“Somebody handed me Mariah Carey’s record and said, ‘Would you sign this?’” How Adrian Belew ended up on a number one single without even knowing

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Guitarist Adrian Belew has worked extensively as a session guitarist and touring musician – in addition to his tenure with King Crimson, he has toured with Frank Zappa, David Bowie, and Talking Heads, to name but a few. Another role on his resume? Being featured on a hit Mariah Carey track without him even knowing.

In a recent interview with Guitar World on the subject of his extremely well-worn Stratocaster, Belew discussed how that Strat has become one of the most-heard guitars on the planet… without him realizing.

“Maybe one of the most well-known songs [it was featured on] would be [Tom Tom Club’s] Genius of Love, which has been a huge hit now three times,” he says. “It’s been sampled 166 times by different artists, which is something I only learned recently when [Latto’s Big Energy] came out in 2022.”

“I was at a King Crimson show, I was signing autographs and somebody handed me Mariah Carey’s record and said, ‘Would you sign this?’ I said, ‘I don’t even know Mariah Carey. Why would I do that?’ They said, ‘Oh, you’re right here. It says you co-wrote this.’

“They opened it up and showed that I co-wrote [her 1995 hit Fantasy, which samples Genius of Love] with [Talking Heads’] Chris [Frantz] and Tina [Weymouth]. I was amazed.

“That’s exactly how I learned about it – otherwise I might have never known. It was the Number 1 record in the country at the time, but I don’t listen to mainstream radio. I called up my manager the next day, and he didn’t know, either. This guitar has crossed over a lot of people’s ears.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Belew told the story of how he got his go-to Strat from a used guitar store in Nashville for $285 in 1978.

However, he didn't like its brown sunburst finish, so he enlisted the help of Seymour Duncan to give it a complete makeover, resulting in perhaps the first-ever relic'd electric guitar.