Even though the album came out in April,
Mariah Carey is finally plotting out a tour in support of her E=MC². “We’re looking at November right now,” Carey told MTV. “Please don’t hold me accountable if it turns out to be December 5 or December 7 or January 18!” Before she hits the road, Carey will perform at both the Teen Choice Awards on August 4th and Fashion Rocks at NY’s Radio City Music Hall on September 5th. Much like her last tour — when Carey changed her wardrobe nine times over the course of one concert (kinda like her episode of MTV’s Cribs) — Mimi promises the shows will be “elaborate.” As for the rumored troubles between her and husband
Nick Cannon following their self-promotional shotgun wedding, Carey says the couple are “good.” “Life is beautiful, and things are going well,” Carey said before asking fans to just be happy for her and stop rumor-mongering.

[Photo: Bedder/Getty]

Mariah Carey’s most embarassing moments are always caught on film. There was her public breakdown on TRL a few years ago, her wacky episode of Cribs where she took a bath on camera and now the clip above, which shows Carey throwing out the first pitch at a game between the Yomiuri Giants and the Rakuten Eagles at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. As you can see, she’s clearly a knuckleball pitcher who had trouble finding the mark. Carey celebrated her brief baseball career by shopping for kimonos with a goofy Japanese talk show host. Hit the jump for highlights from her full adventure in Tokyo. (more…)

The Big News: Mariah Carey enjoyed the highest-selling debut of her career as her E=MC² equaled 462,971 copies, an easy ride to the top of the chart and the best opening week performance in 2008. Leona Lewis‘ history-making Spirit dropped from one to two, selling one fifth the albums that Carey did. Thanks to an appearance on Idol Gives Back, Miley Cyrus and her alter ego Hannah Montana’s Best of Both Worlds in Concert rocketed from thirty-one to three. Rookie country act Lady Antebellum landed in the fourth position with their self-titled debut album, while NOW 27 clung to the five spot. Encouraged by the DVD release, the Juno soundtrack leapt from forty-six back into the top ten.

Debuts: Thrice’s The Alchemy Index Vol. III & IV entered at seventeen, one spot ahead of Rush’s Snakes & Arrows Live. (more…)

Mariah Carey and her physics-savvy new album E=MC² sits at the center of this week’s New Music Report. Click above for RollingStone.com Deputy Editor Caryn Ganz’s thoughts on the new record and whether or not the star producers mesh well with Carey’s still impressive vocal range.

• Review: Mariah Carey’s E=MC²

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.

[Video: Jennifer Hsu]

At a private listening party hosted by L.A. Reid, Rolling Stone recently got a chance to check out Mariah Carey’s eleventh studio album, the follow-up to 2005’s blockbuster The Emancipation of Mimi. Due April 15th, E=MC² jumps from hip-hop-flavored jams like the Young Jeezy-assisted “Side Effects” to bright, mega-catchy stuff like the disco “That Chick.” The album also tosses in a couple of big-voiced ballads (“Bye Bye,” a piano-based song about losing someone close to you) and beats from big-name producers like Jermaine Dupri, Will.i.am and Scott Storch. In a notable departure from earlier albums, Carey sings in a lighter, less showy voice than we’re used to on a few tracks, including lead single “Touch My Body.” A horny jam about a “secret rendezvous,” the single was co-written by Tricky Stewart and The-Dream, the team that co-penned Rihanna’s “Umbrella.”

Nate “Danja” Hills, who produced “Migrate” (which features T-Pain), tells RS that on that track Carey “definitely opens up towards the end of the song and shows what Mariah does. (more…)

The red carpet fuss at last night’s VH1 Save the Music gala centered around two people: John Mayer and Mariah Carey. Quick-witted Mayer seemed especially eager to avoid commenting on his personal life (in answer to the query “Who’s the lady in your life” he responded, “Aunt Jemima, and I can’t wait to go home and get me some flapjacks!”). Mayer confirmed to Rock Daily that he’s planning to relax a bit before working on his next record, and when asked who he’d like to secure for his upcoming rock cruise, he proclaimed, “I want Isaac!” The bartender from The Love Boat? We think so.

As we waited (and waited) for Mimi, industry legend Quincy Jones revealed that Mayer, John Legend and Coldplay are three current acts he admires, and shared a tip for creating platinum records: “I go for goosebumps — when I get the goosebumps, I know someone else is gonna get them,” he told us. “And anyone who says they can go in there and figure out how to sell fifty million albums is lying!” L.A. Reid also did some secret sharing, hinting that Jay-Z’s new album is going to sound “gangsta” (okay, maybe that’s not so secret since it’s inspired by a movie called American Gangster) and boasting about the guy with the biggest-selling debut of the year. “Kanye West has the hottest album in the world today,” he said. “And that’s our record.” One tidbit Reid couldn’t divulge: the track names for Mariah Carey’s upcoming album, though he did proclaim it “amazing.” We were thisclose to more information, but Carey’s manager, Benny Medina, failed to give the okay.

Woman of the hour Mariah Carey finally arrived in a long purple dress with butterfly rings on each hand just moments before the ceremony began. She shared some insight into her still-untitled record (the name should be arriving any day now), calling it “probably the most fun record I’ve ever had, and that’s tough to say after The Emancipation of Mimi.” When Carey was whisked off, we settled in for Conan O’Brien’s monologue, which included the killer punchline “Senator Clinton has always encouraged music education. Right now she’s trying to encourage Barack Obama to play second fiddle.” When the show was over, a mob formed around Carey and Mya, but oddly nobody approached Jon Bon Jovi a few tables over as he got up and made a quiet exit.

Mariah Carey has news! Her dog, Jack, is “a person” and her fans sent her an awesome cookbook. Oh, and she hopes to have the follow-up to blockbuster The Emancipation of Mimi in stores by the end of ‘07. She chose to bury that last tidbit in one of her patented extremely detailed voicemail messages to her lambs. In the latest audio letters, she muses on her short jaunt to Capri (”which was a stone groove”), her personal trainer (”it’s bleak because I can’t eat anything good and she makes me work out after I’ve been in the studio for like 80 trillion hours, but whatever”) and life in general (”everything is “flantastic!”). She just finished the tenth “nice” song for her upcoming album and is headed to Atlanta to work with JD — Jermaine Dupri, we presume — for a “stone groove/smash-hit wonder or at least a stone groove, hopefully.” Now back to her “vocal rest” …

When we think about Mariah Carey we imagine negligees, industrial-sized vanilla-scented candles, and Bonne Bell bubblegum LipSmackers. But when Hong Kong-based concert promoters Concerts Asia think about Mariah, they apparently imagine a nightmare-ish diva with very few ticket-buying fans and outrageous requirements. A statement on the promoter’s Web site read, in part: “As promoters of the Mariah Carey Hong Kong concert, we have decided to cancel the event effective immediately due to both the poor response of public ticket sales and also due to specific last-minute demands which we find wholly unreasonable and not with the best interests of Hong Kong, us and also the fans.”

The Smoking Gun acquired Carey’s tour rider (note: not sure of the date on this), which gives us some sense of what Mariah’s like on tour. After perusing it, we picture her lounging with some combination of her twelve fluffy bath towels, munching diet cheese, and sipping Cristal out of a bendy straw. Seriously, though? Nothing on here is THAT outrageous. What did she do to piss off the Chinese?