Also pretty sure the idea is for AC radio will jump on board at home – they’ll just dump the original Foreigner version for the Mariah version in their playlists. And AC radio play sells albums.

An unkind person may suggest she’s seen Leona Lewis’s sales and decided she wants a piece of the ballad-selling market and so has aped Lewis’s recent treatment of Snow Patrol’s Run. The difference is of course Lewis can deliver the song live with aplomb. Can we really see Mariah doing this justice after her recent run of poor live efforts?

(Same goes for her other big-throated ballad cover of 1994, the Luther Vandross duet “Endless Love.” When that came out, Billboard was like, Whoa, Luther and Mariah, stand back, this thing’s gonna top the charts for months!! and instead it rose to No. 2 for a solitary week and dropped off the charts relatively expeditiously for the two of them. Again: Carey’s fans and radio PDs seem most excited by new material from her; covers are hits for her but not the biggest ones, the Jackson 5 redo excepted.)

Also, “In case I need it when I’m colder“?! Somebody needed to check the lyric sheet she took into the recording booth. I’m not just being picky here; Lou Gramm’s restrained delivery of “In case I need it when I’m older” is part of what makes the original song moving, and Mick Jones saved “colder” for the next verse’s capper, “…keeps me warm when life grows colder” (a verse she eliminates).

Not sure what its airplay potential is – it may depend on whether everyone (radio, her record label, listeners) really wants this to be her big pseudo-comeback after the relative semi-flop of “obsessed” (sort of like “we belong together” was after “it’s like that”). But if she wants a number one, she might want to wait to release it to itunes until it has already generated some solid airplay, like she did with “touch my body.”