Mariah Carey's grunge era is on its way. In her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the Grammy-winning "Honey" singer-songwriter revealed she made an alternative rock album in 1995, which was quietly released under the band name Chick and featured live vocals from her friend Clarissa.
During an appearance on Friday's episode of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, Carey said she found the version of the album, titled Someone's Ugly Daughter, that features her own vocals and announced plans to release it to the world.
"The quest for that version is going great. We actually have it," said Carey, 53, of looking for the record's once-lost vocal files. "This was my outlet, and nobody knew about it. Most people, I'd rather they don't even know about it until we decide exactly what happens from that quest of finding those vocals."
She then spoke about making Someone's Ugly Daughter amid the creative process for 1995's Daydream, which spawned three No. 1 hit singles and eventually became Diamond certified. "I would just write these things, say, 'Can you play [vocalizing]?' to the guitar player, who would happen to be there, while we're working on records like 'Always Be My Baby' and 'One Sweet Day', eventually 'Fantasy', and whatever from that era," said Carey.
At the time, the "We Belong Together" performer was living in upstate New York with her ex-husband, music executive Tommy Mottola, and felt boxed into the R&B-pop ballad sound she became associated with early in her career.
"It's not that I was like, 'Oh, I can do that.' But it was also like, it was such an outlet," she recalled of deciding to make a grunge record. "It was like, 'Let me just do this', because after the session, why not? There's energy, and we were working for whatever - 15, 16 hours on scrutinizing stuff, and then we just made this record all at the same time."
She then spoke about the desire to release the album with her own vocals intact. "I honestly wanted to put the record out back then under the same pseudonym and just put it out, you know? Whatever, let them discover it was me," said Carey. "But that idea was kind of stomped and squashed and whatever. Clarissa came in, and we wrote one of the songs together, and she got on the other records - one or two of the other songs."
Now, Carey finally plans on dropping her version of Someone's Ugly Daughter - though perhaps not as a straightforward release. "I think this unearthed version will become something that, yes, we should hear," she said before teasing a collaboration. "But also, I'm working on a version of something where there'll be another artist working on this with me as well."
New versions of those songs? "Possibly something built around the album," she teased. "I'm just full of surprises."
Finally, Carey looked back on the time period in which she made the album and why its creation was a refuge for her. "I had no freedom during that time. That was my freedom," she said. "I would drive around with my assistant with the top down in upstate New York, and we'd be screaming the lyrics of these songs that nobody else knew."
She continued, "It was my release, and it was just fun. Literally, I started out, 'Oh, this is just for laughs. We're having fun,' but then I was like, 'No, this is me screaming. This is literally what I'm going through.'"
Two songs from Someone's Ugly Daughter - "Demented" and "Malibu" were uploaded to YouTube in 2009. Around the release of The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the musician's representatives confirmed to Pitchfork that she "wrote, produced, and sang background vocals on every song from Chick's album" except a cover of Cheap Trick's "Surrender".
(People)
|
|
