[Music] from our studios in new york city this is charlie rose since her debut in 1990 mariah carey has sold more than 115 million albums worldwide she is the top selling pop artist of the 1990s her latest single heartbreaker is her 14th is in the stores today i am pleased to have her at this table for the very first time they have sent out five million copies of this album to record stories across america and maybe in the world i don't know whether this is just domestic first or whether they al
l go out at one time i don't know i'm pretty involved in the whole process but it stops when i get to the distribution thing i don't i'm not quite aware of all of it you're involved in the process meaning what well meaning that from the inception of the song you know writing it um co-producing um i pretty much kick the producer out of the studio when i do my vocals because i have this thing where i only like to be with my engineer and do my vocals alone and mixing i'm there for mixing mastering
i have to approve do you like doing that it's not that well yeah i mean i love writing i love the evolution of a song i love doing background vocals i do most of my own background vocals or you know i love doing arrangements background arrangements that's kind of like my bag but um but it's a little bit annoying because i have to be so involved even on the level of like mastering where i might be doing a thousand other things but if they don't get the approval from me they can't send it out and
a lot of times people won't do it exactly how you want it so i've learned that if you want it done the way you want it it's a very important lesson to learn you're not yet 30. that's a very important lesson to learn before you get there uh this album you just told me yeah was not even in your imagination until what three or four months ago right and i mean i've done an album a year it was i mean they only count they don't count the unplugged thing because that was not an album or the christmas a
lbum i don't know why i didn't make up the rules but um every year basically since i was just out of high school i've been in the studio making albums doing this whole thing and i pretty much take the same amount of time at least six eight nine months to do it so i've been in the studio every day in my life basically this whole time um but this album i was actually recording songs for a movie called all the glitters that's been in development for me for like two years at this point they're final
ly happy with the script finally ready to get going um kate lanier who wrote set it off and what's love got to do with it is written the screenplay and it's musical but it's not like we burst into song for no reason it's actually got a really nice moving story um but i was writing the music for that and i had the my friend dj clue gave me the it's actually a loop of a stacey latticeau record from 1980 the movie set in the early 80s and um i had this song and i finished it and we were all working
together jay-z came in and he did the rap on it was like he's you know an incredible incredible artist so i was just like wow i have this record i put a summer record out every year the movie is pushed back should i do an album and then i said i have some songs i've already written for for the um for the movie should i just incorporate those but i ended up writing all new songs and i went to capri and i pretty much lived in the studio night and day for two months in capri in capri because if i
had to be like sorry well come on i mean seriously right wouldn't you rather record in capri yeah than here yes of course that's my boy so the point is if i was you know to get this done i had to completely isolate myself and i wanted to also experience the summer i've never been there and it was one of the most incredible places it helped my voice so much just the humidity the not you know the lack of pollution and um i went and i recorded that basically like the skeleton of each track and wrot
e the basics with each person i was writing with and then took the tracks did my vocals went back now just for my information have you been writing songs all your life you know for most of your career you've been writing a good percentage of your stuff i've written everything but the cover songs that i've done since the and uh on this album i have a remake of phil collins against all odds which was actually one of my favorite songs growing up and i saw him in england we were both at the same sho
w and i didn't know if he knew i'd done this song or not and i never met him and so i i was went up to his dressing room and i was like excuse me yes mr collins i just want you to know that i did your song and you know i hope you don't hate it and stuff like that and he was like is it is it fun album you know and we talked about it and he stayed and watched my performance and he was really really generous and nice about and he was really excited about it so that was very flattering you worked wi
th david foster on this yes i did for the first time actually david foster and diane warren and i collaborated and diane doesn't she's one of the biggest songwriters in the world she doesn't collaborate with people but she collaborated with me i'm like the first one she's collaborated with in like two years and she's a very unique individual and she's you know she's very lovable sweet person she's really talented so the reason that i like to collaborate is because melodic ideas come to me so qui
ckly but i can't play i'm horrible on piano because like horrible horrible well i wrote sometimes i'll come up with with a good one like vision of love started with me playing it was my first song that i ever put out because i'm so bad i'll sometimes do something that'll sound okay because i don't know what i'm doing but if i try to match the melodic ideas that are coming to me i lose them when i'm trying to figure out the chords so i like to work with great piano players you know someone like d
avid foster diane who doesn't fancy herself to be like this great piano player but she's a great songwriter so you can pick up what i'm hearing really quickly and jimmy jam and terry jimmy and terry there's two legends two legends that i've been admiring forever and actually um they're going to be working on this soundtrack for all the glitters as well because set in the 80s and they basically owned every song of that decade missy elliot missy elliott and i worked together on the butterfly album
we wrote the last album i had we wrote a song called baby doll we worked together on this album with the brat also who is actually one of my really good friends she's been there for me your mother tells the story that your mother who sang opera yes loved opera sang opera that she would be practicing and you had an instinctive ear and you could pick it up and even sing it in italian yeah she tells me that i do you don't remember it she just told me vague recollection she's she tells the story al
l the time i don't know if it's me remembering the story from the hearing or remembering actually yeah but she um she said she was doing rigoletto and she she made a mistake and i said no mom it goes like this but you've where did this come from this great gray is it just simply because you inherited from your mother or something else it made you so early on say i want to be a great singer well i think that definitely music is something that is passed down i mean somewhere along usually most mus
ical people have a relative or someone that was music's in their house and they play and listen and sing right but my mom definitely um exposed me to music at a very you know from the time i started talking i was singing you know my brother and sister have an older brother and sister they were playing al green stevie wonder you know all the whatever was hot on the radio you know basically r b i was hearing in my house um and i just always loved it and i was always an insomniac even as a little k
id and i used to steal the radio from like the portable radio from the kitchen and i would sneak and i would listen under the covers and i would sing and that's the only thing that could get me to go to sleep was like you know music would comfort me and get me you know get me out of there what kind of what kind of you know economic status did you have growing up in long island well well my parents were married i think they were you know fairly they did fairly well but when my mother and i um i a
lways want to say when my mother and i grew up i feel like we grew up together but when when i was growing up um my parents were divorced since i was three so um she was no longer singing um she used to sing with city opera but at that point she was no longer your mother's irish yes my mother's irish american my father is african-american and venezuelan so i'm a combo played of many things people don't understand that but whatever so you're growing up and you're but your dad leaves well my peopl
e are split yeah um your mother's responsible for how many kids well my brother and sister moved out by the time uh my sister was out married by the time she was 15 and my brother moved out of the house when he was i guess 16 or something so i was like my mom basically and i were together from the time i was well born but alone together since i was like seven what influence did she have she had a huge influence on me because she was very um she instilled a belief in me that i don't know that tha
t many parents could have done i mean she would say don't say if i make it say when i make it i mean since the beginning of my life i've been saying i want to be a singer so she was saying well don't say if i become a singer say when i become a singer when i am successful when this happens so she's named me mariah carey with no middle name because she said that she thought it was a good stage name so basically she's had this plan but she had a plan that her daughter would be great i guess so i m
ean this plan but it didn't but it but you you bought into it in a sense it was something that you grew to want as much or more than she ever wanted oh definitely my mother is not like she wasn't a stage no at all my mother was kind of highly unconventional i mean she always had me around really um artsy types theatrical types you know she actually [Music] it was great because she allowed me to develop my own personality and my own sense of self and become very independent um i was on my own a l
ot she worked two jobs at one point and i had to stay home alone a lot um we didn't have a lot of money but she always made things festive like christmas was always no matter what she had to wrap up a hundred little things she would do it you know she made me you know like the love of holidays the love of music the love you know a lot of things that are really positive and i'm also really an optimistic person so i think that a lot of that comes from her but if you want to be a singer right what
do you do i mean do you do you take lessons in high school do you i mean how does it's it's awesome how many albums you have sold i mean when you think about it you're way up there above everybody except the beatles and elvis more than michael jackson in the 1990s more than it's stunning achievement to sell as many albums i mean i'm sure you've done more than you ever imagined or fantasized i never knew about you know what i only thought about i want to hear my song on the radio like i remember
listening to the radio i was a radio freak and so my whole thing was i just can't wait to hear my song on the radio you know and that was my goal i didn't know about gold albums platinum albums selling records i didn't even think about outside america i mean i thought about my hometown hearing myself on the radio you know and then it's amazing because these you write these songs and then you go to countries where they don't speak the same language as you and you see people singing the lyrics bac
k to you and it's this amazingly rewarding feeling to think of last night when i was doing the tv special at my junior high i was walking through the halls and i was looking at the cafeteria and i was remembering the girl who used to go there me you know as an insecure little seventh grade kid who had this dream of being a singer that i didn't talk to my friends about you know and i was very insecure about a lot of things about you know my looks i was insecure about just being different you know
but music was always something that i knew i had that made me special and so i was becoming it was sort of making me a little bit emotional thinking like wow i really did this you know who was the first person to tell you other than your mother that you had a great voice because you know you're noted now for having a voice that ranges over five to seven octaves right i don't know what it is especially today it's probably less than one octave but they didn't get any sleep but um no actually um i
don't know because even though my mother's a classically trained opera singer i'm so the opposite i mean i'm so singing however i feel like it i don't read music you know i write songs but i i mean i tried to study piano i'm just so un it's funny because i'm a perfectionist and i'm totally disciplined when it comes to my work but when they started to try and make music into work like where you had to figure out technical stuff i just had a block because it's so the other side of my brain but th
e first person who ever told me and i'll never forget this is a girl named maureen and i was six years old and we were walking back from school and we were both singing a song from school because we were in this play and she stopped singing was listening to me and she said when you sing it sounds like there's music behind you and i never ever ever forgot that because that was like the first non-family member who ever ma gave me a compliment or acknowledged my singing something made you at some p
oint this is an off-repeated story to go i guess when you were a teenager and hand a demo tape to tommy mattel actually what happened was i was a backup singer right out of high school for brenda k starr who had a hit song called i still believe which i actually recently did a remake of and she took me under her wing she was like a big sister to me and it was great because a lot of people wouldn't have been like that with someone that they they might have felt threatened you know i mean she didn
't she was just like always like you gotta listen to my friend mariah she writes her own songs he's our son you know she would like tell anybody and their brother like try and give people my demo tape and um she wanted me to give her some of the songs that i'd written i was like i really want to do my own thing i want to get a deal blah blah so i actually had a deal um that was almost in place with warner brothers and it was through a producer that i was signed to at the time you know with songs
that i'd written mostly when i was in high school and they wanted to use some of the songs uh for a movie that they were doing called lean on me if you ever saw it with morgan right and so um so i was thinking that everything was cool and everything was set and brenda called me and said you gotta come to this party because you know it's going to be a lot of executives there and i was like well you know i already have this thing in place i'm not sure what's going on so i decided to go and i went
to her house and i had only one dress she let me close she let me this little mini skirt and all i had was like my little averax jacket that i used to wear in high school which basically looks like a cheerleading jacket you know i mean i looked probably 12 and the only thing she couldn't let but but with this little skirt on and this whole little ton of thing i don't think she couldn't lend me with my shoes because my feet were too big so i had on sneakers with this whole ensemble yeah so it wa
sn't banging wasn't very good look but i guess it whatever caught some people's eye because they were asking me who's you know who's the girl they were asking brenda and she actually wanted to hand the tape to jerry greenberg um who she knew from i think it was atlantic records and she brought me there to meet him and instead tommy came up and grabbed the tape out of her hand when she went to she said here jerry and tommy snatched it out of his hand so he took the tape and it didn't even have my
label on it the right way it just said brenda k star rehearsal and he listened to it and he didn't really believe that it was the same kid who he saw in the party you know and he came back but the stories he put it into his limousine and put it on the cd player in the limousine and turned around and came back and by that time you had gone i had gone and it was that night so many things happened because brenda and i went to a producer's uh house named arthur baker who did a lot of songs and he w
as very you know big producer and he was playing my tape and calling everybody going you gotta hear this girl you gotta hear this girl and so everything happened for me like in this one crazy moment this was about 89 88 yeah yeah so it was like all this stuff was going on 88 actually all this stuff was going on and it was at one moment and then tommy actually located me through her management and so when he found you what did he say well he called up my answering machine i lived with about four
girls on a mattress on the floor um above this club and it was a horrible place we had floods fires everything but um one of the girls is still one of my best friends and we had this ridiculous answering machine we were acting like complete fools and you know never expecting the head of a record company to you know leave a message and so i get this call it's like uh yeah it's time rotolo cbs call me back left the number no and so we were listening to it flipping out but like more more than that
we're just flipping out that they heard this ridiculous message so my mom and i went up there i didn't have a lawyer i didn't have anything um and you know worked it out worked it out made a deal but did he say then i had a lawyer when we made the actual but did he say you're going to be you have something you know this is the best voice i've heard in a long time or anything like that yes he will see because i already had the thing going on with warner brothers then they stepped it up and i had
a meeting with the heads of the whole company and they were like we're going to do this too this is when you had not recorded a single album this was before mariah carey was even the idea of the first album no but it was the idea because a lot of those songs ended up which was great because we had produced this demo my ex-writing partner and i produced this demo um and it had songs that became number one songs actually on the demo so they could hear not only the songs but they also heard the voi
ce so it was like most people maybe they have a look maybe i mean i'm not just trying to be self promoting but this i'm telling the story i had the whole the whole package because the demo was really actually sounded good and they were creating somebody to come on for a whole new generation right the idea right and but see that my point was was the demo showcasing the vocals and having the songs was a big plus you know so it helped me out a lot and also then what happened was when warner brother
s and sony began you know kind of like then it creates this bidding war kind of thing but um cbs records were sold to sony yes right i think around that time so um but he definitely made me believe that he believed in me as much as i believed in myself which was a huge decision-making factor in me going there because i could have ended up i would have been a warning yeah tell me because so much has been written about it what difference he made in your rise to have this extraordinary decade so th
at you and i guess on the male side garth brooks you know are clearly by a wide margin the most predominant vocalist of the decade well i think definitely in the beginning there was a lot of care taken in making sure that the imaging and everything else and putting me with certain producers um was right and um i mean the songwriting was hugely important too but i don't think even today people recognize i don't even talk about it so but but i think um i think he took a lot of care with the launch
and making people you know see me as the next big thing um and we were partners you know we worked together we really i mean i wrote the songs i you know i was definitely even though in the beginning i think my sound was definitely more watered down on the first album because i was put with producers who were already big slick well-known people and so it was more i actually liked my demo tapes better than how the album came out but because because they were more real they were more um it was mo
re of an individual sound rather than like a slickly produced thing it had i had more of my own identity so um but anyway i feel that you know me right he knew my capability as a writer he knew basically it's like okay i think on this album we need a song that's the big ballad that's the pop ballad do the you know how about that okay i'll write that now did you write that most of those i wrote every song that i've ever done except for the remakes that i've done and except for the duet with whitn
ey houston because that was already written and jeffrey katzenberg called us in yeah all right so you so here this all of a sudden you yeah they have decided that you can be something very very very special you know and and tommy takes the great interest in your development there was this notion and i'm because you're here it's important to say it that somehow he was more of a fingali he was somehow directing this career and fashioning you and my curiosity is whether that's true or not true or w
hether he simply was more like a partner and then that you had your identity and you had your strength and and you had your songs and and and we miss it if we think because i think tommy has said this right to think that mariah is not our own person is not to know mariah right tell me the truth well i am definitely my own person much more now than i was a few years ago but we were definitely partners creatively but you know partners don't always have the same opinion and i often would want to go
into one direction or release singles that i felt were more close to my heart like more r b or things that i felt right and you were more into rap than yeah i mean you know it's like the difference between sitting in a car and and actually he was pretty tolerant letting me play wu-tang clan and tupac rather than listen to you know what he wanted to do some pop parties but i mean but i mean yes we were partners in the sense that because i was the person writing the songs in their very involved y
ou know we were partners he had a very strong opinion about a lot of things and when i look back i sometimes think well i know that i didn't agree with a lot of those opinions but then again you know i was always writing the songs i was always doing those things i was always crying out to be my own person but i think when people think about this bengali thing it was more who i was surrounded with surrounded by it was more that surrounded by meaning meaning people who were in control of my career
you know the lawyer or the producer or whatever right people who right we're all colleagues and friends of his right so because of that and because of it was more like um fashioning the look and the image and keeping it one way which was non-threatening which was not necessarily me which was not necessarily the most fun thing to do which is sort of why when i had the whole butterfly album which was um people were like whoa she's dressing sexy and oh what's she doing and she's trying to make a s
tatement it's like look i've always been like this you can see pictures of me when i'm six years old sitting on a beach posing you know what i mean that was always me but it was it was toned down um for a number of reasons some of which i probably were more personal than professional but um and it did work in the beginning for me to be really plain and simple and non-threatening and let people focus on my voice so i think that that that worked but after you do that and you're growing up at the s
ame time you want to be able to express yourself musically you know you want to look the way you want to look you want to it's it's fun you made it you made enough videos at this point you know with curly hair you know in a field or standing in a dress it's like you know can i move on a little bit and grow cree you know expand i wanted a lot of things to talk about here but i mean when i look at you now yeah this is the way you want to look this is the way you feel this is who mariah sees in her
own soul right the way you look now the way you sing now the kinds of songs you choose where you know you have after the divorce from tommy and and seeking out new associates in a sense have moved to a place what would you how would you characterize it musically musically and personally well i think that i actually did collaborate with i mean i worked with old dirty bastard in 1995 when i was still in that whole thing and he's one of the most creative outspoken people in rap music we must say a
nd um we did a song called fantasy but it was just the remix it wasn't on the album so a lot of people who don't listen to hip-hop radio or who don't go to clubs wouldn't have known that you know i worked with de brat and jermaine dupri and those guys back then too but it was always you know pretty much for a remix or something that was only catering to one audience and the pop stations never heard it or you know basically the people who watch the mass appeal you know shows on vh1 or something d
on't see the version with odb and me you know so they saw me doing working with puffy and working with different people on the butterfly album and they were like what is this drastic change you know why is she with rappers suddenly but really it was something that i had it was an evolution from where you'd already begun yeah and i wasn't allowed you know it wasn't like those versions were incorporated into the album then because it was all about keeping it mass appeal so to me we're at the year
2000 it is mass appeal i mean i've grown up listening to rap music it's nothing new you know i mean it's really been around for over 20 years it's not a new thing and rhythm and blue is longer yeah so i mean in my actually my first song vision of love was number one on the r b charts first then pop so i mean i think it went more everybody wanted me to go more pop because it's always easier to be mass appeal you know but that's boring to me i can't just do that it's really boring like i would go
crazy all right let me just say well come i want to come to this album where this is and what this says in terms of the kinds of things you've just been talking the you two you and tommy fell in love while you were just while you were partners you know and you lived in bedford and much has been written and said about that did you in any way feel mainly i mean you you were growing you were becoming um you wanted to to be your own person musically you know then there becomes the separation and you
come to new york city and butterflies the first album yeah the first album after that it came out during that whole time what did it represent for you in your own mind and an evolution but a stretching it was something that it was like a a lot of the lyrics on that album are almost you know exact there are things that i wished certain people would say to me it's like i still have to be politically correct when i speak about this too it's really hard to walk that line but um but don't yeah it's
it's really hard to walk the line but butterfly will always symbolize that moment in my life when i kind of i did i was breaking free i was you know i was scared of a lot of things i was not scared of your talent you knew your talent i believed in the album so much i believed in that album and it's still actually my if i could make my dream album of my own stuff i would probably use some of the songs from this album rainbow and some of the songs from butterfly because to me it was just an expres
sion of myself and it was like very real and it was just um it was a cathartic experience it was like i had to do it i had to release this whole thing once you made this transition was it difficult i mean after you got over the initial fear after you've made this album after this album again produced a number one hit number one hit single how did you feel then after this album rainbow or about butterfly i mean did you sense this is going to be okay i mean i made this transition i felt okay i mea
n i you know what i'm still dealing with it really honestly i'm still dealing with it um i felt amazing i felt such a mixture of emotions i mean i really had gone from yes i was very independent at a very early age i was living on my own as a teenager in new york city you know i wasn't i didn't have a sheltered life as a child i you know had kind of a lot of craziness and dysfunction surrounding me but um i was inexperienced with men i wasn't you know i mean so i went from being just like i didn
't have any boyfriends while i was in this transitional period of just writing and working and doing on stuff you know i went basically from just having boyfriends like in high school that meant you know that was a high school thing to being involved with someone who was much older and a very very strong person at the helm of my career so when i came out of that with butterfly i guess it was i was feeling like a rebellious kid in a lot of ways you know but i was also like experiencing life like
wow what's going on what is this i can actually go out i can do this i can go places that i hadn't been doing before yeah and i mean i just felt hanging out hanging out because that's really me i mean free if you could just go back to high school that's how i was then it's like you know i sort of had this this lapse where i became somebody who i really wasn't and and it was it's sad because if i just been allowed to express myself more or just been allowed to really you know be who i am you know
go out more be who i am be a free spirit because i was never looking to do anything it's not like i was going out looking to yeah yeah you weren't looking for guys or you weren't you just wanted to go out and experience what people your age were doing and people in your profession were doing just to experience the kind of sense of what it's like to be yeah yeah i didn't i think that's part of the reason why i feel like i'm still grounded is because i didn't experience fame when it initially hap
pened to me i didn't experience that whole thing where your brain gets twisted and you're like i'm young and i'm famous and i'm going out and i'm doing this and i sort of went into this like i was very sequestered in this whole you know just with everybody around me it was very much like almost in a cocoon yeah and i'm not saying that to to say anything negative about about anybody else i'm really not i mean it happened it's over we we all are very successful you know we've all gained a lot from
this and the partnership continues the business partnership continues and tommy's been supportive and continues to say you don't have a bigger fan in the world than he is oh that's very nice well you knew that i mean is that true um if he's i you know what i don't know i know maybe that was true at one point i would i would like to think you'd like to believe i would like to believe that you think he i mean you just said the most interesting thing is you just wanted to go out i mean i i just wa
nted to be myself i wanted to be able to be who i am which is like we were talking about the video before and there's a scene where i'm playing the bad girl with the black hair and then we have the cat fight and it's that whole comedic thing that's a big part of who i am i've always wanted to act i always wanted to do different characters i always wanted to show different sides of myself you know i grew up doing characters all my life and it's like you know i was never really encouraged to show
that i had a personality you know i was never encouraged to do things that were i think that's why the success of the song heartbreaker you know a lot of it had to do with the video because people were like whoa that's really i can't believe mariah is actually playing a different character fighting with herself on the scene it's really funny and i think that's a big part of why people have this misconception about me that i'm this or maybe they don't have it anymore but that i was just really bl
and just seeing exactly like said that in bedford and then going to do yeah and other people's rights probably think other people write my songs or do those things and that's why when you showed me that magazine before well there's a store picture here you and you wanted to say what's what's the story okay there's a picture right it says it's this one guys david lachapelle okay yeah um you've got in here you've got sean puffy combs mogul rapper producer publisher clothing manufacturer record exe
cutive pop star right she's got jewel it says singer poet actress mariah carey singer and it just and because i write my own songs i produce my own records how many songs i have to write until i at least get that credited i don't understand why people have a problem acknowledging that i mean i'm i'm so involved in my own stuff i wish i could relax or somebody else would take over you know not only that you're taking acting lessons with sheila gray i guess and all for all that glitters and and fo
r other projects and for other projects yeah you're taking this sort of the whole process seriously rather than simply saying okay i want to be in a movie because right because i'm a pop star well actually working yeah it's not even about being in a movie to me it's it's about the fact that it helped me as a creative person as a writer as a singer in every way as a human being to study with sheila because she really helped bring out so much of me that i was blocking i mean i was going through my
life really literally like being tense all the time and not dealing with my emotions and it took like one session of me lying down on her floor and doing this relaxation exercise to burst into tears and realize that i was so out of touch with myself because i was just trying i was in denial you know i was i was trying to live the life i was really unhappy and i was and i was afraid and i was just you know my life was a complete mess is some of that still here this sense of being afraid and sens
e of yeah a little bit of still a mess um still a mess well something no i'm laughing because i use that word all the time it's a joke it's funny to hear you say but um yeah there's still a lot of mess that goes on um i feel like i have to be so in control of everything and so aware of what's going on with my career because it's different now you know we talked about the beginning but since butterfly i've had to really really take charge of every aspect of my life and i'm happier because i'm hap
pier with the end result but it's also you know a lot of responsibility you can't just you can't say there's somebody over there taking care of all that stuff right and all i have to do is write songs and stand up and sing yeah exactly now you've got to think about the whole package because you now are in charge of mariah right and it's not necessarily have somebody looking after you for better or worse well before it was like okay can i wear this dress or am i going to get in trouble for this l
ike can i you know it was it was like okay i wasn't really focusing on how's the lighting on on the you know floors looking on the show like i was yesterday i was focusing on can i get away with wearing this without getting in trouble for it you know what i mean it was all like all just the stupidest most minuscule stuff but it became it was really that was my thing like that was my focus was like can i have a few minutes of peace can i talk to some friends on the phone can i maybe get a minute
to myself so that was more you know and i had a song called looking in on the album uh daydream which basically a lot of my friends who heard it kind of started worrying about me after that because it was sort of expressing my unhappiness with my life and um those songs i mean i when i write songs that are really honest they come to me the quickest and uh i have a song on this album rainbow called petals where i'm sort of talking to some people who i don't speak to anymore and i'm kind of trying
to figure out why i made certain decisions in my life through this song from beginning to end and people who know me really can't listen to it because they know who it's about different sections and what it is and they everybody pretty much cries when they hear it and i was crying when i was singing it but it's like i've learned again getting back to the acting thing to be able to be free with my emotions and to be able to be in touch with my emotions and i think that that's the most important
thing that's that's come out of my studying acting and it's very important to me yes i would be in touch with your own emotions to be in touch with my own emotions being in touch with myself to be able to be free to be able to be less inhibited i mean until two years ago i had to have one side of my freaking face covered or bangs or something all the time because i was always oh you know i was told that i didn't look right that way or wearing a certain color would make me look to something you k
now and it was always something playing on my insecurities there was always you know that whole thing i grew up insecure to begin with i didn't need those things to be you know actually prayed upon but are you more and more confident in your own judgment about things because your instincts are being reinforced by the experience of trusting yourself yes definitely pedals is this most difficult of these songs it's the most difficult i think if i were to sing it live i would be very emotional when
singing it um but it was the quickest to write and i had it in my head and i i brought it to jimmy german terry lewis and and we explained it and it sort of it goes into this segways into this rainbow interlude and um it goes from this really pretty miserable you know it's it's it's a really it's actually a beautiful song but it's very sad and it goes into this optimistic interlude and then it segues into a song called thank god i found you and somebody said to me the other day this is the first
album you've made where you don't end on a sad song yeah and i think that's positive thank god i found you as the last song here it begins with heartbreak what what's the decision process to choose the song that gets the most attention from an album like the first single second second um you decide that or do you in concert with your record producer decide that well this actually the song heartbreaker i wrote for the for all the glitters for the movie and i had it and i wanted to just put it ou
t i was like you know i don't want to waste it they push back the movie i want to put it out and um you don't just put out a single it's just people just don't do that and um so that's why it has like that bouncy fun you know kind of retro cutesy feeling but um i worked with a dj clue who's never actually collaborated with the singer before he and i are friends he played me the beat um and it was just obvious there's some like certain things that are pretty obvious and then the remix to that um
is actually written over a snoop dogg record yeah with the bratman is here yeah yes so um so it's it's pretty much of an obvious thing i always know my first single pretty much you will always want to sing ballads yeah i mean i love both i don't want people to think oh now she's doing the hip-hop thing it's not it's not like that at all it's just that now she's just trying to make sure she's with it yeah not at all it's just that i i mean if i'm going to do an up-tempo i want it to be hot i don'
t want to be some boring you know thing that i don't like i mean so i'd rather what i try to do with this album is incorporate the ballads um with the songs that are more you know the up-tempo records and use um interludes to kind of segue between them so that you wouldn't feel this this jolting thing you know so i mean i did told you by the cover of against all odds it's pretty hard to go from a record with missy elliott and brat that's a loop of a snoop dogg record to against all odds but beca
use working with jimmy german terry lewis were really genius at um figuring out interludes and we really had a great musical partnership we kind of figured out how to make these transitional pieces that would make the album work and i think sequencing this album was real really important and i tried to kind of tell a story in the sequencing and make it all kind of make sense when you dream now about the future what do you dream about what do you when you fantasize about when obviously acting is
part of it you know because it's an extension yes you know so it won't just say singer it'll say singer songwriter musician producer actress that would be nice that would be nice yeah but but do you think about the musical where are you going musically well because you're all of a sudden performing you a and associating yourself with rather extraordinary group of people in terms of of music today right well i mean it's funny because working with artists that i love that i'm inspired by too i mea
n i've worked with brat a number of times missy and i have worked together this is the first time i work with jay-z and also snoop and that's the thing that people don't realize is like we're all musicians you know we're all influenced by each other's work so it's not such a stretch and people you know often like a rapper will have five guest rappers on their album or four guest vocalists it's not a big deal in r b or in hip-hop it's just in the pop world people don't understand that it's i mean
i don't listen to pop radio i really don't listen to older music you know like my favorite classics or i'll listen to like what like aretha franklin stevie wonder minnie riperton you know songs that i grew up with um or or hip-hop radio you know or whatever's you know hot so it's like what i where i feel i'm going musically actually my next project is the soundtrack for all the glitters which is set in the 80s it said in 1981 so hopefully i'm going to be working with jimmy jam and terry lewis a
nd we're going to be executive producing it together and i've talked to i spoke to rick james i'm going to try to make it really like a retro kind of 80s album which is actually works with what's going on musically today because everybody's sampling records from the 80s anyway so i mean that's my next project musically do you sense the power you have i mean you know how much power you have or do you look at and say i don't know what those words don't mean anything to me because but i mean you're
out there you were nervous about being alone even though you can afford to hire the best talent around and afford to associate yourself and they want to be associated with you because of this amazing track record you've had in this decade um it gives you power right i guess i mean it's so funny because i don't feel like that i think there's always something in me that will remain um the little kid who always felt like the rug could be pulled out from under them you know because i moved around l
ike 10 or 12 times with my mom when i was little and i didn't really have she was a great stable amazing force in my life but everything else was kind of like you know and then i went um into the other situation and now i'm just coming out of it right you still are just coming out of it aren't you i mean that comes through to me loud and clear that it's not easy to have that kind of experience right you know and and to have somebody play that significant role and feel some sense to be free and y
ou as i hear you wanted to be free within the confines of that relationship right yeah i would have been happy with that but you know i don't want to it's really hard because i don't want to come across like i'm saying negative thing like people really really want to twist it and make it like i'm being negative or whatever i mean they were very positive things you know that happened within that relationship for both of us you know and um it's just difficult because still being involved in a busi
ness capacity is really really hard i mean it's really really because there's so many memories because it's just drama it's just drama all the time and i mean i would i would love to be able to feel like there's a nice uh happy medium and a friendship because i'm not the type of person i don't like change i don't like losing people i don't like you know you know i keep friends if they mean something to me they're they're a part of my family for the rest of my life so it's like the whole thing is
is sad you know it's a difficult situation it's difficult to talk about it's difficult to deal with the whole thing is just pretty bizarre but do you think you'll find that that medium place hopefully um i guess i mean i i think people are always going to ask me about it i'm always going to have to walk a fine line with it and so i hope so you know are you at the place and this is my last question about relationships only because of you when we've talked about music that you're open to relation
ships now have you gotten to that point yeah because whoever you're associated with whether it's i mean you can be seen in an event with someone and all of a sudden it's the new man in moriah's life it can be yeah i mean all that's not comfortable for anybody no it's totally you know i mean and it's not natural for anybody no not at all i mean and almost gives it puts the something that might have a chance yeah doesn't have a chance yeah because everybody wants to define it from the first moment
they see you and especially if it's another celebrity i mean they just want to jump on it rather than giving it time to breathe you know and if there's anything you want it's time to breathe exactly you know it's time to be yourself and to breathe and to to heal and do all those stuff exactly but they don't want to give you that time charlie yeah they don't want to no but you know what i've actually what i realized is you have to just be secure i mean the public and the and the um the media or
whatever will attack a relationship and make it into you know drive people crazy and it really takes somebody really secure to be able to handle that kind of thing so i'm really actually very happy in a relationship right now um with someone who is also he's an entertainer very big latin superstar his name is luis miguel and he's great about that but i didn't yeah no but i'm bringing it up because he's so secure within himself um with what he does and you know even to the point where people are
like do an english album he's not doing an album in english because he doesn't need to he's not a follower he doesn't have to follow the trend of that right now and he's great because he understands this craziness of my life because he's got the same thing and there's very few people who you can be like okay well i'm about to go on stage now and sing in front of 50 000 people so i'll call you back when i'm done or you know who understand okay well there's you know people doing my hair and makeup
and you know you're trying to like lie in bed but there's a million people running in and out with wardrobe so you know i think it's i've come to a good place and i think that this is helping me feel for the first time like i'm in a supported nice um place you know because it's not just about okay wow here we have this let's romanticize and and make something into you know this perfect picture romance it's like care about me as a human being not because whatever in the end too you know what you
've got what you've got that's extraordinary you've got your music you know and you've got your talent i remember once i had a conversation with someone and in a very different way but they were talking about you know tough times and they said you'll always have your talent you know no matter how bad things get or how good things get at the core is that sort of belief in self and talent right you know and each year you live you i assume you grow more confident of that and more wanting to expand
and grow and try new things and and be all that you can do well there's actually a song on the album called can't take that away which also is called mariah's theme in parentheses which is funny that you mentioned that because uh it was when i was dealing with some drama and i felt really a lot of opposition i felt like i needed to get this off my chest and i wrote this song and it says they can't it's basically they can't take that away from me you know it's about finding an inner peace and no
matter what else happens around you holding on to that and knowing that they nobody can touch that and i also was really inspired by the negative stuff that's happened this past year with kids and you know and i really wanted to give that message mostly you know to kids and when i did my special the other night i was talking about it to them you know because it's important because when you're in high school junior high if you're if your friend gets mad at you or if you're not in the right group
or if you're you know you don't look the same way as everybody else you can feel like that's the end of the world and this song i think i hope will inspire you know some kids to feel okay about themselves even if they're not the ultimate ideal perfect jock or cheerleader or whatever it is it's great to have you here thank you all right kerry this album um has all the things that we have talked about here it is going to be released uh today rainbow five million copies and i'm sure you can find it
in your favorite music store or somewhere on the internet um it's been fun for me thank you for coming very
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