It's midnight in Manhattan. In the back of a limo the size of a small room, with the hum of an R↦B radio station in the background, Mariah Carey is unwinding with a glass of white wine.
Like a true New Yorker, Mariah doesn't sleep much. Instead she lives by her own nocturnal timetable, cruising through the streets in the blacked-out car from one studio engagement to the next.
The biggest-selling female artist of the '90s, who has sold more than 90 million records, has an entourage of men in black who crowd round the door of her limousine ready to deal with her every request. Finally, I am beckoned over. Peering inside I get my first glimpse of the famous pop diva who once waitressed for tips but whose personal fortune is now estimated at an astronomical $200million.
Stretching her long, elegant legs across the seats, she smiles and apologises in a husky Long Island accent for the six-hour delay to our meeting.
In person she is not as petite as you expect. She is 5ft 9in, and has a toned body that a supermodel would envy.
Mariah is the equivalent of showbusiness royalty, and although her manner is relaxed it's obvious that she likes things drone in a particular way. The left side of the limo is hers, she tells me, because she prefers to be seen from the right side.
Mariah may be a diva. but she is no prima donna. She has just finished 12 hours of TV interviews that ran way over schedule. And even though she has had barely three hours sleep, she is now on her way to oversee the editing of a TV special.
This is the new, sexy Mariah Carey — the girl learning to have fun again after the end of her claustrophobic high-profile marriage to the man who discovered her, 49-year-old Sony record boss Tommy Mottola.
Under his guidance, she covered up her curves and stayed at home. Now she is making up for lost time, out on the town with musicians and film stars, dressed in the boob tubes or barely-there dresses that have become her trademark. She acknowledges that her marriage, which broke up last year. was “a case of one person loving another too much.”
“I went abroad to get my divorce, and it was very quick.” she says. “On the day, I felt a tremendous sense of closure. It was just something I had to do. Now I am definitely in my second childhood.
“When I first started out I knew how to be reserved. All along my real self was so much more lively and always joking.”
Though things didn't work out in their personal relationship, it is clear that Mariah owes Mottola a lot. And although her ex-husband is still her boss, she is confident enough in herself to feel comfortable staying with is record label.
Before Mottola discovered her, Mariah pounded the pavements in a pair of her mother's old trainers, a size too small for her. Her break came by chance. At a party, she handed Mottola her demo tape. He played it in his car on the way home — and was so impressed he turned around and went back to the party to find her.
Within days she had a record deal. He set out to make her a star, and his wife.
By the age of 23, Mariah was one of the most successful singers in the world and was married to a man twice her age in a ceremony on June 5, 1993 inspired by videos of Princess Diana's wedding. But she felt trapped in the couple's £25million mansion 40 miles outside New York.
“I mean, obviously it's like a glamorous, flattering, amazing thing when someone on that level believes in you so much and is interested in you and focusing on you,” she says. “My husband represented a form of stability I never had.
“I knew a lot at a very young age which is why I guess I seemed very mature when people met me at the time of my first album.
“But I hadn't experienced enough of life itself. I probably still haven't. For a long time I wasn't allowed to assert myself.
“It wasn't hard to leave that house. The last time I went up there I felt sad because it represented years of my life putting the house together when I could have been doing other things. But everything happens for a reason. That housewife stuff is not really my bag but I know I could be a decorator if I want to!”
Her love life has not run smoothly to say the least. She recently spit from baseball player Derek Jeter. They met at a fundraiser and hit it off because of their similar backgrounds. Like Mariah, Derek was a celebrity who had an Irish mother and a black father. She smiles when asked if he might be a subject for one of her ballads.
“No. I wouldn't write a song about Derek at this point although I might have before. Being with him was necessary. It was a transition and a catalyst for getting me from one point of my life to another. More than anything I am glad I met his family. It was a worthwhile experience.”
Still, for a singer who writes such powerful songs based on personal experience, it seems incredible that Derek was only her second proper relationship.
“At the time I met Tommy I probably looked like a vixen but I was very innocent. He is the first person I was really with,” she admits. “I had boyfriends in high school but it was not like I felt comfortable enough to be that intimate with them. I knew I was never going to stay there and get married and have babies. It was about self-respect that I never let it go further.”
Limited experience notwithstanding, Mariah has definite ideas of what she wants in a man — “honesty and a sense of humour. He would not have to be an entertainer or celebrity, but it would help if he was someone who maybe understands what it is like to be in the pubic eye. It can be intimidating, even to people who have a level of fame in their own right.”
Understandably. Mariah is wary of marrying again. “I always thought I would not get married until I was 30. Little did I know…” she says with a wry smile.
“I will only get married if I am going to have a kid and I am truly in love with that person - not for laughs or for the sake of it. I would be very cautious about it. Anyway, I don't want children right now. I only want them when I am in love with someone who will be a truly great father.”
Mariah's fine features and smooth skin are framed by her trademark sweeping honey locks. Her doe eyes are emphasised with heavy sweeps of light brown shadow above impossibly long lashes.
Tonight she is wearing black pedal-pushers, black high-heeled mules and a boob tube. Pulling her designer puffer jacket around her, she looks like a Gucci interpretation of what a girl leader should be. At 28, Mariah is articulate and focused, as you would expect for someone who has been famous for most of her adult life.
The limo slows to a halt outside an impressive town house for her to get a change of clotting. Inside, her home is a picture of palatial glamour that no Hello! shoot could ever hope to match. A grand-floor lift ascends to a subtly-lit living room made majestic by rich wooden doors, parquet flooring and marble fireplaces.
There are pictures of Mariah everywhere. Pride of place goes to a black and white portrait of Mariah's mom, Patricia. Mariah trots into the kitchen to let out Jack, her six-year-old Jack Russell. As she pets the dog, it is obvious that the kitchen is not much more than an accessory in her superstar lifestyle.
“I came home last night and all I had was a can of Progresso soup.” she says. “And then I couldn't get it open because there was no can opener.”
Back in her limo, her boob tube replaced by a twin-set, Mariah remarks that she owes much of her success to her mother. Patricia was an opera singer and a single mum, who supported three children by becoming a voice coach.
She first noticed her daughter's talent at four when she filled in a missing piece in an aria — in Italian. From then on Mariah followed her mother around the house, mimicking every sound she made “like a little tape recorder.
“Mom was great but we moved around a lot and had lots of different things happening in our lives.” she recalls.
Feeling like an outsider in some of the white middle-class neighbourhoods where she grew up, Mariah threw herself into her music and also into behaving badly.
“I was a bad girl in the eighth grade because I was angry that I couldn't be this popular cheerleader type,” she says. “I had to be the coool, bad girl who smoked in the toilets and banged people's heads against their lockers.
“The areas I lived in were full of middle-class kids with money — it was the norm for them to get Mustangs or Camaros for their 16th birthdays. My family always had the worst house, the worst car. Our car was so battered we called it the Dodge Dent. I was embarrassed to drive down the street in it.”
Mariah left home at 17, when her mother remarried. She took various jobs to make ends meet, inducing waitressing.
“I was concentrating on becoming a backing singer and mixing demos.” she says. “Every place I worked I got fired from. I just didn't care. I was spending tine listening to my tapes and figuring out what time I could leave for the studio.
“I had one pair of shoes with holes in them, one size too small because they were Mom's. They were leather and I had been walking in them in the snow so they were stretched, but I didn't ask anyone for anything. I wanted to do it all myself.
“When my friend Brenda asked me why I didn't get new shoes I said I needed the money left over from my rent to buy food for my two cats. The funny thing is that my life is like a mirror image of what it was like then, non-stop working. It's the same thing now — only I don't travel by subway.”
The last time Mariah used the subway was eight years ago — the year her first album, Mariah Carey, sold five million copies. It catapulted her into the pubic eye and put into motion a career that seems unstoppable. She now has 75 gold, platinum, and multi-platinum records under her belt and has had 13 US No 1s — which have now been collected into a new album called #1's. Her British hits include such ballads as “Without You,” “My All,” “I'll Be There,” and “One Sweet Day.”
But Mariah missed her independence. Her only form of expression was her lyrics which also became a cry for help. As she prepared to free herself of Mottola's control, she described herself in a song as “the girl who lives inside the golden world.
“Looking back, that was a very sad time,” says Mariah. “It was 1995 and I was going through a lot. The only way I could express myself was through music. Writing that was a big step for me.”
She admits her marriage to Mottola was partly a need for a father figure in her life. Her father, Alfred Carey, an aeronautical engineer, left home when Manah was three. For years, they weren't in contact but, she reveals, last month she called him.
“We went through the family pictures and retraced his roots. My father's mother was Afro-American and my grandfather was Venezuelan,” she says.
Despite being absent for her childhood, Alfred has won his daughter's respect by never capitalising on the family connection.
“I hope he is proud of me — although he has never told me he is,” she says. “He was never involved in my music when I was growing up and he never exploited it. There is no animosity between us.
“What I do for a living is gratifying because I can do things for people I care about. I bought my mother a house in New Jersey because she had never owned one. I got it for her without telling her and had it decorated exactly like she would want it. I even put her Irish family crest on the wall.
“We showed her round and, just as she was saying what a beautiful home it was, she got all confused and said. ‘Why are there pictures of me?’ I said, ‘Because it's your house, Mom. I bought it for you.’ It was such a great moment.”
Some of Mariah's will to succeed came from the experiences of her older sister Alison. When the family split, Alison went to live with her father, but left home at 15 to get married. Her life became a downward spiral of drug abuse and prostitution. Then she contracted the Aids virus.
At the mention of her sister's name, Mariah's eyes wet up. She dedicated her debut album to Alison but now keeps her distance.
“I can't talk about this legally,” she says. “All I can say is that sometimes it is better to separate yourself from people when you know it is also a damaging situation for you. I do what I can from afar.”
In a group of divas that includes Celine Dion and Whitney Houston — with whom she has just duetted on the song When You Believe — Mariah is the youngest and possibly the most accomplished as a songwriter and producer. She now wants to branch into films. After 18 months of acting classes, she has two roles in the pipeline. For one, in which she will play a singer, she will write the soundtrack.
“I always wanted to act.” she says. “I would love to do things that aren't about me. I'd like to try smaller parts, with an edge, to show a different side to myself.” For now she is enjoying her lifestyle and revelling in hanging out with celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Leo is cool. but we are not seeing each other. As soon as I met him, I knew they would say he is my new man.” she smiles. “But I am not spiralling out of control.”
Despite her global success, Mariah still does not feel financially secure.
“People read that I sell a certain number of records and estimate how much I earn, but they forget I have to pay my lawyers and my managers.” she says.
“I realise how fortunate I am but inside I still feel the rug could be pulled from my feet at any time.”
Despite her newfound independence Mariah still wears the reminders of old ties on a gold chain around her waist like a charm bracelet. One is a heart, from Mottola. Another is a ring she had moulded from one given to her by Aliton and another from a high-school friend.
It has been a rags to riches rise for Mariah though she rubbishes any fairytale analogies as being too simplistic.
“It's not like I didn't work for what I had.” she insists. “From childhood to now my whole life has been a struggle. I am very fortunate so I never like to seem ungrateful by being unhappy. I am lucky, although there have been a lot of difficult times. Like anyone else, life can get you down.”
But when life gets her down, Mariah always has one major consolation.
“The best thing about being Mariah Carey is looking round a stadium and seeing 50,000 people in the audience. It is seeing people from other countries around the world singing my songs back to me that makes me happy.”
The limo pulls up at the editing suite, although Mariah is in no hurry to end our conversation. A knock at the window brings her mind back to business.
She smiles warmly and thanks me again for waiting for her as she climbs elegantly out of the car. She beckons to an assistant and asks him to get hold of Trey, a close friend and collaborator.
“Check out what time he's coming down,” she calls as she sashays into the building.
There may be work to be done but Mariah still wants to have fun. And even past 1am, who isn't going to come running at any time of the day or right when the queen of pop calls?
