"It's by the grace of God that
I'm still here."
Sometimes when you read about stars in the tabloids, you get this tinge of envy,
like there's this big party going on and you still haven't been invited. But
when you see a picture of Mariah Carey, maybe sunning herself on a boat with
friends in Capri, it's different. You almost feel like you could call her and be
like, "Hey, Mimi, got room for one more?" It's true, Mariah is smart, gorgeous,
and successful (she has sold more albums than any other female artist ever -
over 150 million at last count). And yet she seems approachable. Songs like "We
Belong Together" (the biggest hit of the year) deal with powerful feelings of
love and loss, the kind you'd be afraid to share with anyone. But Mariah's not
scared to let it out, which lets us in. She knows that we all go through stuff -
good and bad - and she gives our journey a voice.
The Mariah Carey Interview
by Deborah Baer
Because of her own journey, Mariah has become a legend. She has a
do-rag-to-riches story that's profoundly inspiring. Mariah was born with a
special gift - her voice (plus, she's written or co-written every piece she's
ever done). But that gift came at a price. Growing up on Long Island, New York,
Mariah suffered almost debilitating insecurity about not fitting in. For one
thing, her mom is white and her dad is black, which was pretty uncommon when she
was a kid. It was embarrassing to Mariah that her parents couldn't afford to
keep up with the new Mercedes and fancy houses in their town. (Her mom called
their Dodge Dart the Dodge Dent because it was so beat up!) Her folks divorced
when she was 3, and her older sister, Alison, fell into a downward spiral (it
was rumored she was into drugs). Alison got pregnant and had a son, Sean, when
Mariah was in kindergarten. Now Mariah calls him her "saving grace," but at the
time, her difficult family situation made her vow that she would make her life
different.
So she did. After high school, Mariah was singing backup when then Sony Music
Entertainment honcho Tommy Mottola moved her to center stage. In 1991, at only
21, she won a Grammy for best new artist. But that professional high was
followed by a personal low: an awful five-year marriage to Mottola. Mariah
continued to have hit after hit, but she says she struggled to break free from
his control for years. The biggest blow was emotional meltdown in 2001 after her
movie debut, Glitter, and album of the same name bombed. Her tour was canceled;
she was even briefly hospitalized. But she refused to quit. Today, now that The
Emancipation of Mimi has so far sold three million copies, she's a bigger star
than ever.
Still, to meet her, you'd never know it. She prances into the living room of the
Hollywood Hills home she's renting, wearing jeans, a tank, and a sweatshirt,
barefoot on tiptoe (she says it's the way she's walked since she was 4), and you
immediately feel welcome. "Sorry I'm not diva-style for you!" she announces. And
then, without a drop of diva-tude, she answers CosmoGIRL!s' questions about
friends, heartbreaks, and how she was ultimately reborn.
Beauty Schooled
CG! Reader: Were you popular when you were in school? - Amareia, 15, Hawley, PA
Mariah: "No, I wasn't popular. When I was
little, I moved around 13 times with my mom. That made it really difficult for
me to assimilate every time I went to a new school. Because I was biracial. It
set me apart in a lot of ways and made me really feel like an outcast. You want
to look like everybody else, and I didn't look like anybody else. I didn't look
like my white friends; I didn't look like my black friends. As a kid in
elementary school I didn't know how to put myself together yet. You know how
important that is. In seventh grade, I shaved my eyebrows because I didn't know
how to tweeze them. Plus, my hair is kinky - and it's also very fine. It's the
most difficult aspects of both worlds. So half the time I'd go to school with my
hair in knots."
Mariah finally figured out the hair stuff and how to dress. "There was this one
time when I was walking up the driveway and I had on a pair of really tight
jeans," she says. My friend's older brother made a comment like, 'Hey! Like your
pants!' So that became my thing! Boys were always telling me that I had a nice
ass so I was like, Okay, let me just work that! ... I became more secure about
myself, but it was by the totally wrong means."
By the time Mariah reached the 12th grade, she was known as a class clown and
was friends with everybody, which came in handy when she was nominated for prom
queen. "I couldn't believe that I had gotten to that point," Mariah says. "I
campaigned shamelessly. I would talk to the younger guys and be a little
flirtatious. So they all voted for me. I won the nomination by a landslide!"
Unfortunately, because of school politics, she didn't win the actual crown. But
her disappointment didn't last long. "I remember saying to myself that night,
What would I rather do? Be prom queen now or go on to what my dream is? Fine, no
prom queen."
A Star Is Born
CG! Reader: What influenced you to become a singer? - Jessica, 15, Rohnert Park,
CA
Mariah: "Music was my main source of peace
and happiness. If there was something messed up going on in my house, turmoil
and things that were unsettling to me, I would walk and sing to myself. It
grounded me emotionally. I would sleep with the radio underneath the covers at 4
a.m. and just sing along. The feeling I had was, I need to sing, I need to make
a big melody, I need to express myself."
Even as a kid, Mariah was certain she's be a superstar one day. "It's bizarre,
but it's just a feeling you get when you know and you're driven," she says.
"When we were seven, my friend Maureen said to me, 'When you sing, it's like
there's music behind you.' it was the biggest compliment I ever got. It was a
defining moment for me."
Lessons in Love
CG! Reader: When you were a teen, how did you cope with heartbreak? - Maryssa,
14, Boothwyn, PA
Mariah: "I never really had somebody who
totally broke my heart, because I wouldn't allow it. I think that was a wall
that I built up because I had to be very protective of myself from the time I
was little due to the lack of self-esteem, the insecurity, the not feeling
pretty, not having the same things other people had. Any boyfriend I ever had in
high school, which was really only like two or three, I never did anything with
them. I was so frightened of getting pregnant. I was so traumatized by what I
saw (with my sister) I was like, until I'm with the person I'm going to marry,
I'm not going to do that. It was a conscious decision because I knew what I
wanted, and I knew I wasn't going to get there by getting pregnant as a
teenager. Any boyfriend who was with me had to accept that I wasn't going to
sleep with him. That's it. Sorry!"
Mariah jokingly admits that she's still kind of a prude. "I have friends who
love to shock me," she says. "A friend just called me with this crazy story, and
I'm like TMI, TMI! They know I'm Mary Poppins, but I can still hang out." She
says that it's her innocence that makes her songs so profound. "I think I am a
romantic and that's why I can write love songs that people relate to. It might
even be a memory from eighth grade. I haven't lost that side of who I am."
Shaking It Off
CG! Reader: How do you stay strong when people are talking about you and you
know they dislike you? - Lizzie, 18, Montgomery, AL
Mariah: You just have to shake it off. One
day I sat on a plane to Puerto Rico for seven hours reading negative press about
myself. Yeah. It was depressing. But I've always been me. I was me before I got
famous and had money, I was me when I got ragged on by talk show hosts. Every
obstacle, including the 'breakdown' or whatever they called it and the whole
Glitter debacle, just made me so much of a stronger person. It just brought me
back to the little girl I was internally who sat there and said, "I believe I'm
going to make it. Don't say if I make it, say when I make it.' Just believe in
yourself."
Her Rebirth
CG! Reader: If you could be born again, what would you do differently? - Natali,
20, New York City, NY
Mariah: "I do believe that I have been born
again in a lot of ways. I think what I've changed are my priorities and my
relationship with God. I feel the difference when I don't have my private
moments to pray. I said to my father when I went through all that stuff, 'I feel
like I've gone though everything but death, so I'm scared of anything anymore.'
Once you fall that hard and have been kicked and kicked, you learn to protect
yourself. I'm a fighter, but I learned that I'm not in charge. Whatever God
wants to happen is what's going to happen, it really is 'let go and let God."
Even when people were literally calling her crazy and wrongly predicting that
her career was over. Mariah says that her faith showed her the light at the end
of the tunnel. And now she's had such an amazing comeback that those dark days
of the soul almost feel like ancient history. "I feel like I've had endless
second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth chances. It's by the grace of God I'm
still here," she says. "Yes, I'm frustrated a lot of the time, I go through bad
days. But I'm ecstatic where I am," It's that complexity that makes Mariah so
real and yet, she says, so misunderstood. "My Saving Grace," off her last album,
Charmbracelet, to illustrate the point. "Yes, I've been bruised / grew up
confused / been destitute / I've seen life from many sides / been stigmatized /
been black and white / felt inferior inside." That song in particular has a
deeply personal meaning to Mariah. "It was saying, 'Hey, I'm a person who's been
through the wringer, but that light is always there,'" she says. "As long as
there's hope, I'm there with that, I'm okay."
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