Entertainment

Mariah Carey still hopes to release secret grunge album

October 18, 2024 1:34 pm

Mariah Carey [Source: The North West Star]

Mariah Carey is still hoping to release her secret grunge album recorded in the 1990s.

The pop superstar moved away from her musical roots back in 1995 to put together an alternative record but it was never released and the singer has now admitted she’s “mad” it’s been buried for so many years.

During an appearance on Las Culturistas podcast, host Matt Rogers asked the singer: “Can you drop that grunge album?” and Carey replied: “I know, right? I’m so mad that I haven’t done that yet … but who do I drop it with?”

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Rogers then suggested she should release it independently using “Garage Band or something, like, a grungy thing” and the singer added: “I could do that.”

“It’s a good album. OK, you will hear it. I was getting life from that, seriously. It was jokes, as well. They’re everlasting,” she went on to say.

Carey previously opened up about the buried album in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 in 2020, revealing music executives banned her from releasing it.

“I got kind of in trouble for making this album – the alternative album – because back then, everything was super-controlled by the powers that be,” she said.

“I never really was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to release it’. But then I was like, I should release it. I should do it under an alias. Let people discover it and whatever, but that got squashed.”

Titled Somebody’s Ugly Daughter, the album did get a release under the band name Chick with Carey’s pal Clarissa Dane taking over lead vocals. Mariah’s singing was heard only as backing vocals and she was credited as D. Sue.

However, the original recordings with Carey singing lead are believed to still exist.

The singer opened up about the project in her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey, writing: “I was playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light white female singers who were popular at the time.”

“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.”