Omissions aside, The Meaning of Mariah Carey is at its best when Carey indulges in reliving the pure moments of joy she’s found amid the challenges and flashing lights of her life: cruising uptown. Mariah Carey has announced a new memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. This tale of one of the great divas of all time arrives September 29th. Carey broke the news in a post on social media.
What is “The Meaning of Mariah Carey“? It’s a ridiculous “memoir,” quite short with big type and wide margins. In it, Mariah Carey — who doesn’t explore much of anything that we’d call introspection — blames everyone else in her life for any unhappiness she may have suffered. She throws everyone under the bus, starting with her mother and her first husband Tommy Mottola.
“The Meaning of Mariah Carey” is a sop to her fans, a product for the “lambs” who are no longer buying her albums. Maybe they’ll get a little gossip out of it. But an actual memoir? The book is “published” under an imprint at Henry Holt from Andy Cohen, the guy who wrangles the Real Housewives and has a talk show on cable. This isn’t Robert Gottlieb publishing Sidney Poitier. This is US Weekly in hardcover.
Well, okay, Mariah’s childhood is terrible because her mother, an aspiring white opera singer, is jealous of her. Mariah’s dad is black. She has two much older siblings, each of whom drifts away into sketchy lives. The parents divorce and Mariah is left to deal with her mixed race background. The worst thing that happens to her is the older sister makes her swallow a Valium at age 12.
Determined to be a singer, Mariah meets a collaborator named Ben Margulies, who writes her early and very tuneful hits. She signs what she claims is an onerous deal with him. But frankly, to this day, the Margulies songs are Mariah’s most memorable and tuneful including “Vision of Love.”
She writes:
“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.”
Instantly she meets, at 19, Tommy Mottola, head of Sony Music. He’s in his 40s, married, converted to Judaism, father of two teens not much younger. In the book, Mariah doesn’t mention any of that baggage. They marry lavishly, and she recalls being a songbird in a gilded cage.
She really socks it to Mottola: “With all due respect, Tommy Mottola was just the bitter pill I needed to swallow at a pivotal period in my life. And there is a lot of respect due to him. He was a visionary music executive who fearlessly and ferociously dragged his visions into reality. He believed in me, ruthlessly.”
She admits now she married him not out of love, but out of ambition. “There was never really a strong sexual or physical attraction there, but at the time, I needed safety and stability—a sense of home—more than I needed a boyfriend. Tommy understood that, and he provided….More than my personal happiness, I needed my career as an artist to survive. Happiness was secondary. Happiness was a fleeting bonus. I married Tommy because I thought it was the only way for me to survive in that relationship. I saw the power he could put behind my music, and he saw the power…”
There’s a lot of that. I always thought Tommy was the bad guy, now I feel bad for him! They built a mansion in Westchester and she called it “Sing Sing” after the famous local prison. Again, there is no mention of his family or what it was like to be stepmother to kids your own age. “Our holy matrimony was built on creativity and vulnerability. I respected Tommy as a partner. If only he had known how to give me the respect I was due as a human being.”
Did Mottola have feelings? Was he a person? Unknown here. Mariah didn’t want to sing the Margulies type ballads. She was into hip hop and rap. Mottola didn’t get it, and so their relationship fell apart. Was she right? Wrong? Listen, this is what she wanted, and she was young. She got the career she wanted. Mottola made lots of money from it.
The rest of the story is about Mariah having hits, one after another, and “writing” them although she doesn’t explain her composer skills. She doesn’t play an instrument, can’t write or read music. She dismisses the actual facts that she was successfully sued several times for plagiarism and/or settled complaints to that effect. She writes of the disputed song “Hero”: “And here’s a side note with a side eye: A couple of people have come for “Hero,” and for me, with both royalties and plagiarism claims. Three times I have been to court, and three times the cases have been thrown out. The first time, the poor fool going after me had to pay…”
Around this point I started to lose consciousness. The book does, too. The Nick Cannon marriage is glossed over like a season of “The Bachelorette.” There is NO reference to billionaire fiancee James Packer, the failed famous engagement, no insight into why Mariah’s career was so jangly. The whole “Glitter” debacle is completely whitewashed. Words that don’t appear in this book: “Jennifer Lopez.” “American Idol.” “Benny Medina.” Nope. Not there. Not in the book. If you’re looking for those stories, read someone else. There are glaring omissions of many who kept the career alive.
So if you want a souvenir, 20 bucks is a fair price, $17.99 used to be the price of a CD. “The Meaning of Mariah Carey” remains unknown. And maybe it’s better it stays that way.
I bought the Kindle version, $14.99, which is the best way to go. It’s cheaper, and like Mariah sampling her “music,” I was able to sample some quotes.
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The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah CareyBye Bye Mariah Carey Meaning
Published byAndy Cohen Books on September 29, 2020
Genres:Adult Nonfiction
Format:Hardcover (349 pages)
Source: Gift
Purchase:Amazon • IndieBound
Add Book:Goodreads • Bookhype
It took me a lifetime to have the courage and the clarity to write my memoir. I want to tell the story of the moments - the ups and downs, the triumphs and traumas, the debacles and the dreams, that contributed to the person I am today. Though there have been countless stories about me throughout my career and very public personal life, it’s been impossible to communicate the complexities and depths of my experience in any single magazine article or a ten-minute television interview. And even then, my words were filtered through someone else’s lens, largely satisfying someone else’s assignment to define me.
This book is composed of my memories, my mishaps, my struggles, my survival and my songs. Unfiltered. I went deep into my childhood and gave the scared little girl inside of me a big voice. I let the abandoned and ambitious adolescent have her say, and the betrayed and triumphant woman I became tell her side.
Writing this memoir was incredibly hard, humbling and healing. My sincere hope is that you are moved to a new understanding, not only about me, but also about the resilience of the human spirit.
Love,
Mariah
Proceed With Caution:
This book contains mentions of violence, drug use, child abuse, racism (including use of the n-word), domestic abuse, and miscarriage.
The Meaning Of Mariah Carey Pdf
The Basics:
This is singer-songwriter, actress, superstar, diva, Mariah’s Carey story in her own words. She goes down deep and tells all. There are also pretty pictures and song lyrics.
My Thoughts:
I am so glad that I had the opportunity to read The Meaning of Mariah Carey. She was such an important part of my childhood. She’s the first singer that I remember being a true fan of. My parents played her music and I was obsessed. I also thought she was so pretty and was shocked to see someone famous who actually looked kind of like me!
Even though I would consider myself a fan of Mariah, I am guilty at poking fun of her “antics” over the years. After finishing The Meaning of Mariah Carey, I take back anything bad or thoughtless that I said about her. This woman has endured and overcame so much and I just had no idea. Some of things that looked “crazy” were of course twisted by the media to look that way, or were things that happened and we had no idea what was going on inside her at the time. I certainly had a new appreciation for everything Mariah Carey has done.
The one thing that I didn’t like about The Meaning of Mariah Carey Google account not syncing contacts. was how jumpy the narrative was. Mariah did warn us that she was going to tell her story her way and that’s not necessarily in an organized manner. I like organization! Sometimes she’d switch timelines in the middle of a story and I’d get confused, have to flip back, and then proceed. That’s not really a bad thing, since we all get off track when telling a story and have to tell a little backstory and then get back to the story we were originally telling. But I just wished it had been a little more linear.
I do wish I had listened to the audiobook version of The Meaning of Mariah Carey. She narrates it herself, which is awesome. And she sings in it! I love her voice, so I’m going to have to add myself to the forever long library wait list to grab it. I think it’ll be a whole experience.