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Remember when Mariah Carey's Glitter soundtrack saved a life on 9/11?
On one of the darkest days in American history, Mariah Carey saved a life.
September 11, 2001 is remembered as one of the darkest days in American history, but one woman's life was saved thanks to a very unique story.
Like she still is today, in 2001, Mariah Carey was one of the biggest stars in the world. Her seventh album Rainbow had come out in 1999, and included the Billboard Hot 100 number one single "Heartbreaker." Two years later, she was releasing her eighth studio album, the soundtrack to her film Glitter.
Glitter, which released in theaters on September 21, just ten days after the 9/11 attacks, starred Carey as an aspiring singer who falls in love with a DJ. The film was critically panned, but has since become something of a cult classic.
The soundtrack similarly was a commercial flop, being her first ever album without a number one hit. However, it has been retrospectively appreciated by critics and fans.
One of the reasons Glitter has had such lasting ability in pop culture was its close proximity to the 9/11 attacks, which Carey has blamed for the film and soundtrack's initial lack of success.
"I don't care if it was the best one of my life, anything released the week of 9/11/2001 was not going to work," she told The New York Times in 2005 about the soundtrack.
There's even a famous viral video of the day of the attacks that pans up from a New York City billboard for Glitter.
In 2021, WPXI-TV news in Pennsylvania interviewed Sara Botkin, a woman who worked in the World Trade Center but survived that dark, fateful day.
She had a temporary job working in an office on the 105th floor of the south tower and should have been in her office when the first plane hit. Instead, she was in the concourse and about to take an elevator up. 176 of her coworkers at insurance brokerage firm Aon Corporation died that day.
Her reason for being late to work that morning? She stopped at a store before work to buy the Glitter soundtrack from her favorite artist, Mariah Carey.
"I think it's gotta be luck. So many people said god was watching out for me that day," Botkin said. "And I believe in god, but I can't think that he would be a god that would watch out for all those people who lost their lives. Fathers and daughters and mothers and sons. So, I just think I was really lucky."
After the attacks, Botkin moved back home to Peters Township, Pennsylvania, got married, and joined the family business.
None of that could have happened without Mariah Carey.
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.
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