored, such as reggae, and her continued recording of gospel-influenced hymns.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: "E=MC²" was generally well received by music critics, with many complimenting the record's broad genre influences, and musical and production styles. Some critics, however, felt that the album was too similar to "The Emancipation of Mimi". The album debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 with opening week sales of 463,000 copies; the highest first-week sales of Carey's career. It also debuted at number one in Canada, and opened inside the top-five in Australia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Worldwide, the album has sold over 2.5 million copies.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: Four singles were released to promote the album. The album's lead single, "Touch My Body", became Carey's eighteenth chart-topper on the "Billboard" Hot 100, making her the solo artist with the most number one singles in United States history, surpassing the record held by Elvis Presley. Additionally, it gave Carey her 79th week atop the chart, tying Presley for most weeks at number one. It achieved strong worldwide charting, peaking within the top five of the singles charts in Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. "Bye Bye" served as the album's second release. Although hailed by critics, and expected to have achieved large commercial success, the song stalled at number nineteen on the Hot 100, and managed to chart weakly internationally. The third single, "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time" failed to garner success in any prominent music market. The fourth and final single "I Stay in Love" became her fourteenth chart topper on the Dance Club Songs chart.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: In 2002, Mariah Carey signed a new record deal with Island Records and in 2005 she released her tenth studio album, "The Emancipation of Mimi". It became the best-selling album of 2005 the United States, and the second best-seller around the world, with over 12 million units sold. It earned a myriad of music industry awards, and brought Carey back to the top of pop music following her commercial decline in 2001. After completing The Adventures of Mimi Tour, she began working on material for her eleventh studio effort, the yet untitled "E=MC²". "E=MC²" was hailed as one of the most anticipated albums of 2008, with many critics weighing their opinions on whether Carey would be able to deliver significant success, following her achievements with "The Emancipation of Mimi". Carey began writing and producing the music she saw fit, and not anything to please record executives. Throughout 2007, Carey recorded the album in a studio built into her private villa in Anguilla, in the Caribbean. She described "E=MC²" as one of her most expressive albums, and one that she felt free on, and able to express herself through her music. In an interview with "The Bryan Times", Carey spoke of her sentiments on the album "It's hard for me to sit here and talk about it without sounding like if I'm bragging if I'm in love with it, but I am I love with this album. I think that having the success with the last record allowed me to have more freedom...and just make records that I like. It's kind of a really fun record".


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: The album was supposed to be released in late 2007, but Carey spoke about reason the album got delayed: "You can't really put records out in December if you want the whole world to have a chance to actually hear it, [and] my fans all over the world are very important to me", adding that she also wants to put out a pair of singles before the album drops. In a separate interview, she elaborated further: "This happened to me with "The Emancipation of Mimi", I started writing more songs, I was like okay let me get these done, then I wrote four more songs and you know how it goes, so now I'm like 22 songs in and clearly I have to cut some of those down". It was then reported that the album will be released in February 2008. However, the release was later pushed back yet again to April 2008.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: Prior to its release, the album's working title had been "That Chick", which was also the working title of a song on the album that would eventually be titled, "I'm That Chick". As the release date drew near, the title was changed to "E=MC²", in reference to Carey's previous album, "The Emancipation of Mimi" (2005). The title signifies "(E) Emancipation (=) of (MC) Mariah Carey (²) to the second power". It is a word play on Albert Einstein's famous mass–energy equivalence formula and has been dubbed as the sequel and improved counterpart to "The Emancipation of Mimi". In his review of the album, Alex Macpherson from "The Guardian" described his thoughts on its title, as well as its meaning:


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: It is worth pondering what the title of Mariah Carey's eleventh studio album could refer to. Emancipation, maybe, in a nod to her 2005 comeback album, "The Emancipation of Mimi"; or perhaps the energy of the original equation, a statement that Carey still has what it takes to party all night at the age of 37, even as she describes herself as "eternally 12". Then again, she could just be identifying herself alongside Einstein as a fellow genius. Either way, 'E=MC²' finds Carey loopier than ever, embracing her own larger-than-life image with gusto: Mariah Carey Squared indeed.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: Carey expressed how she considered "Mimi" the "main course", and felt that the new album would be treated as "dessert". In an interview with "NME", the singer described her choice on the album's title: "Basically, I'm freer on this album than I've ever been. Some of the songs on the last album were cool but maybe not quite as neat as this album." When questioned if the title represented Carey's interest in physics, she jokingly added "Einstein's theory? Physics? Me? Hello! I even failed remedial math. I could not pass seventh grade math even in the lowest class with the worst kids." The album's similarity to its predecessor is not only found in the title and music, but also in its artwork. In the album's cover art, she holds almost the exact pose as from her last album, only with different lighting and wardrobe. It features a black backdrop, with Carey completely naked, except for a large feathered shawl covering her body. Only her first name appears in large pink letters on the cover, with 'E=MC²' appearing in small white letters on the top. In describing the cover, Macpherson wrote "Carey is naked but for the world's largest feather boa, an accessory for which flocks of birds have surely given their lives."


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: Music critics compared "E=MC²" heavily to Carey's previous album, "The Emancipation of Mimi", and felt it followed the same formula of ballads and dance-able tracks. Freedom De Luc of "The Washington Post" felt that after experiencing strong success for the first time in the 2000s with "Mimi", Carey tried to create "E=MC²" with the same formula, although possibly a little improved: "Having found that winning formula of coquettish club bangers, emotional ballads and frisky, mid-tempo coos, the diva with the golden tone has eschewed radical experimentalism here for stasis. 'E=MC²' is mostly more of the same, then, with the '2' representing something sequential rather than exponential. Meet the new Mariah, almost exactly the same as the old . . . 'Mimi'!"


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: The first song on the album's track list is "Migrate", a song Carey wrote and co-produced alongside Danja, and features a rap verse from T-Pain. Its melody is built on a heavy electronic beat, and incorporates whistle registers and several studio-created synthesizers into its melody. Additionally, the song features the inclusion of Auto-Tune and several vocal manipulators, which are used heavily on both Carey and T-Pain's vocals. Lyrically, the song finds the singer during a night out, migrating from several locations: from the car to the club, from the bar to the V.I.P, from the party to the after-party, and finally to the hotel. According to Brian Hiatt from VH1, she "hops from my car into the club ... from the bar to VIP ... from the party to the after-party ... afterparty to hotel" with T-Pain, who urges her to "bounce, bounce, bounce."


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: The album's lead single, "Touch My Body", was written and produced by Carey, Tricky Stewart and Terius "The Dream" Nash. The song's hook is built around a piano melody and "circular keyboard line", and features "a stuttering mid-tempo beat that's accented by finger snaps and electronic synthesizers" as its instrumentation. Lyrically, the song describes the protagonist revealing several bedroom fantasies in which she would like to engage in, asking her lover playfully to "touch her body". According to Ben Ratliff from "The New York Times", it's a "questionably sexy striptease: a goofy-sleazy tryst vignette", with Carey singing "If there's a camera up in here then I best not catch this flick on YouTube."


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: "Cruise Control", featuring reggae artist Damian Marley, is influenced by R&B and reggae, and finds her adapting to the genre by imitating Jamaican phrases, accents and styles of singing. "I Stay in Love" was released as the fourth and final single from the album. Written by Carey and Bryan-Michael Cox, is a mid-tempo "beat-driven" and "piano-laced" ballad, that is influenced by pop and R&B music genres. The song's instrumentation is derived from a piano melody, and is backed by a strong computerized drum-beat. Its lyrics find Carey as her most vulnerable; she describes old times she shared with her lover, and that even though "we said let go", and "inside she knows it's over", she still "stays in love with him". Featuring American rapper Young Jeezy, "Side Effects" describes Carey's abusive relationship with Tommy Mottola, her ex-husband. During the first verse, she discusses the pair's background, and how she was young and naive, and believed everything he preached to her. The lyrics read "Keepin' me there, under your thumb / Cause you were scared that I'd become much / More than you could handle," she confesses, and refers to herself as "Shining like a chandelier / That decorated every room inside / The private hell we built / And I dealt with it / Like a kid I wished / I could fly away." Sarah Rodman from "The Boston Globe" described it as "another look at her fractious marriage to Mottola", and wrote "Although the union ended in 1998, Carey is still suffering, including dreams of the 'violent times' and 'sleeping with the enemy'. Interestingly, her vocal approach here is almost emo, as she hits her rock-solid middle register and refuses to be held captive by the demons of her past." MTV News writer Jennifer Vineyard described the song in detail:


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: [It] finally reveals a side of Mariah we don't see that often — her true self. The Mariah we usually see and hear is a glossy one. Psychologists might say her affect is 'off' — meaning her gestures and facial expressions don't match her mood. There's a reason for that, as she explains on 'Side Effects', which is the emotional abuse she says she suffered during her marriage to music mogul Tommy Mottola. Mariah, who is usually quite guarded, has alluded to the subject in songs like 'Petals', but never has she gone into such detail as she does on 'Side Effects', in which she refers to the marriage as a 'private hell that we built'. Even though it's been 11 years since they split up, she sings in a lower register that she's still 'wakin' up scared some nights ... dreaming about the violent times'. Her emotional scars left her 'a little protective ... a little defensive ... a little depressed', which makes her 'fake a smile' as she 'deal[s] with the side effects'. Even though it features Young Jeezy, it sounds like a rock power ballad.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: "I'm That Chick" is a song Carey wrote alongside Norwegian duo, Stargate. It is a fast-paced song, which features a "care-free feel", and is influenced by soul, pop and disco music genres. The song incorporates a sample from Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall", and features a strong thumping bass-line and hand claps. Evan Sawdey of "PopMatters" described it as a "late-night disco-bass groove", and highlighted its production as the album's finest. "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time", the album's eventual third single, was written and produced by Carey and DJ Toomp. The song was described as a "mid-tempo", "party jam", that is influenced by pop, R&B and soul genres. Critics elaborated on the song's "soul" influence, with Melissa Ruggieri from "The News & Advance" describing it as a "soul-thumper", while "Digital Spy"s Nick Levine called it a "nod towards classic soul". The song's title is derived from the popular line, "me love you long time", from the 1987 war film, "Full Metal Jacket". Additionally, its hook and instrumentation is derived from sampling Mark DeBarge's Stay With Me. Critics also noted how "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time" "recalls" the melody riff and chord progression of the "Hill Street Blues"s theme song. The song's main source of production comes from its "lush keyboard work", and her usage of the "double voice", which she uses throughout the song's bridge. Carey described the effect as "layering her voice", so that the bridge would sound like a "swooning bank of a hundred Mariahs".


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: "Bye Bye" served as the album's thirteenth track, and also composed by Carey and Stargate. An "inspirational power ballad", it is influenced by R&B and pop music genres. The song is built on an understated and simple piano-driven melody, that is decorated with a soft bass-line. Lyrically, the song was described by critics as a "larger than life anthem", and an "inspirational lighter-in-the-air ballad", and finds Carey remembering both her father, as well as any lost loved ones. While the verses are dedicated to him, the chorus was written in a third-person point of view, for her fans: "This is for my peoples who just lost somebody / Your best friend, your baby, your man or your lady / Put your hand way up high / We will never say bye / Mamas, daddies, sisters, brothers, friends and cousins / This is for my peoples who lost their grandmothers / Lift your hands to the sky / Because we won't ever say bye bye". While listing several forms of loss, Carey encourages to never let go, and always live with their memory, and put their hands up if they ever lost someone, 'cause we won't ever say bye bye'. Serving as the album's closing number, "I Wish You Well" was compared to the closing number on "Mimi", "Fly Like a Bird". Similarly, "I Wish You Well" incorporates gospel influence into its melody of "rousing piano waltz", that "extends forgiveness to those who have wronged her in the past and is pretty much interchangeable with its predecessors." Extensively making use of the whistle register, she references Mottola in another light than "Side Effects": "'I Wish You Well's' message to Mottola is similarly striking. Accompanied by a piano and some multi-tracked backing vocals, Carey sings: "Still bruised, still walk on eggshells / Same frightened child, hide to protect myself / But you can't manipulate me like before." She then prescribes Bible study and says, "I wish you well."


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: Following the song's digital release, Carey promoted the song on several live televised appearances and programs throughout the world. Only days prior to being released digitally, the singer was announced as the musical guest on an episode of "Saturday Night Live", taking over for Janet Jackson who caught the flu and was unable to perform. Hosted by Jonah Hill, Carey performed both "Touch My Body", as well as live rendition of "Migrate" alongside T-Pain. Following the set, Carey and her manager at the time, Benny Medina, met with Lee Daniels, who then offered her a role in his film adaptation of "Precious" (2008), in which Carey would later star and earn acclaim for her acting. After reaching the top of the "Billboard" charts, the Empire State Building was lit up in Carey's motif colors, white, pink and lavender, for the entire week. On March 25, 2008, Carey was featured as the special guest performer at "The Hills" season premiere party, an event marking the start of a span of ten episodes airing in between season three and four. Carey performed "Touch My Body", "I'm That Chick" and "We Belong Together", before exiting the stage to a standing ovation. After the performance, Carey received strong praise from the program's cast members, with Lauren Conrad saying "I've always been a huge Mariah fan, and she's just so beautiful and talented'. Whitney Port and Audrina Patridge referred to Carey as "an amazing singer", while claiming to have listened to her music from a young age. On April 12, 2008, Carey made an appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show". Winfrey interviewed the singer on her weight loss, "E=MC²", and even showed footage of Carey in her New York apartment, showing off her lingerie closet. Following the interview, Carey performed a live rendition of "Bye Bye" for the audience, with three background vocalists assisting her. Kevin Johnson from "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" described the performance as "touching", and complimented the song's appeal.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: On the seventh season of the talent competition "American Idol", Carey was featured as a mentor for the top-seven week. Titled "Mariah Carey Week" and airing live on April 14, 2008, the contestants were to perform a song from the singer's catalog. After all seven contestants sang their individual songs, they all came together for a live rendition of Carey's 1996 collaboration with Boyz II Men, "One Sweet Day". Overall, critics noted how a Carey themed week would be extremely difficult for the performers, due to their vocally strenuous nature. Following their joint performance, Carey emerged onto the stage and performed "Bye Bye" live, while backed by a trio of supporting vocalists. Tamara Jones of "The Washington Post" jokingly commented on Carey's flailing hand movements during the performance, writing how she was "waving like a malevolent homecoming queen". Gil Kaufman from MTV News complimented Carey's performance, commenting on her "barely there micro-dress" and writing how she "serenaded the audience with her homage to lost ones." The "Calgary Sun"s Lindsey Ward described it as a "less-than-fab performance", although complimenting on Carey's leaner figure, "Oh, who am I kidding? She would look hot in a paper bag." On April 25, 2008, Carey opened the "Good Morning America" "Summer Concert Series" with a live performance in Times Square. Carey, wearing a pink mini-skirt, began the set with "Touch My Body" in front of thousands of fans. During the song, her backing vocals began to malfunction, causing it to repeat phrases and play during her main vocal moments. In order to let the sound engineer know of the problem, she substituted part of the lyrics for "stop singing my part now baby", and completed the final chorus. She continued on with "I'm That Chick", and completed the three-song set-list with her follow-up single, "Bye Bye". After marking the album's stateside launch with her appearance on "Good Morning America", Carey took to Europe to perform on several programs. She began with an interview on the British radio station, BBC Radio 1, and continued onto a live rendition of "Touch My Body" on both "The Sunday Night Project" and "The Paul O'Grady Show".


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: Similarly, Carey performed the song live on the German talent show, "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" (Germany searches for the superstar), in April 2008. On August 8, 2008, Carey performed a mash-up of the song at the 2008 Teen Choice Awards. She began with her single at the time, "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time", and worked into the bridge of "Touch My Body", before reverting to the former song. At the Fashion Rocks ceremony in 2009, Carey performed "Touch My Body" and her current single, "Obsessed", as well as the remix to her 1995 song "Fantasy". During the set-list, Carey was accompanied by six men in black ties, who hoisted her into the air in front of over 6,000 people during "Obsessed", and rigorous dance routines throughout "Touch My Body". In promotion for "E=MC²" and the single, Carey was featured as a guest judge and musical act on the fifth season of the British talent competition, "The X Factor". During that week, all the contestants would have to sing songs from Carey's catalog. Prior to her arrival, one of the show's judges Dannii Minogue said "Could it get any more nerve-wracking for the contestants?", due to the general strenuous nature of Carey's songs. After several performances by the finalists, Carey performed "I Stay in Love", accompanied by three background vocalists. She received a standing ovation from the audience and judges, and continued backstage for a taped session with the contestants. At the end of the program, she performed her classic "Hero" (1993), and was eventually joined by the finalists for the finale of the song. "Hero" was re-recorded by the 2008 UK X Factor finalists and released as a single, becoming the best-selling single of 2008. According to reports, the episode gained a large increase in viewers due to Carey's presence, and was able to surpass its long-time rival program, "Strictly Come Dancing", in the ratings. Carey made an appearance at the American Music Awards, held on November 23, 2008, at the Nokia Theatre. Wearing a long black gown, she performed the song after receiving an honorary award for her achievements in music. Chris Harris from MTV News described it as a "riveting performance".


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: "Touch My Body" was released as the lead single from the album on February 12, 2008. The song received generally positive reviews from music critics, who complimented its hook and production, as well as its playful lyrics. "Touch My Body" reached the top position on the Hot 100 in its fourth week, and became Carey's eighteenth chart topper, selling 286,000 digital downloads. The song's opening week broke several records, making her the solo artist with the most number one singles in United States history, surpassing the record held by Elvis Presley. Additionally, it gave Carey her 79th week atop the Hot 100, tying her with Presley as the artist with the most weeks at number one in the "Billboard" chart history." The song also sold the highest amount of digital records in one week, surpassing Rihanna's "Umbrella" (2007), which sold 277,000 units. Internationally, the song achieved strong chart success, peaking within the top five on the charts in Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The song's music video was directed by film-maker Brett Ratner, who had previously worked with the singer on five other music videos. It follows around a story revolving around a computer employees fantasy as he visits Carey's home. As he fixes her computer, he enters a fantasy in which the pair perform several activities together, including a pillow fight, playing laser tag, "Guitar Hero" and slot cars, and throw a frisbee, all while showing off Carey's figure in several revealing outfits.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: "Bye Bye" was announced as the second single from the album on April 15, 2008. The song received generally positive reviews from music critics, and was heavily speculated to have become her 19th number-one single on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Many reviewers complimented its simple and understated musical arrangement and personalized lyrics, while some felt the song was too simple for an artist of Carey's stature. The track only managed to reach a peak position of number nineteen on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Throughout other countries where it found release, the song achieved relatively weak charting, peaking within the top ten in New Zealand, and in the top-fifty in Canada, Ireland, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom. The song's accompanying music video was directed by Justin Francis on the island of Antigua in the Caribbean. Notably, Carey and Cannon began dating during their trip to the island, and later wed on April 30, 2008. The video features behind-the-scenes footage of the couple, Carey promoting the album in the United Kingdom, as well as photos of several of Carey's close friends, family and past collaborators such as Luciano Pavarotti and Luther Vandross.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: The album's third single, "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time", was released on June 1, 2008. Many complimented the song's production and incorporation of the "Stay With me" sample, while others were unimpressed with the chorus in general. Chuck Taylor of "Billboard" assured the song would endure strong success and radio appeal, and complimented its overall production, as well as Carey's voice: "[It's] a playful, beach-befitting groove, featuring a bright sample from DeBarge's "Stay With Me," lushly woven vocals and Carey's highs doting on fans with her sonic signature." In the United States, the song peaked at number fifty-eight, and at number twenty-seven in Japan. On the UK Singles Chart, "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time" peaked at number eighty-four, and spent only one week in the chart. The song was featured on the final scene of "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" (2008), a film in which Carey made a cameo appearance. Its accompanying music video was shot over a three-day interval in Hawaii, and makes usage of the islands scenery, as well as shots of Carey in several bikinis, while swimming with a dolphin.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: "I Stay in Love" was released as the fourth and final single from the album on October 28, 2008. The song failed to chart on the Hot 100, though became Carey's fourteenth chart topper on the Hot Dance Club Play. Additionally, it peaked at number ninety-five on the UK Singles Chart. The song's accompanying music video was filmed by Carey's husband, Nick Cannon, and features Carey as a dancer in a Las Vegas show at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino Resort. Additionally, during the show and its preparations, Carey realizes that her ex-lover has found love with one of her fellow dancers, leading her to blow up the car he gave her, as well as its accompaniments in the Mojave Desert.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: Since the album's release in early April, Carey had said publicly that she planned on embarking on a large worldwide tour in support of "E=MC²". In an interview with "Billboard" on March 28, 2008, Carey explained "It's come up, and I'm probably going to do it, but I don't know exactly how we're going to do it or when. I'm thinking probably September. But I think it's important to tour with this album, because there are so many songs that I really want to sing live, that I really enjoy." Months later, in an interview with MTV News in July, Carey further addressed her plans of a tour: "We're looking at November right now. Please don't hold me accountable if it turns out to be December 5 or December 7 or January 18!" When asked to describe the tour's theme, Carey explained "I'm thinking elaborate. I like elaborate. We only do substantial. That's what my jeweler says. I haven't gotten the looks in mind just yet, but we're going to figure it out soon enough." Despite continued plans for a tour, and announcements made on "The X Factor" in United Kingdom in November, the tour was suddenly cancelled by early December. Tabloids and critics began heavily speculating that Carey had become pregnant, and had abandoned plans for a tour as a result. Many claimed to have seen Carey visiting a famed gynecologist's office in Los Angeles. Additionally, Carey's newly slimmed figure began to change, as she stopped her exercise routines and gained weight. Though Carey had eventually announced that she was pregnant with twins on November 28, 2010, over two years later, she admitted she had indeed been pregnant during that time period, and suffered a miscarriage. For that reason, she cancelled the tour, and lost the child only two months later.


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: "E=MC²" received generally positive reviews from music critics. At review aggregator Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received a weighted average score of 64 based on 19 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior editor of AllMusic, rated the album three out of five stars, and wrote "it's misleading to judge Mariah based on her new record of possessing the most number one singles, as she's not about longevity, she's about being permanently transient, a characteristic 'E=MC²' captures all too well." "Billboard"s Gary Trust felt that on the album, Carey was in "pristine form", stating, "She's proclaimed emancipation before, but Mariah Carey's never sounded as free as she does on her 10th album. Carey's made a pop album with equal parts levity and gravity." Writing for "Entertainment Weekly", Margeaux Watson graded "E=MC²" an 'A−', and described how the album's goal was to prove "her comeback was no fluke". She continued complimenting the album's several collaborations, and wrote "the result is a largely enjoyable mix of flirtatious club jams, midtempo love songs, and emotional ballads anchored by hip-hop beats that handsomely showcase the singer's powerful vocal chops." Though Carey's voice had been criticized since her 2002 release, "Charmbracelet", for not being able to deliver the "gravity defying vocals" from the 1990s, blogger Roger Friedman from Fox News wrote "Her infamous eight-octave range has suffered a little wear and tear over the years, but Carey still can flutter from great highs to mellow lows like no one else." Alex Macpherson from "The Guardian" gave the album four out of five stars, heavily describing the singer's vocal state throughout the album: "Carey's voice has been mocked, bizarrely, as being a triumph of technique over soul – an argument that fails to comprehend that technique and soul are intertwined, that technique primarily exists as a means to convey emotion – but she is on fine vocal form throughout 'E=MC²', whether belting out massive ballads, or layering her voice into a swooning bank of a hundred Mariahs." Macpherson concluded his review with, "When she sings elsewhere, "Them other regularities, they can't compare with MC," "it is hard not to agree", referencing a lyric on "For the Record".


title: E=MC² (Mariah Carey album)

text: The "Houston Chronicle"s Joey Guerra felt all of the album's tracks were strong, and wrote "Every track plays like a potential hit single, and that's exactly what fans will love about 'E=MC²'. Expect it to soundtrack much of the summer and beyond." "Los Angeles Times" staff writer, Richard Cromelin, gave the album two out of four stars, noting its "alternatives to the glass-shattering flamboyance of her early '90s youth." He concluded in his mixed review of the album, "Of course, consistency isn't so important when an album is assembled as a series of singles rather than a cohesive work. Fortunately for Carey, the tabloid-tailored real-life back story on one side and the producer's craft on the other matter more than the art of singing in this particular fairy tale." Ben Ratliff of "The New York Times" felt the album didn't level up to par with Carey's previous release, writing "Much of the record sounds like urban-radio imitations, without the peculiarities and effective hooks of 'Mimi'. Maybe emancipation isn't a continuing procedure; maybe it only comes once." Writing for PopMatters, Evan Sawdey rated "E=MC²" four out of ten discs, describing it as a "shallow imitation of its predecessor". Sawdey concluded his review on a mixed note, stating " the second act of Mariah's comeback doesn't wisely expand her sound: it instead succumbs to the blueprint so carefully laid out by its predecessor, a pointless remake that exists only because it has to. If you ever had a doubt as to its formulaic nature, you need to look no further than its title. Long live the Diva." Caryn Ganz from "Rolling Stone" questioned why she limited her vocal abilities throughout the record, "nearly every song confines Carey to four-note verses, offering little room for her glorious range." Journalist Eric Henderson, writing for "Slant Magazine", graded the album three out of five stars, and concluding with, "Such are the rewards of an album like 'E=MC²', in which one does reach a solution, but not before Mariah bends over backward to show her work." The album finished in the top-ten of several "best of 2008" lists, ending at number four on an official poll held by "Billboard", eight by "The Detroit News", and number ten by "The San Diego Union-Tribune". Robert Christgau picked out one song from the album, "Touch My Body", as a "choice cut" ().