The Meaning of Mariah Carey

by Mariah Carey

  I remember in the beginning of the session, we were at the microphone, doing a part that I was having a difficult time getting right. Cindy’s such a perfectionist (as I am now), but she had patience with me. When you first learn how to do background vocals—different tones and styles—it’s not easy. Producers liked my tone, but I had to learn how to really get in the pocket, to get it exactly how they wanted it. Precision takes practice. Cindy had a new gig practically every day; she was a master. When I first started singing alongside her, I had to work hard to keep up. Now, background vocals are one of my favorite elements in building a song. I love the textures and layers and how lush they can make a song; backgrounds get into your bones.

  Once, while Cindy and I were recording and standing very close to each other at the microphone, she could hear my stomach rumbling. She looked down and saw the sad shoes I was wearing, scanned my crumpled outfit, and then looked up at me with pity and recognition. I was too excited to be self-conscious—at that point in life, my ambition was stronger than my shame. Who cared if I arrived a little hungry and a little shabby? I was finally singing for a living, right next to a consummate professional.

  Cindy gave me her number that night and told me if I ever needed anything, I could call her. I didn’t know what to do with that. She’d sung with huge acts all around the world—what business did I have calling her? What would I say? I didn’t call, and the next time I saw her she called me out on it. It wasn’t easy for me to ask for help. I didn’t want to bother or burden her, I explained. Cindy looked me in the eye and said, “Mariah, you need to call me.”

  Suddenly it struck me. Oh, I get it. I was supposed to call her. I hadn’t understood right away that this was part of the process: the initiation, the mentoring, the nurturing, the entry into a society of sister-singers. These rituals were all new to me. And I was unfamiliar with being welcomed into a family of artists—into a family of any kind.

  Once I had broken into the inner circle of elite background vocalists, recommendations started to come in. Background vocalists are hired by word of mouth—one singer will recommend another, and good singers like to work together. If the squad is strong, the session is strong, and if the sessions are strong, the money is good and steady. I was now in the tight and talented community of working musicians in New York City. Though I was invariably the youngest in the crowd, I also often hung out with some of them outside of work hours, mostly on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I wasn’t into drinking or hooking up at all; the hang, to me, was about networking—emphasis on work. It paid off.

  I got an offer to do a demo session for a group called Maggie’s Dream. When I got to the gig I was told I would be singing for a male vocalist. In walked this sexy, serene, toasted-almond-colored artsy young man—he just looked like the definition of an artist. His thick, dark hair was just in the beginning phases of dreadlocks. He had a perfect five o’clock shadow, with a thick stripe of goatee down the center of his chin. He was dressed rock star casual: heavy black leather vintage motorcycle jacket, black jeans, black T-shirt. He had a thin ring in his nose and smelled how I imagined ancient Egyptian oils would smell. His face was kind and fine, with a boyish smile. He went by the name of Romeo Blue. His friends called him Lenny. And about a year later, the world would know him as Lenny Kravitz.

  Maggie’s Dream had a drummer named Tony, who was also the drummer for the band of a singer named Brenda K. Starr. Brenda had a big R & B pop hit out called “I Still Believe,” which the record company was looking to rework. There was an opening for background singers, and Tony got me a slot at the audition. I was excited because Brenda had a big song on the radio—and you know how much I loved the radio. At the audition, we were asked to sing Brenda’s song right in front of the table where she sat. I gave it my all.

  I sang for my life. I did all kinds of runs and belted out the last note. When I was finished, I stood perfectly still, returning back to Earth, heart on fire. Brenda gave me a long, flat stare, then suddenly broke into a mischievous little giggle. In her clipped, nasally accent, she said, “You trying to steal my job?” I didn’t move. But her giggle turned into hearty laughter. I didn’t realize you weren’t supposed to outsing the singer who could hire you!

  “Mariah is my new best friend,” she said, breaking my trance. Wait. She knew my name! I couldn’t believe someone who had a major song on the radio now knew my name. Immediately after the audition, Brenda had to fly somewhere to perform, but as soon as she returned, I was hired. She kept saying, “I told everybody about this girl Mariah!”

  Brenda was a spicy mix, in the true meaning of the word. She grew up in the projects on Ninetieth and Amsterdam Avenue, and the culture of the projects grew in her. She told me her mother was Puerto Rican and Hawaiian and her father, Harvey Kaplan, was Jewish and in a band called the Spiral Starecase. They had a hit song: “More Today Than Yesterday.” Brenda was a bit older and more street savvy than I was and had an effortless and silly sense of humor. It was easy to become friends.

  My life as a professional singer was moving swiftly, but at the same time, I was still a teenager. One time I was hanging out with the guys from Maggie’s Dream, and one of them started teasing me because I was a virgin. (Apparently, Clarissa had told them I was.) Everybody was laughing, but I didn’t get why it was funny. I was a kid. I was always the youngest and clearly the most idealistic, so I had to suffer through some of the more crass amusements of adult musicians.

  I may have been young and naïve, but Brenda knew my songs were good, and wise beyond their years. When I let her listen to my demo, she said, “Oooh, Mariah, I wanna do this on my next album.” She currently had a song that was still in active rotation on the radio, and every time we were together and I heard it play, it was mind blowing. I couldn’t believe I was working with her and she was my friend, not to mention that she had given me my biggest gig to date.

  Yet I said, “I know I don’t have anything big going on yet, but I’m sorry, I have to keep these songs. These songs are the ones I wrote for me.”

  I may have been insecure about my money, my clothes, my family, and a whole host of other things, but I knew my songs were valuable. I was really excited to finally be in the company of young and some struggling current musicians and artists, but the truth was that I had always believed this would happen to me. Brenda never pushed me to use my songs after that.

  Singing background with Brenda while she toured with her big song was big fun. Once, we went to Los Angeles to appear at a popular radio station’s concert. It was the first time I’d ever been to LA and one of the few times I’d ever set foot on a plane. Now, I was boarding a plane as a professional singer, going to do a big outdoor radio-sponsored concert in LA! To me, being on the radio was being famous. For the show, Brenda was set to sing “I Still Believe,” with me as one of the background vocalists. Will Smith was there too, to perform “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”

  Jeffrey Osborne (from the group L.T.D.) was also there; he did “You Should Be Mine (The Woo Woo Song)” as part of his set. I was in the audience, watching. Jeffrey, the veteran among us, began singing the chorus to his song with his seasoned, smooth voice: “And you woo-woo-woo,” he started off. The crowd joined in. After a few rounds he offered his microphone out into the audience.

  “Pass it to her! Pass it to her!” Brenda chirped, wagging her finger at me like a happy puppy’s tail.

  I took the mic and gave that “woo-woo” a special Mariah remix, with all kinds of vocal flourishes, and in the end I took the last “woo” way up into my high register, and the whole crowd broke out in wild claps. That was the day Will Smith and I became friends.

  Will and I were both really young, and looked it. Above my signature blown-out bangs, I had gathered the top portion of my unruly, crinkly hair into a yellow scrunchie, hair fanning out of it like a furry fountain, and let water and nature do their own thing with the back half of my ’do. I was wearing a little bubble-gum-pink tank dress I had borrowed fro
m Josefin. Will was tall and lanky, dressed as if he expected a pickup game of hoops could break out at any moment. He was incredibly friendly and funny, as was his charismatic friend, Charlie Mack. Immediately I could tell that he was not only super talented but really bright and laser-focused. I loved “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and was very impressed with what he had accomplished.

  Will and I would sometimes hang out at Rascals, below the apartment I shared with Josefin. He was an uncomplicated friend. Both of us were absolutely ambitious and still maintained a childlike wonder and curiosity about the world. Our relationship was always platonic and never got weird.

  After he heard me sing, Will believed in my talent. He took me with him to Def Jam Recordings, the hottest new hip-hop label at the time, where he was signed. As we walked down the street on our way to Def Jam, we saw this tall, thin white man approaching us. He stood out because he was kind of dancing and bopping, with headphones on that were blasting music so loud you could hear it: “It takes two to make a thing go right!”

  I later found out it was Lyor Cohen, who managed Run-DMC and LL Cool J and signed Eric B. & Rakim and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. It was a curious scene to me: this sinewy grown man, dressed kinda cool, singing aloud, “I wanna rock right now!” I was thinking, How does he even know this song?

  The Def Jam offices had a very “downtown” vibe. This was the label of many hot male hip-hop artists, so obviously there were a million girls going in and out. Most people probably just assumed that I was a groupie, strolling in on the arm of the Fresh Prince. Will had never heard my demo; he’d only heard me sing at the concert, but that was enough for him, I guess. Upstairs we found ourselves with a junior executive who wanted me to sing. Once again, I may have looked a little shabby and young, but I was discerning enough to understand: I wasn’t going to sing for this random guy. I was grateful for Will’s confidence, but I had my sights on a major label with a legacy of artists more in alignment with my singer-songwriter ambitions—somewhere huge, like Warner or Columbia Records. That’s where I knew I belonged, and that’s where I believed I was going to be.

  My faith and focus were strong, but there was also evidence of my hard work, like a possible deal moving at Atlantic Records. During this time the majors were reaping the benefits of their teen stars—the Tiffanys and Debbie Gibsons of the world. As the story goes, Doug Morris, the head of Atlantic, responded to my demo by saying, “We already have our teen girl,” referring to Gibson.

  Clearly, he didn’t really get it. For that matter, most labels didn’t really get me. They really didn’t know where I fit. They didn’t understand my sound; the demo had songs that didn’t fit neatly into an existing genre. Though really young, I was definitely not teen pop. There was a bit of soul, R & B, and gospel infused into my music, and I had a hip-hop sensibility. My demo was more diverse than the music industry at the time.

  Then, of course, there was always the blondish biracial elephant in the room. Executives at Motown supposedly reacted to my demo by saying, “Oh, no, we don’t want to deal with a Teena Marie situation again”—meaning they didn’t want to force the general public to grapple with wondering if I was Black or white or what. They didn’t know how to market me. Most record executives just didn’t know how they would work my record. They weren’t sure it could “cross over.” But for the record, Teena Marie never cared about crossing over. And I didn’t want to cross over either.

  I wanted to transcend.

  CHERCHEZ LA FEMME

  One night Brenda announced, “I’m going to take you to this party, and you’re going to meet a big record executive, Jerry Greenberg, and it’s going to be great.”

  Sure, why not? I thought. I was feeling enough professional confidence to let her drag me to an industry party. I was doing sessions and had a deal brewing at Warners for one of my songs to be used in a movie. I wasn’t too invested in this party being the party. While she had a generous heart, Brenda could also be pretty zany, so I sometimes took a lot of what she said with a grain of salt.

  We were going to get dressed at her house in Jersey, since she had all the clothes, makeup, and accessories from being on tour and having some money. She was supposed to pick me up from my apartment. I waited in my cramped vestibule, slumped on the tile floor, for over an hour (mind you, there was no texting back then). Finally, she appeared, revved up, full of energy, and ready to party. Her excitement was infectious.

  We started our going-out ritual in her large bathroom. Brenda had all the mousse, hair spray, combs, and curlers you could imagine. With her mixed Puerto Rican and Jewish heritage, I could certainly work with what she had. I attempted to create one long, uniform coil all around my head by twisting sections of hair around the rod of a curling wand. I finished it off with a straight bang. I borrowed a little black dress from her (what else!). I had brought a pair of my own opaque black tights, but I couldn’t fit into her shoes; they were too small. So I layered my black Vans sneakers with ribbed slouchy socks. I topped off the ensemble with my one statement piece—that Avirex jacket from high school.

  I really tried with my look, and it was all right. Brenda told me the party was to celebrate a new record label, but since, by this time, I was interested in the big labels with the big boys and big artists, I didn’t have high expectations about who would be in attendance. The new label was the collaboration of three well-known industry guys who had come together to form their own label, WTG Records. “WTG” stood for Walter, Tommy, and Gerald. It sounded like a tire business to me; I didn’t really know who anybody was yet. But Brenda knew Jerry (Gerald Greenberg), who she told me was a big shot in the industry (in 1974, at thirty-two, he became the youngest-ever president of Atlantic Records). When she explained this, the party started to get a bit more interesting.

  I now understood why Brenda wanted me to bring my demo with me (not that I ever went anywhere without it)—she’d brought me there to meet a guy from Atlantic Records. When we got to the party, I was surrounded by “industry people,” though I still had no clue what that meant. As I walked around, I took in the scene. Some handlers were traipsing a female artist around, like a show horse. She was very blond, very pretty, very white, and very dolled up and coiffed, with a flurry of label folks forming a tight, buzzing cloud around her. There were large blown-up pictures of her all over the room. I guessed we were supposed to ooh and ahh in her presence. But I wasn’t interested in her. I was just thinking, Who is she, why should I be excited? To me she was just someone they were toting around. Frankly, I was unimpressed by the whole scene.

  Brenda and I sat down at a table. We were trying to have a good time in the room full of suits, but all I could think was that I could be at the studio working on songs or something. That was where I always wanted to be. We got up to go to the bathroom, making our way through the crowd to get to the staircase that led to where the restrooms were.

  As we bounced up the stairs, I saw him.

  He wasn’t anyone I would have normally noticed: not particularly tall or short, not stylish or tacky. I’m pretty sure he had on a suit. He would’ve been totally forgettable if it weren’t for his eyes. Our eyes locked, and an energy instantly rushed between us, like a mild electric shock. He had a piercing stare.

  He looked into me, not at me. I was a little shook—not in a bad way, but not in a love at first sight way, either. I kept going up the stairs, this time at a slower pace, as I adjusted to what had just happened. When I closed the bathroom door, the odd sensation was still pulsing through me. What had happened? I didn’t know who he was, but I recognized him somehow. I knew it wasn’t from TV or anything like that. It wasn’t his face; it was something else. I recognized his energy, and I think he recognized mine.

  Brenda was all excited. “Did you see how Tommy Mottola looked at you? I did!” she said, her eyes wide.

  “Who’s Tommy Mottola?” I asked.

  “Girl.” She looked at me quizzically, a sense of seriousness about her. “‘Wh
o’s Tommy Mottola?’!” She began to sing a familiar refrain: “Tommy Mottola lives on the road … You don’t know who that is; you don’t know that song?” I shook my head. She sang a little bit more: “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh cherchez, cherchez—”

  It hit me. “Oh! Yeah, I know that song!” I joined in: “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, cherchez, cherchez.” It was “Cherchez la Femme / Se Si Bon,” by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.

  I let her know that I used to like that song when I was a little girl.

  Brenda said, “That is the Tommy from that song. He’s one of the biggest record guys, ever.” Brenda and I headed over to the spot where they were all standing.

  I was standing by wondering, if he was such a big shot, what did he want with me? The party was filled with prettier girls, with professional makeup and far better footwear. Tommy said to Brenda, “Who’s your friend?”—the most intense three words I’d ever heard.

  Brenda directed her answer to Jerry. “She’s eighteen years old; her name is Mariah. You gotta listen to this!” Just as she went to hand Jerry my demo tape, Tommy’s hand swiftly cut her off mid-extension. He snatched the tape, got up, left the table, and left the party. It was bizarre and bewildering. I was like, What kinda shit is that?

  That was an important demo. It had some of my best songs—“All in Your Mind,” “Someday,” and “Alone in Love.” Had this Tommy guy just taken all that work (and money!)? I wasn’t sitting there thinking, Yay, I just gave my demo to a big-time record executive. I was focused more on the fact that I was out one more copy of my demo. I know this Tommy guy’s never going to listen to it, I thought.

  The popular story goes that Tommy left the party to get in his limo, where he could immediately listen to the demo. I didn’t know what was the reason he left the party so abruptly. But after he did, I was ready to leave too. So I did.

  Eventually Tommy came back looking for me, apparently not believing what he had just heard had come from that same girl on the stairs, the innocent-looking kid in Vans and slouchy socks. All those dressed-up girls in high heels were working so hard to get the attention of W, T, or G—and T came back looking for me.