Mariah Carey Describes How Ex-Husband Label Boss Tommy Mottola ‘Shot Down’ Her Attempts to Record R&B Songs
If there’s one thing every member of the Lambily knows it’s that Mariah Carey is her own boss. The legendary singer who does not subscribe to the traditional notion of time — except, of course, when the hour of “All I Want For Christmas Is You” comes around every holiday season — told Harper’s Bazaar UK in a new cover story that back when she was being mentored by former Sony Music CEO Tommy Mottola, her future ex-husband did all he could to keep her in a traditional pop lane.
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“Sometimes I feel angry about that time, but I think I’ve made peace with it – in any case, I vowed I’d stop talking about it,” Carey said when asked about her five-year marriage to the music mogul. “Humor is my release, and people who know me know that. I’ll make little jokes about what happened because otherwise I could make every day a sob story. It’s a coping mechanism, but it’s in my nature to laugh.”
Carey spoke about what she’s said was Mottola’s controlling influence on her career, including his attempts to “pigeonhole” her as a mainstream pop singer. “I wanted to do more R&B, more urban music, and any time I would bring that up, it would get shot down,” she told the magazine. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like the music I was making – I just felt there was more inside me that I wanted to release.”
By the time the couple separated, Carey had already begun to move away from that sound, incorporating hip-hop elements on her iconic 1997 Butterfly album, which included production from Q-Tip, Missy Elliot, Trackmasters and currently imprisoned Bad Boy Records impresario Sean “Puffy”Combs on tracks including, “Honey,” “Breakdown,” “Babydoll” and “The Roof (Back in Time)”
In addition to his tight grip on her sound, Carey said Mottola even kept the scope of her fame a secret at a time when he was trying to convince her that she couldn’t make it to superstardom without him. As an example, she cited a trip to upstate New York early in her career to record a televised Thanksgiving concert where, when she arrived, the streets were packed and she began to understand that all the security was to manage the huge crowds who’d come to see her.
“And that was just shocking, because nobody had ever told me, ‘Hey, these people are outside the store, and they all want to buy your record’,” she said.
The rest, of course, is history. Five-time Grammy winner MC has since become one of the most beloved and best-selling artists of all time and as she gears up to release her upcoming 16th LP, Here For It All (Sept. 26), she gave the magazine a bit more detail on what fans can expect. Following the release of the upcoming album’s first single, the bouncy, sassy “Type Dangerous” and its silky follow-up collab with Kehlani and Shenseea, “Sugar Sweet,” Carey said the album will be an “eclectic mix” of styles, from the fast-paced and mid-tempo tunes you’d expect to some of her signature ballads that she described as “sad yet triumphant.”
And while her signature winking humor is in full effect when asked which female divas she admires — “I’m going to have to go with me!” she joked — Carey copped to liking songs by Tate McRae, Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo, if only because she likes to keep up with what’s on her 14-year-old daughter Monroe’s playlist.
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