Guess
Jun 1st, 2006, 03:24 PM
http://www.mariahconnection.com/uk/mm1.bmp (http://www.mariahconnection.com/uk/mm2.bmp)At the start of the decade, Mariah Carey’s star looked on the wane - bad record sales and rumours of a breakdown plagued the R&B diva. But, with her latest number-one album and a string of multi-million dollar deals, the queen of excess is ready to recelaim her throne.
`I haven’t been out of the apartment for a few days,’ Mariah Carey tells me. She’s pretty much just woken up. It’s 8:30pm on a Friday night, and she’s been nocturnal all week. I follow her on a tour of her home as she totters down the hall in a pair of black Agent Provocateur Hollywood Pom Pom mules. Carey says she always wears heels around the house because she walks on her tippy-toes. And, anyway, she says, `They’re not high compared to a street shoe that I would wear, darling!’
Mariah Carey’s house is at the top of a tower, a duplex penthouse in TriBeCa, an area of town that has just been named the most expensive in New York City. Her living room on the 5,000sq-ft 17th floor is warm and welcoming, with cushions and flowers – everything is taupe and beige and gold and cream. Marilyn Monroe’s white piano, for which Carey paid over £350,000 in October 1999, is surrounded by dainty white ropes. A local soul radio station plays on hidden speakers.
Mariah, surrounded by a hundred plump cushions, kicks off her heels, and snuggles up on the Moroccan couch. She speaks in the low voice she’s had all her life. `The other kids at school would say, “Could you call and pretend to be my mom?”’ she recalls. Her barest whisper fills a room in a very strange way, and when she laughs, she laughs a lot. She can, and does, break into flawless song mid-sentence.
This month sees the release of Say Somethin’, the latest shiny slice of perfect popular R&B hewn from the rich seam that is Carey’s latest album, The Emancipation of Mimi. Written with Pharrell Williams, Carey joins Snoop Dogg on a deceptively infectious musical trip that’s guaranteed to be one of the anthems of the summer.
A quick biography. Mariah Carey was the woman who sold the most albums in the Nineties: her first came out in 1990, and her 1993 album, Music Box, has sold tens of millions of copies. In 1998, she divorced her star-making, music-producer husband, Tommy Mottola; they married in 1993 when she was 23 and he was 20 years her senior. In 2001, at the top of her game, she signed a reported £55 million, five-record deal with Virgin.
Her movie, Glitter, was released in September 2001, but had little success at the box office. At nearly the same time, she was hospitalised in Los Angeles, California. The press called it a nervous breakdown; Mariah described herself as suffering from exhaustion. In 2002, she left Virgin by mutual consent, but soon found a new home at Island Def Jam. Her comeback was slow: it began with a stellar rendition of the US national anthem at the Super Bowl in February 2002. In late 2002, her poppy album, Charmbracelet, was moderately successful. Then came the Grammy-grabbing The Emancipation of Mimi.
Mariah Carey has had the best-selling album in America of 2005. And even though she’s spending lots of money to make money (she needs to buy property in Los Angeles because the hotel bills are ludicrous when she and her entourage head out west), she’s now got enough cash in the bank to coast out her days.
But while she could buy a sunny little island somewhere and make an album whenever she feels like it, instead she has her new Elizabeth Arden perfume deal (she loves working on the perfume, and the perfumers say she has an excellent nose); a new deal with Gillette razors; a jewellery and accessories line; and deals with Pepsi and Motorola.
She is also working on a new film, called Tennessee. She has become the celebrity that puzzled and, rightly, troubled her when she was younger. Carey is working all the time – extending, as the marketers say, her brand. Why? Because the little girl who was so afraid of staying poor, whose grandparents disowned her mother for marrying a black man, who has hours and hours of beauty school under her belt and whose mother didn§t own a house until Carey bought her one, will never be penniless again. The princess in the tower might finally be happy – especially now, having just been triumphantly vindicated as an artist, but you wonder if she will ever find the security she still so craves. You hope so. Back downstairs at her thick, gilded front door, Carey is wide awake and ready to get to work. `Air kisses!’ she commands by way of goodbye, her face beaming.
Mariah Carey’s new single, Say Somethin’, is available now on Mercury Def Jam. To read the rest of the interview, buy the July issue, out now.
Source: www.MariahConnection.Com
`I haven’t been out of the apartment for a few days,’ Mariah Carey tells me. She’s pretty much just woken up. It’s 8:30pm on a Friday night, and she’s been nocturnal all week. I follow her on a tour of her home as she totters down the hall in a pair of black Agent Provocateur Hollywood Pom Pom mules. Carey says she always wears heels around the house because she walks on her tippy-toes. And, anyway, she says, `They’re not high compared to a street shoe that I would wear, darling!’
Mariah Carey’s house is at the top of a tower, a duplex penthouse in TriBeCa, an area of town that has just been named the most expensive in New York City. Her living room on the 5,000sq-ft 17th floor is warm and welcoming, with cushions and flowers – everything is taupe and beige and gold and cream. Marilyn Monroe’s white piano, for which Carey paid over £350,000 in October 1999, is surrounded by dainty white ropes. A local soul radio station plays on hidden speakers.
Mariah, surrounded by a hundred plump cushions, kicks off her heels, and snuggles up on the Moroccan couch. She speaks in the low voice she’s had all her life. `The other kids at school would say, “Could you call and pretend to be my mom?”’ she recalls. Her barest whisper fills a room in a very strange way, and when she laughs, she laughs a lot. She can, and does, break into flawless song mid-sentence.
This month sees the release of Say Somethin’, the latest shiny slice of perfect popular R&B hewn from the rich seam that is Carey’s latest album, The Emancipation of Mimi. Written with Pharrell Williams, Carey joins Snoop Dogg on a deceptively infectious musical trip that’s guaranteed to be one of the anthems of the summer.
A quick biography. Mariah Carey was the woman who sold the most albums in the Nineties: her first came out in 1990, and her 1993 album, Music Box, has sold tens of millions of copies. In 1998, she divorced her star-making, music-producer husband, Tommy Mottola; they married in 1993 when she was 23 and he was 20 years her senior. In 2001, at the top of her game, she signed a reported £55 million, five-record deal with Virgin.
Her movie, Glitter, was released in September 2001, but had little success at the box office. At nearly the same time, she was hospitalised in Los Angeles, California. The press called it a nervous breakdown; Mariah described herself as suffering from exhaustion. In 2002, she left Virgin by mutual consent, but soon found a new home at Island Def Jam. Her comeback was slow: it began with a stellar rendition of the US national anthem at the Super Bowl in February 2002. In late 2002, her poppy album, Charmbracelet, was moderately successful. Then came the Grammy-grabbing The Emancipation of Mimi.
Mariah Carey has had the best-selling album in America of 2005. And even though she’s spending lots of money to make money (she needs to buy property in Los Angeles because the hotel bills are ludicrous when she and her entourage head out west), she’s now got enough cash in the bank to coast out her days.
But while she could buy a sunny little island somewhere and make an album whenever she feels like it, instead she has her new Elizabeth Arden perfume deal (she loves working on the perfume, and the perfumers say she has an excellent nose); a new deal with Gillette razors; a jewellery and accessories line; and deals with Pepsi and Motorola.
She is also working on a new film, called Tennessee. She has become the celebrity that puzzled and, rightly, troubled her when she was younger. Carey is working all the time – extending, as the marketers say, her brand. Why? Because the little girl who was so afraid of staying poor, whose grandparents disowned her mother for marrying a black man, who has hours and hours of beauty school under her belt and whose mother didn§t own a house until Carey bought her one, will never be penniless again. The princess in the tower might finally be happy – especially now, having just been triumphantly vindicated as an artist, but you wonder if she will ever find the security she still so craves. You hope so. Back downstairs at her thick, gilded front door, Carey is wide awake and ready to get to work. `Air kisses!’ she commands by way of goodbye, her face beaming.
Mariah Carey’s new single, Say Somethin’, is available now on Mercury Def Jam. To read the rest of the interview, buy the July issue, out now.
Source: www.MariahConnection.Com