Mariah Carey walks into the room and you have to suppress the desire to either kiss her hand or carefully mist her with Chanel No. 5.
Needless to say, either of these actions on the part of her interviewer would bring the National Guard.
Because Mariah is the $200 million woman. Carey, the girl next door with the startling seven-octave vocal range, is among that elite group of superstars known throughout the world by her first name.
Yet, when you're sitting across from Carey, you get the vibe of a smart, talented and open artist who knows exactly who her audience is and is comfortable calling the shots.
Now, after 34 million albums sold in the U.S. alone, Carey wants to try her hand at acting.
“I'd love to do things that aren't about me,” said Carey, wearing all black with a tiny diamond-encrusted crucifix at her neck. “I'd like to try some smaller parts, some with an edge, to show the different aspects of my personality, to show a different side of myself and not necessarily be the star.”
A project is being written for Carey by Cheryl West, author of the off-Broadway play Holiday Heart, which Carey admired. Carey, 27, already has one soul ballad ready for the soundtrack.
“I was always in plays and usually had the lead, but of course singing was always my first love,” she said. “I did want to act as well, but because I started writing songs so young and got into singing backup for people and (recording) demos, I got more into that end of things. And that became my main focus.”
For the past year, including during the making of her new album, Butterfly, Carey studied acting four times a week for three or four hours a day. The result, she said, is her most nakedly emotional work to date.
“It was draining, since a lot of the acting exercises dealt with things I blocked as a child,” she said. “In going back and dealing with those things, it gave me a surge of a lot of emotional stuff that was beneath the surface. It was very helpful as a singer and writer. It helped me bring my emotions to the surface so I could apply them in a more real way to my music.
“I was completely emotionally drained every day, and I would be like, ‘Now I have to go sing?’ It fed me creatively and helped me be more pure in the writing.”
Even though Carey collaborates with hot producers Sean “Puffy” Combs and David Morales as well as rappers Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Butterfly is packed with the sort of pop-R&B ballads that made her a superstar seven years ago.
Carey wants it known that some might be missing the point by labeling the disc a hip-hop record.
“I don't think it's in any way obvious which things on this album are influenced by R&B,” Carey said. “Because in the end, it's my voice on top of a track that has a harder edge or a hip-hop loop, something I've done even as far back as ‘Dreamlover’ (in 1993), which was a loop of a song by (Brooklyn rapper) Big Daddy Kane.
“I mean, nobody knew that except for the people that are aware of samples and who listen to a lot of hip-hop. But it wasn't talked about. The people at the record company may not have even known. To them, it was just a happy record with an R&B feel, which was why the dancers in the video could do their thing to it.”
Carey, in town recently for talks with film producers, only hints that the self-penned lyrics on Butterfly reflect her separation from her husband, Tommy Mottola, chief operating officer of Sony Music, which owns Columbia Records and releases her albums.
Carey, who married Mottola in 1993 three years after he discovered her, is said to be responsible for $200 million in annual revenues for Sony.
“There is some pressure,” she admits. “I'd say I'd like to have more time between albums. For some reason, I guess because everybody knows I can do it, I can go in and deliver an album every year and a half. Right now, I have more albums out than some female singers who were superstars when I was a kid.”
Carey has asked that Butterfly, her fifth album (not including a Christmas record and an MTV Unplugged EP), be promoted longer than the usual four singles so she can concentrate on film work next year as well as her first U.S. tour since a 10-city arena trek four years ago.
One night recently, Carey and R&B hitmaker Babyface penned a song together for Seven Mile, an act on Crave, Carey's label. Another Crave act, Allure, currently has a Top 5 smash with a single Carey co-produced — a remake of the 1986 Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam hit “All Cried Out.”
Meanwhile, speculation is rampant that Butterfly's lyrics and a new video for the top-10 hit “Honey” are digs at hubby Mottola — who is also reportedly the inspiration for Andrew Dice Clay's role in TV's Hits.
Carey says no way.
“Now, why would I do something like that?” Carey said. “It's racist to assume that just because the actor in the video is Italian, he's supposed to be (Mottola). I mean, after all, Tommy has to go out and promote that video. It amuses me the way they're reading certain things into the lyrics that have nothing to do with what they think is being talked about.”
Early on, Carey saw her first five singles soar to No. 1 and the ex-waitress and hat-check girl was transformed into a diva talked about in the same breath as Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand and Anita Baker. Her Daydream album two years ago sold more than 7 million copies.
But it wasn't always this way. Daughter of an Irish mother who sang with the New York City Opera and a black Venezuelan father she hardly knew, Carey moved 13 times with her divorced mom before she even reached her teens.
“I went through more before the age of 12 than a lot of people go through in a lifetime,” Carey said. “I had a crazy upbringing. A lot of my mother's friends would say that if I actually made it, it would be a miracle.”
Carey started singing professionally as a backup singer for late-'80s club chanteuse Brenda K. Starr. She won the Best New Artist Grammy Award in 1990 and has seen almost 20 songs make the Top 40.
Critics are not kind; the Rolling Stone Album Guide dismisses Carey's music as “billion-dollar Naugahyde,” “ersatz soul music” and “skill and passion slaving over piffle.”
In many ways, Carey, who co-wrote everything on the new album but the remake of Prince's “The Beautiful Ones,” is a typical product of New York's ubiquitous R&B club scene.
“Rap has been around for a long, long time,” Carey said. “People don't realize it because it's just becoming mainstream. I've been hearing it since the '70s. People perceive me as a mass-appeal artist and if they don't listen to R&B radio, they don't hear my hip-hop remixes and don't understand that this has been a part of what I've been doing for a long time.”
In fact, Butterfly may be Carey's most subtle effort. She's not only toned down the theatrics, but her voice has taken on a whispery, softer quality.
“I'm proud of the writing on this album because a lot of it is telling a story,” she said. “Because I've been more driven by the melody in the past, I would let the lyrics be almost secondary. This time I really think they're equal.”