It’s been nearly 30 years since Mariah Carey recorded a grunge album with her band, but it’s still not too late for the world to hear the icon embrace her inner rock star.
On the episode of Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ Las Culturistas podcast that dropped Wednesday (Oct. 16), the vocalist confirmed that she hasn’t forgotten about Someone’s Ugly Daughter, the alt-rock LP she worked on with her band in 1995 while simultaneously recording her album Daydream. “I’m so mad I haven’t done that yet,” she told the hosts of wanting to release the shelved project.
Even so, Mimi says there are some logistics she hasn’t yet thought about. “Who do I drop it with?” she said, to which Rogers suggested she release it independently through Garage Band.
“I could do that,” Carey continued. “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.”
As told by the “Obsessed” singer in her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the singer and her band wrote and recorded Someone’s Ugly Daughter to blow off steam while working on Daydream. She initially wanted to drop it as it was, but ended up releasing it under the pseudonym Chick with her friend Clarissa Dane on lead vocals.
The Songbird Supreme previously spoke about the grunge album on Rolling Stone Music Now in 2020, confirming that she’d uncovered the original version of the record with her voice at the forefront. “I think this unearthed version will become something that, yes, we should hear,” she said at the time. “But also, I’m working on a version of something where there’ll be another artist working on this with me as well … Possibly something built around the album. I’m just full of surprises.”
Carey’s episode of Las Culturistas comes as the superstar is gearing up to embark on her 2024 holiday tour, which kicks off Nov. 6 in Highland, Calif. The trek will run for about six weeks, with the star making stops in Texas, Georgia, Philadelphia and more parts of the U.S. before closing out Dec. 17 in Brooklyn, N.Y.
“It is going very well,” she recently told Entertainment Tonight of rehearsals for the tour. “We just finished up working on my setlist, getting the whole stage together, the ensembles, the fits — all of it.”
In April, Carey will reach the 20-year anniversary of her iconic album The Emancipation of Mimi, which spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2005. The five-time Grammy winner kicked things off a few months early at the beginning of October with a performance of “We Belong Together” at the American Music Awards.
