Mariah working with "American Idol" girls on new album
The wait for Mariah Carey's highly anticipated track with Miguel, "#Beautiful", is officially over. The singer and American Idol judge phoned in to On Air with Ryan Seacrest to chat about the hot new single and working with the Grammy-winning crooner, as well as how she used Idol finalists Candice, Kree, and Angie's vocals as backup on another new track!
As for Miguel, Mariah says: "I'm a huge fan of his music and I think everybody is so blown away by him right now. We got together, he had starting writing this song with just the guitar riff, and I have to say this about him as a collaborator, sometimes when you haven't worked with somebody you don't know really what they do in the studio, and if they have the same kind of love for music that I have, and he's the truth. We just wanted to do something different that has a texture that feels fresh."
So how does Mariah's hit-making process work? "It depends on who I'm working with, but were talking if I go to Atlanta and go to Southside studio to Jermaine Dupri, who I wrote 'Always Be My Baby' with. He literally has a club in his studio and a basketball court. Let's say I'm working with Jermaine, we may have an inspiration like, 'This beat would be interesting' or a throwback to this moment he will often say like, when I revealed 'Touch My Body' I wrote that with The-Dream, and Jermaine said, 'I think we should go with that verse.' And he was right because it went and was a nice hit."
Mariah also revealed the wait for her album won't be too long either. "Probably we're talking about earlier than mid-summer, which is a lot of pressure on me because I want these last few records to be just as good as the first records I started."
And she will have some special guest on her upcoming album, including the Idol finalists she's been mentoring. "I was in the studio with Candice, Kree, and Angie last night because selfishly, I wanted to get some background vocals from them on another record as I did my mentoring moment, and just give them a glimpse, I said, 'I'm wearing a totally different hat right now, this is me the producer, that goes quickly through the part but we have to be precise,' but the girls only had a couple hours and I didn't want to push them, but it was a great experience, so they did backup for a different song which I will not reveal the title yet."
Speaking of Idol, Mariah will premiere the music video for "#Beautiful" on the show this coming Wednesday. The singer describes the video as "the antithesis of the person you see on American Idol. I was multitasking by editing the final bits with my editor and the girls got to see a bit of that and talk about how important it is to maintain some creative control from the beginning of your career, because a lot of artists think 'I'm not allowed to do this. I'm not allowed to do that.' It wasn't until later. It's not like I first started and got my record deal as a teenage girl and I think I can boss people around and be like, 'Hey, wait I'm coming to fix that video!' I didn't even know about lighting darling, I didn't even know we didn't like bad lighting."
Along with celebrating the release of a new single, Mariah also celebrated her fifth wedding anniversary with husband Nick Cannon at Disneyland, where they sealed the night with a kiss as fireworks went off. So how did they time that perfectly? Mariah joked: "Actually it just happened, nobody planned it. I think in Disneyland it just magically occurs." (KIIS FM)
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