Chick: Mariah Carey’s Alternative Rock Side Project In The 90s

by: G Vazquez

For years, R&B and pop superstar Mariah Carey kept a musical secret, one that she created in 1995. While recording her hit album “Daydream”, she would record other tracks from midnight to dawn. She also wanted to get off some heavy emotions during her tumultuous time with her record company, and her marriage to Tommy Mottola, who was also the CEO of her label.

This was also the time that Mariah wanted more control over her art, imagery, and songwriting. Moving back to her heavy R&B plus hiphop influences, she also dabbled in alternative rock, secretly. The result was an interesting period for Mimi, proving her well-rounded musical capabilities.

Mariah As A 90s Rock Chick

Carey was into 90s bands like Hole, Sleater Kinney, and Garbage, which became her major inspirations for creating a different recording persona for what would become the Chick – Someone’s Ugly Daughter album. It was an intended side project for fun, and to explore her other creative, non-commercial musical endeavors.

Carey wasn’t a stranger to rock music. She has always been a fan and covered a number of rock classics over the years, including Journey’s “Open Arms”, Badfinger’s “Without You”, Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is”, and Def Leppard’s “Bringing On The Heartbreak”, with Dave Navarro on guitar.

Carey recorded the album after office hours during the Daydream album era. Collaborator and songwriting partner Walter Afanasieff worked with her and the studio staff with fun and spontaneous writing and recording sessions.

However, her label didn’t like the idea of releasing a Mariah album that was way off her public image. They feared it would also hurt her album sales.

Mariah couldn’t release the album as is with her name directly stamped on it. She brought in her friend Clarissa Dane on lead vocals, while leaving her backing vocals intact. Dane also became the official face of the band in a couple of music videos. While Dane is the dominant vocalist, you can definitely hear backing vocals behind each song from Mariah.

Mariah was left disappointed by the final outcome of her side project, saying in a 1999 interview that, “I got kind of in trouble for making this album — the alternative album — because back then, everything was super-controlled by the powers that be. I never really was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to release it’ but then I was like, I should release it. I should do it under an alias. Let people discover it and whatever, but that got squashed.”

Revealing The Past

In 2020, after referring to and cryptically talking about it in bits and pieces over the years, she finally confirmed the existence of the album. What’s more, she also found the original version of that album with her lead vocals. She also recently planned to release it sometime soon.

On her 2020 memoir book, she said, “I created an alter-ego artist and her Ziggy Stardust-like spoof band. My character was a dark-haired brooding Goth girl who wrote and sang ridiculous tortured songs.” She also “looked forward to doing her alter-ego sessions after recording Daydream each night”. It might finally come out soon.