Mariah Carey teases release for secret 1995 grunge album
Mariah Carey has reportedly “found” her long-lost 1995 grunge-inspired album, Someone’s Ugly Daughter, and has revealed intentions to schedule its release.
as part of her 2020 memoir, The Making of Mariah Carey, the ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ singer mentioned that she had worked on an alternative rock project in the mid-1990s.
Taking to Twitter at the time, Carey said the project was “just for laughs, but it got me through some dark days.” She added that her friend Clarissa performs lead vocals on the finalised album, but in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Carey confirmed that she has now found the “lost” version of the album featuring her own lead vocals.
In the video attached to Carey’s tweet, the featured song is revealed to be ‘Demented’, by a band called “Chick”. Artwork for the new old album called Someone’s Ugly Daughter is then revealed.
Two Chick songs, ‘Demented’ and ‘Malibu’, are still available to stream on YouTube since their 2009 upload. Carey’s representatives confirmed to Pitchfork that the singer wrote, produced and sang backing vocals for every song on the album, except for the cover of the Cheap Trick classic ‘Surrender’.
In her memoir, Carey wrote of Someone’s Ugly Daughter: “I’d bring my little alt-rock song to the band and hum a silly guitar riff. They would pick it up and we would record it immediately. It was irreverent, raw, and urgent, and the band got into it. I actually started to love some of the songs. I would fully commit to my character”.
“I was playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light white female singers who were popular at the time. 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”.
Catey concluded: “I wanted to break free, let loose, and express my misery—but I also wanted to laugh. I totally looked forward to doing my alter-ego band sessions after Daydream each night.”
Listen to the two Chick songs currently available below.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.