Mariah Carey Secretly Recorded A Full Grunge Album That Was Actually Released In 1995

While Mariah Carey rocks, it’d be tough to say that she “rocks” in the sense that she plays rock music. That doesn’t mean the pop star has never ventured into that guitar-driven territory, though, because she definitely has. Over the weekend, Carey revealed that while recording her 1995 album Daydream, she also recorded a grungy alternative-rock album alongside it.

Carey shared a video that features a snippet from her upcoming memoir, The Making of Mariah Carey, in which she details the album. She prefaced the snippet, “Fun fact: I did an alternative album while I was making Daydream. Just for laughs, but it got me through some dark days. Here’s a little of what I wrote about it in #TheMeaningOfMariahCarey. S/O to my friend Clarissa who performs the lead w/ me as a hidden layer #Chick #TMOMC”

In the book, she wrote:

“I’d bring my little alt-rock song to the band and hum a silly guitar riff. They would pick it up and we would record it immediately. It was irreverent, raw, and urgent, and the band got into it. I actually started to love some of the songs. I would fully commit to my character.

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. 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. I totally looked forward to doing my alter-ego band sessions after Daydream each night.”

The video reveals the song playing in the 41-second video is called “Demented,” by Carey’s band, Chick. The video also shows artwork for an album called Someone’s Ugly Daughter.

It turns out this music has been under our noses this whole time. “Demented,” as well as another Chick song called “Malibu,” have been available on YouTube since 2009, although Carey hadn’t been publicly connected to the songs before now. Meanwhile, the full Someone’s Ugly Daughter album was actually released in 1995, although it’s hard to find these days. It doesn’t appear to be available on streaming services, and CDs are hard to come by: There is currently one available on Amazon for nearly $1,000, but that’s it.

Carey also wants to release a version of the album with her vocals more at the forefront, as she tweeted, “Fun fact 2: now that you’ve listened to Clarissa’s kick-ass lead vocals, I can tell you that I’m on a quest to unearth the version of this album with my lead vocals and will not stop until we find it! So happy that we get to experience this together lol!”

Listen to Chick’s “Demented” and “Malibu” below, as well as a sampler of the whole Someone’s Ugly Daughter album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aekQTU_pRaE