Mariah Carey is gearing up to release her first-ever memoir – but she believes her biggest fans already know her life story from her songs.
The hitmaker has released 15 studio albums since 1990, and on September 29th she’ll publish her autobiography, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. In an interview with Vulture, Mariah opened up about its contents.
“I say it all in the book. I’d rather people read it that way.” the A No No star says. “And by the way, I forgot a lot of that stuff when I was writing the book. And then recently, people that were friends of his from childhood were like, ‘I hope she told the real story’.”
But she insists there’s no way she could airbrush any of the events she details because she’s already written about several of them throughout her illustrious career.
“Honestly, if you look at the words to I Wish You Well [from 2008’s E=MC2], it tells you a lot of things about different people in my life. It starts with ‘This goes out to you and you and you / Know who you are’, ” she reflects. “And there’s a lot of different people referenced in that from my point of view as a songwriter.”
“And then, background vocals,” the singer, who recently released new single Save The Day, says, indicating when the singers would have kicked in with the phrase, “Can’t believe I still need to protect myself from you.”
“And then back to the main verse: ‘But you can’t manipulate me like before’… It’s like I’ve been telling this story if someone cared to look deep enough. I just feel like there’s no way anybody could have known the complexities and the layered situation that is my life.”
The knowledge that several of the stories are “already out there” made it easier for Mariah to write the memoir, and discuss in greater detail particular events – like her brief fling with Derek Jeter while she was at the end of her marriage to first husband Tommy Mottola.
They met at a dinner party and started flirting via text, and Mimi admits knowing that fans already suspected the song The Roof was about her first meeting with him made it easier for her to reveal specific details from that evening.
“Of course I do! I can never forget that moment,” the star, who is celebrating 30 years since the release of her debut album with her #MC30 weekly exclusives, says. “I mean, it’s not like it was some intensely deep, intellectually stimulating — again, it was a great moment, and it happened in a divine way because it helped me get past living there… under those rules and [Tommy’s] regulations.”
One person who won’t be featuring in the book, however, is Eminem, with whom it has been suggested Mariah enjoyed a relationship in the early ’00s.
Asked about reports he’s “stressed” about what she may say in the memoir about their alleged relationship, the Obsessed star quips: “There’s some songs that I can sing in response to that, but I will not do it…
“If somebody or something didn’t pertain to the actual meaning of Mariah Carey, as is the title, then they aren’t in the book.”
