Mariah Carey’s semi-unfortunately titled Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel has been pushed back from its original Aug. 25 release date to Sept. 15, a three-week delay that will knock the album out of Grammy contention until the 2011 ceremony. There are reports that the album isn’t done yet—Mimi herself said yesterday morning that she was “in the studio finishing this album”—but could there also be panic over the cool response that the album’s lead single “Obsessed” has received from radio and retail so far?


The slightly paranoid “Obsessed” was released digitally on July 6, a little over two weeks ago; its first-week sales of 119,000 copies put it at No. 6 on last week’s digital-sales chart and it entered the Hot 100 last week at No. 11. And despite a video that got lots of Internet attention for its star’s drag-king turn and an appearance on America’s Got Talent, demand for the track doesn’t seem to be increasing all that much; right now, “Obsessed” is No. 19 on the iTunes Store’s chart, and No. 18 on Amazon’s. Sure, in the grand scheme of things, those numbers are not all that bad, but Mariah’s superstar status—not to mention the way the second and third singles from her last album E=MC² failed to connect with a large swath of the public—might be resulting in some concern.


Or it might not! After all, delaying your much-talked-about album is fashionable these days, what with promotional cycles for records seemingly drying up once the things land in stores. Perhaps Mariah is just hoping to stoke peoples’ obsessive fires by drawing out the pre-release process, or at least making sure that people will remember her once February 2011 rolls around?


Mariah Carey’s ‘Memoirs’ Pushed Back [Rap-Up]