by Mariah Carey
Tommy didn’t come to my defense. So here I was, twentyish, on my honeymoon-ish with a fiftyish-year-old man screaming and cursing at me over the phone while my fortyish husband sat there, not doing a damned thing about it. And to top it all off, I was right! Of course our wedding should have been a big cover story. It was planned that way—this was show business!
While the two angry men yelled at each other and me like children, I broke out crying and broke out of that house. I just started running aimlessly down the beach, tears streaming down my face. We hadn’t even digested the wedding cake, and here we were again, back to bickering, back to raging, back to me being dismissed and outpowered. Nothing had changed or calmed down. I just ran, not knowing where I was going. Eventually I came upon a hotel with a beachside bar. Perfect, I thought, I could use a drink.
But when I sat down I realized that I had left empty-handed. I didn’t have a phone or a purse, no cash, no card, no ID. I couldn’t even get myself a sympathy drink to cry into. With my hair bunched up in a topknot, wearing nothing but a bikini and a sarong, I looked like a thousand lonely young women on the beach, not like a famous pop star who had sold millions of records worldwide. I most certainly didn’t look like a honeymooning bride. If anyone did recognize me, they left me alone—and no one could imagine how alone I felt.
I asked to use the phone and made a collect call to my manager (remember when you had to memorize important phone numbers?). I asked him to give the bartender a credit card number so I could at least get a drink. I ordered some sweet and sorry frozen daiquiri. I sipped on it and listened to the waves crashing on the shore as the reality of the situation began to sink in.
Eventually I made my way back down the beach and to the house. But I knew the drill. Once again Tommy and I would sit in silence, after all was said and done. The little bit of hope I’d had that getting married would change him washed away like footprints in the sand. That was the day I began to hold my breath and resist the undertow of Tommy.
THANKSGIVING IS CANCELLED!
And I missed a lot of life, but I’ll recover
Though I know you really like to see me suffer
Still I wish that you and I’d forgive each other
’Cause I miss you, Valentine, and really loved you
—“Petals”
I called him T. D. Valentine. That was his stage name back in the day when he fancied himself a musician. He loved music, that much is true, and he found a way to have a lifelong affair with it. As I’ve said, our mutual love of music, ambition, and power was completely intertwined with our personal relationship. Music was the relationship, but try as we might, that couldn’t make it a marriage. I sincerely believed in my heart I would be with Tommy forever. But my sanity and soul would not surrender to my heart, and the marriage swiftly began to harm me on an emotional and spiritual level.
There was a popular mythology that I was some sophisticated gold digger who bagged a big-time hit maker who was now bankrolling my princess lifestyle—that I was just sitting pretty on a throne in my thirty-million-dollar mansion. The wedding certainly gave that illusion, and that’s all it was, an illusion. If there was any perception of a fairy-tale marriage or life, it was absolutely smoke and mirrors. The ironclad safety that Tommy provided from my family turned into an ironclad dungeon.
The control and imbalance of power in our relationship accelerated. My manager was a childhood friend of his. His preferred security was the tough guy he idolized from his school days (even though I towered over him when in heels). Everyone whose job it was to look after me had deep connections to him. I was very young and inexperienced when Tommy met me; he knew so much more about a lot of things, especially the music business. But I knew some things he didn’t know too, particularly when it came to trends and popular culture, which I suspect made him feel threatened. He seemed threatened by anything he couldn’t control.
Even the idea of me doing something he couldn’t control would send him into an irrational tailspin. One prime, ridiculous example: once, there was a copy of Entertainment Weekly on our kitchen table in Sing Sing. In it was a short piece wherein a writer mused about the idea of a modern remake of All About Eve starring Diana Ross as Margo Channing and me as Eve Harrington—genius! Of course, I adored the original movie, not only for the glamour and the iconic performances but also because Marilyn Monroe had a small but delicious part as Miss Casswell, a gorgeous, ambitious actress.
Tommy read the article and got pissed—at me! Somehow he found a way to blame me for someone else’s fantasy of casting me in a movie (which didn’t even have a love scene, for God’s sake!). As if he were an overbearing father or warden, his anger would permeate the house and rattle my whole being. I got in trouble (yes, “trouble,” because I felt so infantilized by him) for the mere suggestion, made by someone else, of me doing something beyond his control.
The gap between our tastes and instincts in music and pop culture was more divisive than the gap between our ages. In the late eighties and through the midnineties, Uptown Records, led by the late and legendary Andre Harrell, was the label for R & B, hip-hop, and the hybrid that would become known as New Jack Swing. Uptown had Heavy D & the Boyz, Guy (featuring Teddy Riley), Jodeci, Mary J. Blige, and Father MC. Father MC’s album was one of my favorites. Mary J. Blige was doing background vocals and hooks for him and he would also feature Jodeci-love. I would listen to them all the time. Tommy would watch me listening. He knew to pay attention to what I was interested in because he knew my ear and instincts were sharp. But I knew he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t fully grasp its cutting edge. He never really believed in the enduring cultural power of hip-hop because he couldn’t fully understand it. He thought it was a passing fad or trend.
One night, Tommy and I were out with a group of friends and major music executives, in a beautifully lit dining room in an Italian restaurant that served unforgettable warm focaccia and was frequented by music industry illuminati. We were all seated around a big table. My friend Josefin was in from Sweden, and she and her new husband were among the guests, so it wasn’t completely a work dinner, but at this point my work, social, and personal lives were pretty much one and the same. Even our home had been largely designed for conducting business and impressing partners (though my contemporaries’ main concern was where they could chill and smoke a spliff—of all the lavish rooms available, no surprise, we preferred the studio). We would sometimes host big, festive dinners there, some of which were both fun and fabulous, but they never felt like family. Nothing feels like family when you are under surveillance, which I always was.
The midnineties were an exciting era in music, and I was part of a pioneering generation of innovative young artists, songwriters, producers, and executives. We were intent on making a new kind of sound, based in R & B and rap but unrestricted by old formats and formulas. We were playing with new technologies and irreverently blending fluid melodies with gritty hip-hop aesthetics and energy. The music we were making was raw and smooth at the same time, and we were the only ones who knew how to make it work. It was our sound, a reflection of our time and our sensibilities.
My former manager was also with us at the restaurant. The conversation drifted to Puffy aka Sean aka P. Diddy, who had recently left Uptown Records, where he’d started as an intern, eventually becoming head of A&R. Now he already had his own record label, Bad Boy, and his star artist, the Notorious B.I.G., was all over the radio and beginning to spread all over a generation. The then head of Epic Records turned to me and asked, “So what do you think of this guy, Puffy? What do you think is going on with him? Do you like his music?”
He directed the question to me because I was the youngest person at the table. I also loved and understood hip-hop, and I was the only artist there. Besides, I’d recently worked with Puff as a producer. The table got quiet as I leaned in and gave my honest assessment: that Puff and Bad Boy were definitely where modern music was headed.
Not too long before, at our ki
tchen table, Tommy had shared his own opinion with me and my nephew Shawn: “Puffy will be shining my shoes in two years.” I was stunned. Wait. What did he say? It was one of the very few times I stood up to Tommy, telling him that what he had said was blatantly racist. I was pissed. Shawn had never seen me talk back to him; he was shocked that I showed my anger and became genuinely concerned for my safety. So many people were then.
But that night at the restaurant, what could have been a robust discussion between industry leader and artist about global culture and the future of American pop music became an epic Tommy tantrum instead. As I was finishing my answer, I saw his eyes flash with familiar rage. He jumped up from the table and began pacing, huffing and puffing around the restaurant. He was so livid he couldn’t contain himself. The entire table sat in silence as we looked at one another, not knowing what the actual fuck was wrong with him (this time) or what we should do. The whole restaurant witnessed Tommy trying to walk himself back down off a ledge only he could see. Finally, he stormed back. Still vibrating with rage, he slammed his fist on the table and announced, “I just want everybody to know that THANKSGIVING IS CANCELLED!” Um, okay.
We were planning to have a festive Thanksgiving dinner party at Sing Sing, but because I had dared to give my honest, autonomous opinion, in public, to someone he admired (who had asked me what I thought), he was going to shut down the fun. As if it were my ten-year-old birthday party. Even then, it was laughable, the hubris with which he declared a national holiday cancelled. Like, who was going to call Frank Perdue? By God, who was going to recall all the Butterballs?! I’d been asked a direct question. What was I supposed to do, sit there like a dummy and not answer the man? It was all just ridiculous.
What wasn’t funny was knowing how I would be punished for my transgression on the hourlong ride home. Something came over me that night, and I decided I wasn’t going to take the hit for something that wasn’t my fault, again. This night, I would not be locked up in Tommy’s Range Rover torture chamber and sent back to prison in Bedford. I decided I was not going to leave with him under any circumstances. I realized I was taking a huge, frightening risk, but because we were in a public place, with a table full of witnesses, I took a gamble, thinking he wouldn’t make a bigger scene and I might be safe.
He sat at the table stewing and staring at me. I perched nervously in my chair, my leg literally quivering under the white linen tablecloth, but still full of conviction. Somehow, I stared back. Not this night. There was no fucking way I was taking that car ride with him in that state. It was a tense standoff, and everyone at the table was freaked out. They were scared for me; they were scared for themselves. Everybody was always scared of Tommy! But I held my position, and finally Tommy walked out alone. Even though he and I both knew there would still be people following me and reporting back to him, this stand was a monumental move on my part. Out of respect for our privacy, the chef and proprietor agreed to let me discreetly exit through the kitchen. Josefin and I went out to a little club (which was an enormous step for me) to shake it off and have a few cocktails, then we went to a hotel to get a decent night’s sleep. It was my first sip of freedom—and how thirsty I was for more.
’Cause it’s my night
No stress, no fights
I’m leaving it all behind …
No tears, no time to cry
Just makin’ the most of life
—It’s Like That
The night Tommy “cancelled” Thanksgiving was the first time I stood up for myself and resisted his orders. He never allowed me to have a voice of my own; exhibiting the slightest bit of agency or independent thought seemed to threaten and emasculate him. I had no control over his control. I was the voice of the label, making all kinds of profits and shares for him, and yet I couldn’t have a voice at the dinner table. But I wouldn’t allow myself to be cancelled.
FANTASY
While Tommy would never relinquish control over my life, at a certain point he did begin to make concessions when it came to the production of the music. He always respected me as a songwriter; he was a music man and knew good lyrics and melody structure. However, not only was I outgrowing some of the producers he had attached to me, so was the music industry. I always resisted their push to make me fit in a neat mainstream “adult contemporary” category. Adult contemporary was what he knew, it was what his guys knew, and I really knew it too. I could write big pop hits like “Hero.” I could write Broadway-style tunes. Whatever the occasion required, I could make it happen. But I wanted to make more of my own music with a more modern sound. They kept trying to smooth me out while I just wanted to get a little more rough. I wanted to add dynamics and broaden my reach. And, of course, there was a racial and cultural dimension that came with integrating hip-hop—it was a Black art form. Unlike jazz (which Tommy appreciated) or gospel, hip-hop was radical, raw, and in your face. It was not designed to make middle-aged white men feel cool. Hip-hop didn’t really need his kind of “hit maker” anymore, and I think it threatened him by endangering his power. And yet he couldn’t deny the evidence. My instincts were making hits. So he stopped fighting me so much on the samples, artists, and producers I wanted to work with.
I knew hip-hop added exciting, young energy to almost any other sound if done correctly. I knew Puff would be the perfect producing partner for the “Fantasy Remix” I was dreaming about. I was so happy with what producer Dave “Jam” Hall and I had done with the single. For the sample, I chose “Genius of Love” by the Tom Tom Club. It was a perfect fun, swinging party song, but I knew it could go to even more interesting places. We kept the Tom Tom Club sample for the remix, even emphasizing and bringing it out further. Puff was pretty enthusiastic about my idea of featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard from the Wu-Tang Clan—that was the real genius of love.
The suits at the “corporate morgue” weren’t crazy about O.D.B. They actually thought he was certifiably crazy and that I was about to throw my entire fan base into shock. Tommy generally considered rap background noise, and had no idea that O.D.B. was about to bring the noise to “Fantasy.” They didn’t understand how diverse my fans were, nor did they understand the global impact of the Wu-Tang Clan (I mean “Up from the 36 Chambers!”—come on!). Wu-Tang was a movement, a once-in-a-generation type of group, and O.D.B. was such an extra-special member. I truly believed he would bring something incredible to the remix. Puff got the vision and ran with it. There were also a couple of cool A&R folks who helped me smuggle in one of the greatest rap features of all time.
Of course, the session for O.D.B. was late in the evening, and after I was swooped up by Tommy and brought back to Sing Sing for the night. I had taken a bath, which had become for me a kind of reverse baptismal ritual by which I transitioned from young global recording artist back to caged Westchester wife. I slipped into a white silk nightgown, tiptoed across the white wool carpeting of the master bedroom, and climbed into our opulent bed, outfitted with 1,000 thread count white Egyptian sheets and what seemed like a hundred white down pillows.
Tommy was already in bed in his white cotton pajamas. His side of the bed seemed a million miles away. The sterility had become routine. Suddenly the phone rang. I answered and started to squeal with excitement. Someone from the studio called to report O.D.B. had completed his session. “Wait, wait,” I said, “let me put you on speaker.” I pressed speakerphone for Tommy to hear:
Yo, New York in the house
Is Brooklyn in the house?
Uptown in the house
Shaolin, are you in the house?
Boogie Down, are you in the house?
Sacramento in the house
Atlanta, Georgia, are you in the house?
West Coast, are you in the house?
Japan, are you in the house?
Everybody, are you in the house?
Baby, baby come on
Baby come on, baby come on!
Wheeeeeeeeeee! I couldn’t contain myself. I may have even started jumping up and d
own on the bed! Then I heard the next lines: “Me and Mariah go back like babies with pacifiers! Old Dirt Dog no liar. Keeping fantasy hot like fire!”
That was IT! Ol’ Dirty Bastard spit crazy brilliance and scorched our pristine white bedroom with the grime and righteous fun I’d been craving! It kept going, and all his crazy ad-libs sent me into euphoric giggles. I reveled in it. I was just screaming and laughing and whooping. But then I looked over at Tommy. His head was cocked to the side with a look of confusion he couldn’t contain.
“The fuck is that?” he blurted. “I can do that. Get the fuck outta here with that.” There it was. That was what he had to say about one of the most unique, amazing things I had ever heard! I think he was in shock, or maybe he did think he could do it and that all of us were nuts. It was as if the Starship Enterprise had beamed me into another galaxy, far, far away from Tommy. Music was our only true bond, and now we were light-years apart.
Now, I was crazy about “Fantasy Remix.” It was one of the first of my songs that I played over and over before it was out on the radio. I’d play it on the ride back to Bedford (I’m sure Tommy loved that). It felt like all the fun I had missed out on in my childhood. It made me feel happy. O.D.B.’s energy was something everyone could relate to—he was your loving, fun-ass uncle who gets drunk at all the festivities, at Christmas dinner, the cookout, Thanksgiving. O.D.B. and Puff just really helped me create something enduring that all kinds of people connected to. That remix gave us lines and feelings we would use forever. He even brought back Donny and Marie Osmond with “I’m a little bit country, I’m a little bit rock ’n’ roll!” Like what made him bust out and sing that? Genius. And now when I’m singing it onstage and we have his vocals, it sounds like he’s saying “I’m a little bit Roc and Roe”—that always gets me.
Making the “Fantasy” video was really important to me too. I wanted it to feel fun and carefree. In my opinion (which was so rarely considered) almost all of my videos weren’t right. Tommy never allowed me to work with the directors I wanted, the hot ones at the time, like Herb Ritts, or the cool fashion stylists, who would bring an edge to my look; these were creative people he couldn’t completely control. His package for me was so mainstream, but this one, there was no homogenizing this one. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? So, since I couldn’t have a director I wanted to work with, I decided to direct the video myself. It was a simple concept: young, fun, and free. It was shot on location at Westchester’s Playland Park in Rye, New York. Everyone can relate to the joy and abandon of an amusement park, the feeling of throwing your hands up in the air on the roller coaster. That’s the pure fun I wanted to capture. Simple elements, like roller-blading cute kids, bright colors, cutoff shorts, and a clown. There was a night dance sequence with a crew of fresh B-boys and that was pretty much it. That was the pop version. For the remix video, I wanted O.D.B. to do for the video what he had done on the song: bring a zany, grimy element to it.