Why Mariah Carey Is 'So Mad' She Hasn't Released Her Secret Grunge Album Yet

Mar. 15, 2025

We still haven’t forgotten aboutMariah Carey’s secret grunge album — and she hasn’t either!

In an interview withSaturday Night Livestar Bowen Yang and comedian Matt Rogers ontheir podcastLas CulturistasfromiHeartMedia andWill Ferrell’s Big Money Players Network, Carey was reminded that there’s still an audience waiting for her long-lost grunge album.

“Can you drop that grunge album?” Rogers asked.

“I know, right?” Carey, 55, replied. “I’m so mad that I haven’t done that yet … but who do I drop it with?”

Mariah Carey performing in Las Vegas in April 2024.Denise Truscello/Getty

Denise Truscello/Getty

Bowen and Rogers jokingly toyed with the idea of making their own label and suggested the “chic” idea of releasing it on “Garage Band or something, like, a grungy thing.”

“I could do that. It’s agoodalbum,” Carey said.

In 1995, as Carey was recording what would become her hit albumDaydream,the R&B icon quietly recorded a grunge album. Despite being in the peak of the alt-rock boom in the mid-’90s, record label executives didn’t want her name attached to the project.

Mariah Carey on ‘Las Culturistas’.iHeartMedia/Rachel Kaplan

iHeartMedia/Rachel Kaplan

“I was playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light white female singers who were popular at the time. You know the ones who seemed to be so carefree with their feelings and their image,” she wrote in her 2020 memoirThe Meaning of Mariah Carey. “They could be angry, angsty, and messy, with old shoes, wrinkled slips, and unruly eyebrows, while every move I made was so calculated and manicured. I wanted to break free, let loose, and express my misery — but I also wanted to laugh.”

Her longtime producer Walter Afanasieff toldPitchforkthat Sony Music allegedly renamed the band to Chick, made Carey change the explicit lyrics, and brought in her friend Clarissa Dane to handle lead vocals. Carey’s background vocals remained and she was credited as “D. Sue.”

Mariah Carey performing in Las Vegas in May 2023.Candice Ward/Getty Images

Candice Ward/Getty Images

In 2022, Carey revealed that the original recordings ofSomebody’s Ugly Daughterwith her as lead vocalist still exist. “This was my outlet, and nobody knew about it. Most people, I’d rather they don’t even know about it until we decide exactly what happens from that quest of finding those vocals,” she said in an interview withRolling Stone Music Now.

“I had no freedom during that time. That was my freedom,” she explained. “I would drive around with my assistant with the top down in upstate New York, and we’d be screaming the lyrics of these songs that nobody else knew.”

Physical copies of the officially released Chick album exist secondhand, but the album is still not on streaming. Two songs,“Demented"and"Malibu,“are available online with music videos.

source: people.com