by Mariah Carey
* * *
Fate is a bizarre thing. When I was about seven, we were living in that cramped apartment on top of the deli, and I used to love to hear the sounds of the radio coming up into our windows. I remember swaying, posing, and singing with Odyssey: “Oh, oh, oh, you’re a native New Yorker / You should know the score by now.” I didn’t know what “knowing the score” was, but I wanted that fabulous New York feeling even back then. It took ten more years, but I had finally arrived.
To me, the city had a raw grit and an impossible chicness. It was in perpetual motion: masses of people walking fast, no one looking the same but all moving in sync. The city was crazy messenger bikes whizzing around and countless long yellow cabs zigzagging through the streets like a swarm of rough bumblebees. Something was happening everywhere you looked—huge billboards, flashing neon signs, wild graffiti emblazoned across all kinds of surfaces, covering subway cars, water towers, and vans. It was like one big, funky moving art gallery. The main avenues were grand, crowded catwalks filled with eclectic fashion models, business moguls, street hustlers, and workers of every ilk, all strutting and with no one studyin’ each other. Everyone had somewhere to go and something to do. It was a mad and fabulous planet of concrete and crystals populated with misfits, magicians, dreamers, and dealers—I landed right in the middle of it. Hello baby, I was made for this.
MAKE IT HAPPEN
After moving out of my mother’s house I crashed at Morgan’s empty apartment on top of Charlie Mom Chinese Cuisine in Greenwich Village, while he was in Italy pursuing a modeling career (and Lord knows what else). I fed his two cats, Ninja and Thompkins, and tried my best to feed myself. The first decision of every day was whether I was going to get a bagel from H&H or buy a subway token.
I was surviving on a dollar a day, and something had to give—it was either breakfast or transportation. H&H bagels were sublime: soft, warm, and plump to perfection, a classic NYC morning staple that would keep my stomach occupied until three o’clock (H&H stood for Helmer and Hector, the two Puerto Rican owners, who arguably made the best kosher bagels in the world). But then again, getting around is pretty important, and the New York City subway was the rowdiest but most direct route to anywhere in town. The token was slightly bigger than a dime, a dirty gold disc with “NYC” stamped in the middle and a distinctive slim Y cutout. This was the people’s coin, and it could get you anywhere, at any time. But if I could walk to where I needed to go, breakfast would win.
I found a job right away. I didn’t have a choice. So I did what every other broke dreamer does when they get to New York City. I grabbed the free newspaper of real New Yorkers, the Village Voice, and checked out the job ads. I took what I could get—and what I got was work at a sports bar on Seventy-Seventh and Broadway, cleverly named Sports on Broadway.
I began as a waitress, but as management soon discovered, I was still a teen and couldn’t legally serve drinks, so I was moved to the cash register. Boy, was that a disaster. I was a hard worker, but I had spent most of my working time in a recording studio, and working a register isn’t like recording background vocals. I wasn’t picking it up fast. And this was a neighborhood joint with regulars and no-nonsense waitresses, like “Kiss My Grits” Flo in Alice but New York tough. Those broads hated me for messing up their money!
Eventually, I got moved to the coat check. Simple. But while I was hustling, I was also getting hustled: I wasn’t allowed to keep my tips, which is pretty much the entire allure of being a coat-check girl. I got a dollar for every coat. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I also knew it was temporary. When summertime came around, the coat check was converted into a merchandise booth, and I became the “Sports on Broadway” T-shirt girl. The booth was right at the front door, so the first thing the men would see was me with a welcoming smile, in a white T-shirt with the word “Sports” printed across my boobs. I was grateful for the simplicity of it all: the uniform was the bar’s T-shirt and jeans, and since I only had one pair of jeans, it was one less thing for me to struggle to buy.
Not more than three short years ago
I was abandoned and alone
Without a penny to my name
So very young and so afraid
No proper shoes upon my feet
Sometimes I couldn’t even eat
I often cried myself to sleep
But still I had to keep on going
—“Make It Happen”
I also only had one pair of shoes, and they were a size and a half too small. They had been my mother’s—pitiful flat black leather lace-up ankle boots. They were basic and utilitarian, and I made them work. At some point, the top of the shoe separated from the rubber sole, creating a flap that would slap the unforgiving city pavement as I pounded toward my destiny. The swelling of my feet from standing all day in too-small shoes surely contributed to their demise. Snowy days were the worst; ice would slide into the flap, melt, and seep through my thin socks, and the clammy sensation of wet, cheap leather traveled up my spine. And that year New York had a big, newsworthy snowstorm! But I’d pull myself together, as cute as I could manage, and flash a smile, pleasantly doing my job and just hoping no one would look down at my feet. I had years of training for living through humiliation, but now, I wasn’t in school; I was living in The City. I believed in my heart that one day I would make it and have some of the most fancy and well-fitting shoes imaginable.
I had my mighty faith, but I was also blessed with so many signs and acts of kindness from folks along the way. Like Charles, the cook at Sports, who would fry me up a greasy cheeseburger and sneak it to me with a glass of Sambuca. It wasn’t glamorous, but I had a meal, an outfit, and a few dollars. Every day that I made it through, I knew I was closer to my dream. I would drop down on my knees each night and thank God for another day when I didn’t give up or get taken down.
I know life can be so tough
And you feel like giving up
But you must be strong
Baby just hold on
You’ll never find the answers if you throw your life away
I used to feel the way you do
Still I had to keep on going.
—“Make It Happen”
The job at the sports bar was a means, but the studio was the end. Everything went into my demo. One day while I was eating downstairs in the Chinese restaurant, gratefully savoring the cheap morsels of the day’s only meal, I noticed a familiar face. It was Clarissa, the now ex-girlfriend of my brother’s producer friend Gavin Christopher. We hugged like old friends. I told her that I had officially relocated to the city. When I gave her the rundown on my chaotic living arrangements, like an angel, she invited me to come live with her.
* * *
Though she identified as a “struggling artist,” fortunately for me, Clarissa wasn’t really struggling that hard. She lived with a gay couple in a huge classic Upper West Side brownstone on Eighty-Fifth Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. I suspected that she was one of those kids who had a trust fund waiting for her once she got over her starving-artist phase. My music was my life. Music was the only plan, ever.
While it was certainly an upgrade from my previous crowded crash pad, living with Clarissa still had its challenges. She had a room (with a whole door, which closed) where there was a loft-style bed set up with recording equipment underneath it. Her room was off to the side of the larger parlor room. My situation was a ragtag loftlike structure built above the kitchen in the communal area that we shared with the couple. To get to my sleeping cranny I had to climb up onto the kitchen counter and hoist myself up into the teeny nook. It was barely more than a crawl space and had just enough room for a twin mattress, outfitted with a single pillow and a blanket (a “house” warming gift from my mother). The space was so shallow and the ceiling was so close that I couldn’t fully kneel on the bed without bumping my head (so there, I prayed on my back). It was “decorated” with the only remnants from my life in Long Island: my journals and diaries, m
y Marilyn Monroe poster, and a handful of books on Marilyn. I still looked up to her.
Connecting with Clarissa proved to be quite the blessing. She helped me find work and covered for me when I couldn’t make my share of the five hundred dollars a month rent—a fortune to me then. Occasionally she’d take me out to eat. We even did some songwriting in her mini studio. She had a few connections in the music scene from her time with Gavin and would sometimes introduce me to other musicians who also lived on the Upper West Side. On these special occasions, she’d even loan me a little black dress to wear (not dissimilar to what I’m wearing on my first album cover). I certainly didn’t have anything of my own that was appropriate for mingling.
Like everything during that time, nothing lasted long. Eventually the addition of some crazy roommates meant that Clarissa and I fled for our lives (I really can’t get into the details of that) and had to move on and out. We joined my friend Josefin (whom I had met when she was in an open relationship with my brother). She was living with a few other girls from Sweden. So it was five random girls living in a random apartment on top of a club called Rascals, on East Fourteenth Street. I was downgraded to a mattress on the floor, but I was now living “downtown,” in the heart of the New York art scene of the late 1980s. It was thrilling, if precarious, and my eyes were always focused upward. I was able to gain a bit of stability and a lot more faith. I knew more than ever that it was going to happen for me.
I once was lost
But now I’m found
I got my feet on solid ground
Thank you, Lord
If you believe within your soul
Just hold on tight
And don’t let go
You can make it! Make it happen
—“Make It Happen”
After a few months, the other girls from Sweden moved out, and it was Josefin and I. She helped me get odd jobs, but I was also beginning to pick up more background vocal work. For this work, I’d settled on my young singer ensemble: a little black knit tank dress, black tights, and fat, slouchy socks over a pair of white Reebok Freestyle sneakers (my mother’s hand-me-down black shoes having finally been reduced to shreds). Previously, Clarissa had encouraged me to ask my mother to buy me new shoes. My mother then asked Morgan, who, she reported to me, said, “She has to learn to do things by herself.” I was a teen living on my own in the city, but whatever. Eventually, reluctantly, Morgan did buy me a pair of white Reeboks (why not black, I wondered, which goes with everything—but I was grateful to have shoes that fit and were without involuntary air-conditioning). I wore this outfit to nearly every session; it was like my uniform.
Gavin and I were working on a song together. While we were recording, he introduced me to a producer in the city, Ben Margulies, who was hired as a drummer on the session for our song called “Just Can’t Hold It Back.” Ben had his own studio, and I had begun working with him occasionally during my singer-student Long Island commuter days. His studio was in Chelsea, on Nineteenth Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. Located in the back of his father’s cabinet making factory, it was about the size of a pantry. It could’ve been a chicken coop for all I cared—and it honestly wasn’t far from that. What mattered was that it was almost a full recording studio, the place where I belonged. For me, the studio is part sanctuary, part playground, and part laboratory. I loved being there, writing, riffing, singing, dreaming, and taking risks. I’ve slept many a night on many a studio floor, beginning with this humble yet magical place.
Ben and I worked incessantly over the course of a year or so. Occasionally his partner Chris would be there, helping with the programming. I was coming up with a lot of ideas, and we were recording, but I still felt the guys weren’t going fast enough. I was hitting a new stride. I was coming up with all these lyrics and melodies and was frustrated because it seemed to me like it should be going faster. Maybe because I was only seventeen and extremely impatient, but I felt I was differently invested, like I was on a different trajectory than they were. Music was my whole life—so much of my belief system, my survival, was entwined in my songs. There was an urgency in my air, in the moment, and in me. This was my time, and I could feel it. I felt like I was running fast toward something or someone soon, and I was not about to let anyone or anything slow me down.
Ben and I were both excited by the songs we were working on but ultimately our sensibilities and ambitions were incompatible. I think he thought we were going to form a duo, like the Eurythmics, with him as co-lead, the Dave Stewart to my Annie Lennox. I was like, “Um, good luck with that; can we just focus on putting down my songs, please?”
We were able to create a full demo that I thought really showcased my songwriting and vocal styles. My most vivid memory of being in that studio is of me sitting by myself on the floor in the corner writing lyrics and melodies, or staring out the window dreaming of the day I would break through. Look, Ben was very committed and I spent a lot of time working with him, and we got a lot done. But I had a vision, even back then, that my career had the capacity to go way beyond what he or most people around me were even capable of imagining.
Ben suggested we have some “security” in place, by way of a formal agreement, so he photocopied a contract out of the book All You Need to Know About the Music Business (co-written by Don Passman, who would, ironically enough, several years later become my lawyer). With no parent, legal counsel, manager, or even a good friend, I signed it. I was maybe eighteen years old. Obviously I didn’t know much about contracts and deals then, but what I did know was that there was value in my lyrics and the songs. (I remembered seeing a documentary on the Beatles when I was growing up and being shocked that they didn’t have complete ownership of the songs, they’d written—the Beatles!) So I knew not to give away all my publishing. Some of the lyrics to songs like “Alone in Love” I had begun writing in early high school.
We started setting up meetings with record companies and things began to move fast. We got an initial offer from a major publishing company for a song called “All in Your Mind” to be placed in a movie. I remember they offered me five thousand dollars for the publishing.
Come closer
You seem so far away
There’s something I know you need to say
I feel your emotions
When I look in your eyes
Your silence
Whispering misunderstandings
There’s so much you need to realize
You’ll feel my emotions
If you look in my eyes
Hey darlin’
I know you think my love is slipping away
But, baby, it’s all in your mind
—“All in Your Mind”
I refused, even though back then five thousand dollars seemed like a million (which was how much I got for my first real publishing administration deal). Thank God I had a cautionary Beatles tale fresh in my mind. I didn’t sell because I believed my songs came from somewhere special inside of me, and that selling them would be selling a piece of me.
The music business is designed to confuse and control the artist. Later, seasoned music executives told me that Ben’s deal was truly a golden ticket. I was trying to be loyal to someone who believed in me at a crucial time, but in my naïveté, I didn’t realize the enormity of what I had signed away. I was informed, and what I remember, was that he got 50 percent of the publishing on all songs we worked on together for my first album. Okay fine. But additionally, he received 50 percent of my artist’s royalties for the first album, 40 percent for the second album, 30 percent for the third, and so on. It went on that way from 1990 until about 1999. Even though Ben didn’t write one word or note with me after the first album. Out of loyalty to him and the hard work we put in together in that little studio, I never looked back and tried to reset or recoup.
So yeah, a photocopy: that’s the unceremonious origin of my first “official deal.” What a welcome to the music business! Which I was so eager to get into, but I
soon came to believe that my first signature was on a pretty shady piece of paper—and one that would be hard to get out of. But it certainly wouldn’t be the last. A whole forest full of shade was yet to come.
One must pick one’s battles wisely, and I wasn’t about to come for someone who I had already left behind. I was on my way. I’ll be eternally grateful, and I wish him well.
At least we made The Demo.
That demo stayed in my Walkman, which stayed on my hip, and the music stayed in my ears. Aside from the radio, the songs we laid down were all I listened to. And the offers from the major publishing houses gave me confidence that things were going to happen. I just had to keep the faith and keep working. I didn’t stop. I kept going to more sessions, doing more connecting, and getting more background vocal work. I began doing vocals for the musician and producer T. M. Stevens, who’d written with Narada Michael Walden and played bass with James Brown, Cyndi Lauper, Joe Cocker, and other major artists. It was through him that I had the good fortune to meet the amazing Cindy Mizelle at a session.
Since that first background gig at twelve years old, I’d gained a respect for the specific skill and talent it takes to be a good background vocalist. I would listen specifically to background on the radio. I’d study the liner notes on albums and CD jackets to learn who was doing the background vocals (especially on dance records, as I believe backgrounds are what make those songs). I became familiar with all those exceptional singers, like Audrey Wheeler and Lisa Fischer … and Cindy. To me, she was one of the absolute greatest. Cindy Mizelle was the background singer. She sang with the most gifted vocalists of all time—Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, and the Rolling Stones. She was a real singer’s singer. Cindy was that girl to me. I looked up to her so much.