It looks like Mariah Carey is finally going to share her secret scrapped ‘90s grunge album.
The album has been known about since 2020, when the singer shared her memoir, The Making Of Mariah Carey, and revealed that she worked on an alternative rock album in the 1990s.
While the album was never shared, she did say that the vocals were from “my friend Clarissa”, and that her own vocals were more of “a hidden layer”. The album dates back to 1995, and was called ‘Someone’s Ugly Daughter’, and with the band Chick.
While the album has not been heard before, barring a couple of snippets posted on YouTube, Carey did share hints that she was wanting to release the record back in 2022.
In 2024, she raised fans’ hopes again when she spoke to Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang on the Las Culturistas podcast, and said that she was “so mad I haven’t [released it] yet.”
Now, it looks like the plans to track down and share the record are still on the singer’s radar.
Last week, Carey spoke to SZA about the album and described the cover artwork and a song on the tracklist seemingly called ‘Hermit’.
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Since then, she has also appeared on Fallon and said that she has looked into what would be required for the album to come out.
Telling the host that she was behind the scrawled writing in lipstick on the album artwork, Carey added: “I don’t know which record label this is owned by. I don’t think it’s any of them because it’s just the way that it went down. But let’s discuss…”
Jimmy Fallon then played a different song from the band Chick called ‘Prom Queen’, and joked that she should find the album and release it in time for Christmas.
“I always regretted not putting it out, but they kind of stopped me at that point,” Carey responded. “It was Sony at the time. We love Sony now, but back then…a little controlling, a little controlling.”
When Carey first announced the album’s existence in her memoir, she wrote: “I’d bring my little alt-rock song to the band and hum a silly guitar riff. They would pick it up and we would record it immediately. It was irreverent, raw, and urgent, and the band got into it. I actually started to love some of the songs. I would fully commit to my character.”
“I was playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light white female singers who were popular at the time,” she added. “You know the ones who seemed to be so carefree with their feelings and their image. They could be angry, angsty, and messy, with old shoes, wrinkled slips, and unruly eyebrows, while every move I made was so calculated and manicured.
“I wanted to break free, let loose, and express my misery – but I also wanted to laugh. I totally looked forward to doing my alter-ego band sessions after Daydream each night.”
More recently, Carey shared her new album, ‘Here For It All’, after teasing it under the moniker ‘MC16’. It was given a four-star review from NME and praised as “carefree and occasionally brilliant”.
“Among the pantheon of Mariah’s 16 albums, ‘Here For It All’ might not rank very high. The record isn’t as cohesive or experimental as ‘Caution’, it’s not a big musical transition moment like ‘Butterfly’ was, and it’s not as viral-worthy as ‘Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel’ – but it’s still pretty darn good,” it read. “For someone who’s had the ability to stop caring about making music long ago, Mimi remains committed to the craft that she’s had so much influence over, and we, too, are staying here for it all.”
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