Kingdom as the fifth and final single on May 20, 1991. On July 24, 2020, Carey released a five-track digital extended play of the song as part of her 30th-anniversary celebrations of her debut album Mariah Carey. Titled There's Got to Be a Way EP and released in tandem with an eight-track EP of "Someday", it contains "hard-to-find and unreleased makeovers" of the original album track, including both the 7-inch and 12-inch versions (the latter of which was previously only available on vinyl), the "Vocal Dub Mix" and "Alt. Vocal Dub Mix", as well as the "Sample Dub Mix", with the third and fifth being previously unreleased. Gil Kaufman of Billboard called its release a "revelation" for fans in the United States, owing to "There's Got to Be a Way" originally released only in the United Kingdom. Composition "There's Got to Be a Way" is an R&B-pop music song with elements of gospel, lasting for a duration for four minutes and 52 seconds. The song begins with Carey publicly decrying the existence of war, poverty and racism in the world, and she uses the bridge to shift the lyrics towards an uplifting and aspirational tone. A "peaceful, political anthem," the theme of social activism can be heard in the lyrics "There's got to be a way/ To connect this world today/ Come together to relieve the pain/ There's got to be a way/ To unite this human race/ And together we'll bring on a change." Carey goes on to suggest that we should be more tolerant of each other and not resort so readily to war in the lyrics "Couldn't we accept each other / Can't we make ourselves aware." Critical reception J.D. Considine from The Baltimore Sun named "There's Got to Be a Way" one of the album's "best songs", describing it as "gloriously engaging". Music critic Robert Christgau felt that Carey was being too political in her "brave, young, idealistic attack" on war and destitution. Ralph Novak, David Hiltbrand and David Grogan of People wrote that it is a "testimony to her talent that she does so much with so little." They continued to write that Carey's "tone and clarity" makes "There's Got to Be a Way" a "mesmerizing" track. To mark twenty-five years since the release of Mariah Carey in June 1990, Billboard writer Trevor Anderson wrote a track-by-track review of the album in June 2015. He