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Pop singer Mariah Carey: 1995 as a background shouter for a grunge band
Photo: Simon Ritter / Redferns / Getty Images
One would have given Mariah Carey a hip-hop album in the 1990s.
Maybe even singing in her five octave voice in an opera.
But on an alternative rock album?
Barely audible in the background?
Rather not.
But that's exactly what the pop and R&B diva did in 1995, and not only that: As Carey announced on Twitter, she wrote and produced the entire album "Someone's Ugly Daughter" by the band Chick.
In the tweet, she refers to a passage from her autobiography "The Meaning of Mariah Carey", which appears this week in the USA.
In it she describes how she wrote "little alternative rock songs" and rehearsed with the band: "I played with the grunge and punk style of white singers who were so popular at the time. They were so free with their feelings and avoiding their image (...), while with me every movement was calculated and staged. "
In the tweet you can hear an excerpt from the song "Hermit" with Carey's background vocals (not that you could really hear them).
Carey continues in her book that she was unhappy at the time and wanted to break out.
In 1995 she worked on her album "Daydream", which underpinned her status as a pop queen with the hit single "Fantasy".
During the recording there was a dispute with her then husband Tommy Mottola, who produced the album.
Mariah Carey wanted more control over her own music and worked carefully with elements from hip-hop and urban pop.
Chick's album was released in 1995 by a Sony Music sub-label, but didn't get much attention.
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