Mariah Carey plans to release a new version of her alt-rock album.
The ‘Fantasy’ singer secretly recorded ‘Someone’s Ugly Daughter’ under the moniker Chick in the late 1990s, but her record company had reservations and ultimately released a re-recorded version with her collaborator Clarissa Dane on lead vocals.
However, Mariah has tracked down the original version of the record and has plans to let fans hear it in some form.
She said: “[It] will become something we should hear, but also, I’m working on a version where there will be another artist working with me…. Possibly something built around the album…
“This was my outlet and nobody knew about it. I would just write these things. I’d say, ‘Can you play [sings guitar part] to the guitar player who happened to be there while we’re working on records like ‘Always Be My Baby’ and ‘One Sweet Day’ and eventually ‘Fantasy’ and whatever from that era.
“It was like, ‘Let me just do this.’ Because after the session, why not? There’s energy. And we were like working for whatever, 15, 16 hours on scrutinising stuff.
“And then we just made this record at the same time. I would write the lyrics, go and sing it. There was a fear [from the record company] because some of the lyrical content was not what people were [expecting]. I honestly wanted to put the record out back then under the same pseudonym and just let them discover that it’s me, but that idea was kind of stomped and squashed. So Clarissa came in.
“And yeah, there were a lot of big records that were in that genre, that grunge moment… And of course there was the Courtney Love era of Hole and all that going on at the time. I even did the artwork! The artwork for the album was like the dead roach and some lipstick.”
At the time, the 53-year-old singer was in an unhappy marriage to record company boss Tommy Mottola and working on the album gave her some “freedom”.
Speaking on the ‘Rolling Stone Music Now’ podcast, she said: “I had no freedom during that time. That was my freedom. I would drive around with my assistant with the top down in upstate New York and be screaming the lyrics to these songs that nobody else knew. It was my release and it was just fun. And I started out like, ‘Oh, this is just for laughs, whatever,’ like we’re having fun. But then I was like, ‘No, this is me screaming. This is literally what I’m going through.’”