Mariah Carey is still hoping to release her secret grunge album which was recorded back in the 1990s.
The pop superstar moved away from her musical roots back in 1995 to put together an alternative record. However, it was never released, and the singer has now admitted she’s “mad” it’s been buried for so many years.
“Can you drop that grunge album?” “Las Culturistas” podcast host Matt Rogers asked the singer during her appearance on the episode.
“I know, right?” Carey replied. “I’m so mad that I haven’t done that yet … but who do I drop it with?”
Rogers then suggested she should release it independently using “Garage Band or something, like, a grungy thing.”
“I could do that,” the singer added. “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.”
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,” the “Oh Santa” singer revealed. “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.”
The album — titled Somebody’s Ugly Daughter — 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 Mariah singing lead are believed to still exist. The singer opened up about the project in her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey.
“I was playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light white female singers who were popular at the time,” she writes. “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.”
