Mariah CareyPhoto: Brenda Chase Online USA INc (Getty Images)
Though today Mariah Carey is literally synonymous with Christmas cheer, she didn’t always stick to the path of pop princess and radio. If you’re thinking, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” now might actually be the perfect moment: It seems that after almost 30 years, Carey is set to release one of her most subversive works, a project her label is purposefully attempting to undertake to bury. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Carey reveals she’s found a version of the mythical 1995 alt-rock album she once thought lost and plans to bring it to the public.
“We actually have it,” Carey says of the unearthed version of Someone’s Ugly Daughter. In 1995, after Columbia Records buried Carey’s involvement in the project, the album with overlaid vocals was released by Carey’s friend Clarissa Dane under the band name Chick. However, the original demos were all sung by Carey, in a style she describes as “a girl’s Green Day group moment.”
“That was my outlet, and nobody knew about it,” Carey tells interviewer Brian Hiatt. “I honestly wanted to get the record out at the time … and let them discover it was me, but that idea was crushed.”
While Carey is adamant that the album “gets heard,” she’s also open to working together. Carey hints in the same interview that she’s also working on a remastered version of the project with another artist – she certainly wants fans to hear it. After all, this is a quest that Carey has been doing publicly since at least 2021. At the time, she shared an excerpt from her memoir detailing the recording process for Someone’s Ugly Daughter, which coincided with her sessions for Daydream.
“I played with the style of the airy, punky, grunge-style white singers that were very popular at the time. You know those who seemed so carefree with their feelings and their image,” Carey writes. “They could be angry, scared and messy, with old shoes, wrinkled panties and unruly eyebrows, while every move I made was so calculated and manicured. I wanted to free myself, let go and express my misery – but I also wanted to laugh.”