Mariah The Scientist’s ‘Hearts Sold Separately’ Makes Love Spiritual and Unapologetically Intimate
Apologies, I gotta admit, I slept on Mariah the Scientist’s pen and now I see she’s has always been a student of love. Not the rom-com version. The version that lingers, that refuses to let go, that stretches across city lines, time zones, and emotional bandwidths until it either snaps or ties you to someone forever.
Her new album, Hearts Sold Separately, executive produced by Nineteen85 (the sonic mastermind behind dvsn), makes that obsession plain. But this time, it’s not desperation masquerading as romance, it’s control. Precision. Intentional vulnerability.
Released via Epic Records, Hearts Sold Separately is Mariah at her most emotionally economical. Every lyric feels like an invoice. Every vocal choice, a line item. And the overall debt? Still unpaid.
Across 10 tracks, including the slow-burn radio hit Burning Blue and the Kali Uchis duet Is It a Crime — Mariah uses ’80s R&B aesthetics not for nostalgia, but for atmosphere. Think Sade but spun through the anxiety of a woman who reads the comments, knows her worth, and still wants to believe love is worth the mess.
The opening track Sacrifice sets the tone like a foghorn in a storm.
“It’s been at least three hundred days / I got stuck in your maze,”
she sings, as the production echoes like distant thunder.
This is love at a deficit. This is waiting as an act of devotion. All I Want + Pursuit feels like a whispered confession made through tears on the Uber ride home.
“Don’t you ever leave me, don’t you ever go too far”
The kind of thing you don’t say unless you’ve already seen someone start to disappear. But it’s on United Nations where Mariah the thinker cuts through. “Lord, send me some good vibrations now / Help me to unite these nations now,” she sings, drawing lines between intimacy and global tension, between the political and the personal. This isn’t an artist playing in metaphor, she’s threading divinity into desire, and it works.
Other standouts include Rainy Days, a track that plays like a Lana Del Rey B-side soaked in Atlanta humidity, and Eternal Flame, which doesn’t just reference love, it embalms it. “I stare at an open sky and pray for rain,” she sings, but it feels less like a wish and more like a ritual.
When speaking with Rolling Stone, Mariah explained,
“The climate of the world made me want to make a whole project about love. I feel like nobody prioritizes love. Everybody looks at love like it’s a problem. I feel like back in the day, it wasn’t like that.”
She’s right and that’s what makes Hearts Sold Separately such a necessary countercurrent. While the culture continues to romanticize detachment and commodify healing, Mariah is out here reminding us that the act of loving, not being loved, not being wanted, but loving, still holds power. Still costs something. And she’s paid in full.
