Dear Gossips, 

Mariah Carey is currently commemorating the 25th anniversary of her album Butterfly. This is the album that many, including Mariah, consider to be her magnum opus. 

 

“Honey” is the first track off Butterfly and the video for the song happens to be Mimi’s favourite of all her videos of all time. It is indeed a classic – Mimi looks amazing, of course, and she actually runs (briefly), operates a Jet Ski, and performs extended choreography, all of it in the best lighting possible while she serves body and glow.

Mimi recently shared a behind the scenes of the making of the video and what a struggle it was. 

Despite the challenges, though, Mimi prevailed, as she always does, and “Honey” is everything that we know her to be. Which, frankly, has never been grunge. 

And that’s why there are so many headlines coming out of her recent interview with Rolling Stone to celebrate the Butterfly milestone where she talks about recording some of her biggest hits in the 90s, and at the same time also wrote and recorded an alt-rock grunge album.

 

Mimi made mention of this in her memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. The album was called Someone’s Ugly Daughter under the artist name Chick. Here’s the cover art: 

Mimi’s friend Clarissa Dane was on lead vocals with Mimi singing backup ….

…but Mimi performed the originals on the demo and she tweeted during promotion of the memoir that she was trying to find her version: 

So the update now, as we find out from her Rolling Stone interview, is that she was able to unearth the album and “intends to put those songs out – along with a mystery project ‘built around’ those songs and featuring another artist”. 

 

Which means we are getting Grunge Mimi in our future. And what does that even look like? Mimi in flannel? Mimi in Doc Martens? Mimi with limp hair and zero back-combing? Mimi giving us a Grunge Christmas?! This is a mindf-ck, I don’t know how to process, but I am here for it. I am here for one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of our time flexing her range. 

As for the secrecy of it all…

There were signs. We all just missed them at the time (probably because very few people were paying attention to Chick). But here’s the video for the song “Malibu” (featuring the opening lyrics “If I were Malibu Barbie, and you were Suntan Ken”, LOL FOREVER) and take a look at the stickers on the boombox right off the top: 

 

There she is… hiding in plain sight. Our sparkly pink butterfly in the shape of an “M”. Mimi was doing this sh-t long before Taylor Swift picked up a guitar. 

 

Attached - Mimi stepping out in New York the other day.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey