Mariah Carey Details How Ex-Husband Tommy Mottola Tried To Keep Her From R&B
Mariah Carey is spilling her tea and once again, Tommy Mottola is to blame for nearly stifling her career in its infancy.
In conversation with Harper’s Bazaar UK, Carey spoke on her relationship (and later marriage) to the former president of Columbia Records. Him being 20 years her senior, the songbird admitted that he wanted to restrict her sound back then.
“I wanted to do more R&B, more urban music, and any time I would bring that up, it would get shot down,” she explained. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like the music I was making – I just felt there was more inside me that I wanted to release.” She and Mottola split in 1997 and that same year, she released Butterfly, which featured hits including “Honey,” “My All,” “The Roof,” “Breakdown” with Krayzie Bone and Wish Bone, and “The Beautiful Ones” with Dru Hill.
The album was aptly titled Butterfly because Carey “felt free for the first time.” She shared, “Sometimes I feel angry about that time, but I think I’ve made peace with it – in any case, I vowed I’d stop talking about it.”
These days, if/when she does open up about that part of her life, she confessed to putting a “light-hearted spin on it.” Explaining, “Humor is my release, and people who know me know that. I’ll make little jokes about what happened because otherwise I could make every day a sob story. It’s a coping mechanism, but it’s in my nature to laugh.”
Carey and Mottola’s divorce was finalized in March 1998.
In regard to her being labeled a “diva,” it’s now a term she embraces and even joked that her favorite diva of all time is herself.
Carey’s 16th studio album, Here For It All, is slated for release on Sept. 26. In addition to the new music, fans can expect a documentary about her life and a scripted series adapted from her bestselling memoir.
