Mariah Carey hit the big 40 in March, and how is she facing this milestone? With plastic surgery? No. Getting hitched to a younger man? Well, she's already done that, having wed 27-year-old rapper and actor Nick Cannon last April, after a month of dating.
Carey has another plan to fend off 40 fever, which brings to mind another multi-million album seller. Although clearly not as crackers as King of Pop Michael Jackson, Carey does have something of the Peter Pan complex about her. “I'm eternally 12. So I'll be like, ‘okay, let's celebrate the anniversary of being 12!’ Even when I was 20 years old, I thought that was like a million years old. So I don't acknowledge birthdays.”
It's a dangerous game freezing your mindset to pre-teen level so that you can stay youthful, or at least feel it. Carey, though, is unlikely to take it as far as Wacko Jacko.
“Getting older, I feel it's about how you look and how you feel. If you feel old and rancid, then you'll look like that. I say I'm eternally 12 because in this business you kind of don't have to grow up. To me it's really about being as young as you feel and being a good person and true to who you are.”
Her ethos has helped her maintain success as an artist, remaining relevant to young record buyers. Her 2005 album, The Emancipation Of Mimi, was the biggest selling album of that year in the United States (US). Her follow-up in 2008, E=MC² hasn't fared as well but has still sold in excess of one million in the US alone and in April 2008 — a few days before her wedding celebrations — the album spawned her 18th number-one single, putting her ahead of Elvis and two behind the Beatles' all-time record.
Keeping your youth onside is a tricky business in the industry. Madonna, who turned 50 this year, has been criticised for dressing too young and it's an accusation that's also been thrown at Carey. “I don't care what people say. I'm going to wear what I feel like wearing when I feel like wearing it,” she sniffs, wearing a plain black dress, black high heels and, perhaps as a nod to her inner 12-year-old, rings adorned with butterflies.
“When I started out I had one black dress and at one time I had one pair of shoes. And I wasn't allowed to show my body. That made me rebellious for a while, but so what? If I feel like dressing up to go to church, I'll dress up. If I feel like being in a sexy outfit in my video, I'll do it! It's my video.”
When she hit the big time in the early '90s it was under the guidance of Tommy Mottola, whom she wed in 1993. Carey refers to the relationship as “very difficult, controlling and tough.” A decade after the divorce she's still reeling, referring to the marriage on the song “Side Effects” from her latest album. No doubt she's also referring to her ex-husband when she remarks that she “wasn't allowed” to dress how she pleased.
The fairvtale elements of their story were overplayed — the way Mottola had plucked Carey from obscurity, propelled her to the top of the charts and built an extravagant love-nest for her.
Yet it was true that Carey came from humble beginnings. Born in Huntington, Long Island, her father and mother divorced when she was three years old. Struggling to raise three children, her mother moved the family several times. She attended Harborfields High School in Greenlawn where she earned herself the nickname Mirage. “It was one of my nicknames because I was never there,” she laughs. “I was working on my album.”
After graduating in 1987, she moved to New York City, earning rent and food money at a beauty salon before Mottola took her on. “I have 500 hours of beauty school, I do!” she laughs. “Beauty school was pretty cool because you didn't have to go to school for the whole day. You'd just go for half a day and then do your friends' nails for the rest of the day. But it's useful for my life now.”
During her early years with Mottola, Mariah Carey, with her self-titled debut album and the four that followed, became a record-breaking pop giant, easily rivalling stars such as Whitney Houston and Madonna. But 2001 was to prove her lowest point. Record company and relationship problems ensued and she was reported to have suffered a breakdown, the signposts to which were quite public. Today, she pretty much denies it.
“If a breakdown equals a really bad day, a really bad week, then yeah. I look at what some people do in public and I'm like: ‘I didn't do freaking anything!’ And people went on a rampage about me having a breakdown and I'm just like, ‘okay that was part of what I had to endure for whatever reason,’ maybe just to get me more grounded. Good came out of it and it obviously didn't break me.”
To make matters worse her movie career as a lead actress was virtually finished off for good, also in 2001, with Glitter. The film bombed, as did the soundtrack. She won a Worst Actress Razzie award the following year for her role in Glitter.
Although her music career has been revived in recent years, Carey has not attempted to apply the same vigour to acting since. She is keeping to low-key projects but sounds excited by two upcoming movies and not in the least apprehensive. In both, she relished dressing down, anti-glitter, if you like.
“Lee Daniels, who produced Monster's Ball and The Woodsman cast me in his movie Tennessee after seeing me in Wisegirls,” she reveals. “It's a story about two brothers and I play the female who helps them get where they want to be. And then I'm in another film for a small, but very important role. In Tennessee I don't look like myself. People didn't know that I put on weight intentionally for the movie. I could just sit in the South and eat biscuits and do whatever I wanted… but then afterwards I went on a diet.&rdqip;
Now a singer as well as an actress, not to be outdone by the likes of Britney Spears and Beyoncé, Carey also has her own perfume. “I did a fragrance last year and I worked on it myself. I'm not your average perfume buyer because I'm not really a fan of perfume,” she continues before correcting herself, “mine is one of the only perfumes I really like.”
Carey also keeps busy with Camp Mariah just outside New York &mash; so named in 1995 because of her work for the Fresh Air Fund. “I also work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which supports terminally ill children. Sometimes it's just their wish to go to an award show or just get a call from me. It's really tough to talk to people who are on their deathbed, especially when it's children. But I keep it together because it's not going to help them if I burst into tears.”
Carey is often labelled a diva but not in the sense that she can't keep control of her outbursts. Apparently she can be demanding when on tour or in hotels. Past demands have included red carpets being laid out, expensive candles in her dressing room, humidifiers around her bed and a dog chauffeur. More recently, she's enjoyed sending up this image of herself and playing along with it.
“If people think I'm being difficult, they've never met me or they don't know what my job entails. Technically, if you look up the word diva, the first definition would be a talented female singer,” she adds, with a smile. “That's a definition I knew my whole life because my mother is an opera singer and a diva is an opera singer. That's fine by me.”
