Apparently Mariah Carey once made a grunge album

Mariah Carey onstage — (Image credit: Scott Barbour / Getty Images)

Just when you thought 2020 couldn't get any weirder, it's been revealed that pop siren Mariah Carey once worked on a grunge album, the 1995 release Someone’s Ugly Daughter by Chick.

The news is revealed in Carey's autobiography The Meaning Of Mariah Carey, which is published this week. The singer, who has been posting about the book on social media, tweeted, "Fun fact: I did an alternative album while I was making [1995 album] Daydream. Just for laughs, but it got me through some dark days."

In the book she writes, "I’d bring my little alt-rock song to the band and hum a silly guitar riff. They would pick it up and we would record it immediately. It was irreverent, raw, and urgent, and the band got into it.

"I actually started to love some of the songs. I would fully commit to my character. I was playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light white female singers who were popular at the time. You know the ones who seemed to be so carefree with their feelings and their image. They could be angry, angsty, and messy, with old shoes, wrinkled slips, and unruly eyebrows, while every move I made was so calculated and manicured.

"I wanted to break free, let loose and express my misery – but I also wanted to laugh. I totally looked forward to doing my alter-ego band sessions after Daydream each night."

Carey's earthly representatives have confirmed that the singer produced and sang backing vocals on every song on the album apart from a cover of Cheap Trick's Surrender.

The album isn't available on streaming platforms, but there is a video for Malibu on YouTube, and a fan has uploaded a video featuring samples from the album in the last few hours.

For grunge/Carey completists, there's a copy of Chick's Someone's Angry Daughter on sale at Amazon for just $970. Bargain.

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.