Mariah Carey recorded a secret grunge-rock album and now she wants fans to hear it
Mariah Carey is celebrating the 25th anniversary of her renowned “Butterfly” album, but she’s also expounding on her semi-secret rock album.
Two years prior to the release of “Butterfly,” the chanteuse known for her multi-octave vocals and cooing ballads recorded a grunge-rock album called “Someone’s Ugly Daughter” and released it under the band name Chick.
Carey mentioned the 11-track album in her 2020 memoir, “The Meaning of Mariah Carey,” but explained the history of its development in a lengthy interview for Rolling Stone’s “Music Now” podcast.
On the album, the “Fantasy” hitmaker enlisted singer Clarissa Dane to handle lead vocals to conceal Carey’s involvement in the project, on which she co-wrote, co-produced and sang backup on. But a version featuring only Carey’s vocals has been unearthed.
"We actually have it,” she says in the podcast.
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Carey shared that she and Dane recorded the tracks in between working on songs for 1995’s “Daydream” album, which spawned honeyed pop hits including “Always Be My Baby” and “One Sweet Day.”
Carey says she wanted to release “Someone’s Ugly Daughter” at the time with her name attached – “and let (people) discover it was me” – but the idea was “stomped and squashed” by her record label and management, since “some of the lyrical content was not what people were (expecting from me).”
“It was such an outlet,” she says. “There were a lot of records of that genre in that moment, like a girls Green Day kind of group movement and Courtney Love and Hole.”
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Carey used the album as a personal venting platform, driving around upstate New York with her assistant with the car top down and “screaming these songs that no one else knew.” While the project started as a fun aside, she realized while listening to the songs that she was “screaming, literally,” about what she was experiencing emotionally at the time.
Carey was coy about her plans for the version featuring her vocals. But she said it's something fans will hear and added that she’s also working on “a version with another artist.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mariah Carey releasing secret grunge rock album recorded in 1995
