Mariah Carey to detail the 'debacle that was Glitter' in new memoir
Mariah Carey‘s upcoming memoir might have you feeling emotions.
The music icon has revealed her new book — an autobiography about her personal life and professional career — will be full of revelatory information, as she told Variety in an interview published Tuesday.
“Born to a black father and white mother, [I] lived in basically very humble beginnings [and] came out of it,” she told the publication of her life. “[I’ve had] ups and downs, and this and that. And public humiliation and going through the wringer.”
One such obstacle, she noted, was the release of “the debacle that was Glitter,” the soundtrack album to her 2001 film of the same name that flopped critically and commercially (until fans pushed it to No. 1 on the iTunes charts last year) while she suffered a headline-making nervous breakdown. “It’s a real moment we’re getting into,” she said.
“But then you have an Emancipation of Mimi moment,” she continued, referencing the 2005 album (inspired by her divorce from record mogul Tommy Mottola, which she’ll also touch on in the book) that jump-started her career by adding two No. 1 singles to her 18-strong collection of hits that have topped the American charts. “You have to relish that moment, be around real people that care about you and just shake off the other nonsense.”
Carey has reportedly been working on her introspective memoir over the last year, with the news breaking at the top of 2018 after the musician discussed her struggle with bipolar disorder with PEOPLE.
“I had a whole supposed breakdown, alleged. All of this to be revealed in the book, by the way, which I’m obsessed with writing right now. It’s so cathartic,” she told Variety. “It was an emotional and physical breakdown, but it wasn’t a nervous breakdown, because you don’t recover from that really. And even my therapist was like, ‘You didn’t have a breakdown; you had a diva fit and people couldn’t handle it.’ And that is something we should explore, because if a woman gets too emotional or too loud or too abrasive or too real, suddenly it’s like, ‘What’s wrong with her? She’s crazy.'”
While a title and exact release date have yet to be announced for the project, Carey also teased its contents during a November 2018 appearance on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live.
“I was very intimidated and I didn’t want to perform with her…that’s the Queen of Soul!” she told Andy Cohen of performing with the late Aretha Franklin at the 1998 production of VH1 Divas Live. “I don’t want to tell the whole story, because I’m working on my memoirs.”
Before she finishes the book, Carey — who released her 15th studio album, Caution, last year — will next celebrate the 25th anniversary of her wildly popular Merry Christmas album with a re-release deluxe edition (and accompanying tour) set to drop on Nov. 1.
Carey told Variety she anticipates her memoir will be released sometime in 2020 (“but not early 2020,” she stressed).
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