Mariah Carey’s memoir is actually really solid

She seems to have turned her life around in the past 2 years. I think she was having real struggles with her mental health and got the help she needed for that. I find her to be likable again for the first time in over a decade.

Mariah is only sane diva left from her era. Whitney is gone, Madonna is nuts, Janet has no career, Celine is sad and weird, Cyndi has been over for decades. Mariah is the only one left with a viable career with her sanity intact.

She's so deep!

Too bad her voice has taken a beating.

But if she can match her music to her voice's capacities now, instead of trying to be 1990 Mariah, she may win out over all those listed above.

[quote]Mariah is only sane diva left from her era.

Did you fall and hit your head R1? Sane?

Mariah is insane, drunk/drugged all of the time. She is a vortex of self-obsession who is perhaps the worst of all of the above in regards to getting older. She's a total diva and she packs herself into hooker clothes which are several sizes too small for her so that all her fat is pressured to bulge out.

So there's that.

She’s not Virginia Woolf, R2, but she’s a decent writer and an honest narrator of her own story.

It’s gotten a lot of good reviews. Made top books lists for 2020. I love Mariah. She figured out something to have survived this long and not be a drug addict or completely lost.

Also it goes unspoken, but she’s clearly scissored with Da Brat.

Does she talk about why she dresses like a whore all the time? I've always suspected she's just too lazy to get dressed in the morning and goes out in her lingerie.

[quote]She's a total diva and she packs herself into hooker clothes which are several sizes too small for her so that all her fat is pressured to bulge out.

And so did Mae West, Joan Collins, Liz Taylor, Raquel Welch, Cher, Dolly Parton and Charo, but no one criticizes them.

Yes, R8. She’s very candid in the book about the evolution of her image over the years, including dress, hair, and makeup. She’s not a chump. A lot of it has been deliberate.

I feel she’s really toned down the hooker look lately, but that may just be for the book tour.

Does she go in depth about the time she looked like a big fat WHALE?

She looks amazing at the moment. A million times better than any of her contemporaries, especially Madonna.

She was interviewed years ago by Charlie Rose and came across as very serious and thoughtful. Maybe the Mariah character is an act or she’s bipolar.

anyone who is surprised never understood Mimi's sense of humour

OMG, R13, that's not exactly a candid photo.

r16, It most certainly is.

What I want to read is Mary Carey’s memoir!

Does she talk about the Stella years and that guy she was going to marry?

Mariah can surprises when she drops the diva facade and is real. I thought she was fantastic in her scene in Precious. No bull shit, raw acting. Some people seem to chill with age.

She looks like SHIT compared to Jlo. This big fat whale is a major has been. Her last album TANKED and nobody cared

Harmonized whistle notes.

Does she discuss her relationship with Ray LaMontagne?

[quote]And so did Mae West, Joan Collins, Liz Taylor, Raquel Welch, Cher, Dolly Parton and Charo, but no one criticizes them.

Most of them looked good in tightly fitted clothing because they weren't grossly obese R9.

Mariah Carey is a size 18 who wears a size 4 with her fake knockers hanging out. Yes sh does wear several pairs of Spanx to try to hold it all in but they don't work.

None of those ladies you've listed above ever looked like this R9!

I’ve loved her music (ok 90% of it maybe if we include some of the recent stuff like the mainly awful Me I Am Mariah album) for decades and have always defended her but the book left me a bit cold and put me off her. I think it was mainly the BLM crap. e.g. the police and white people are bad; her white mum is bad, her black father is good (despite him walking out and her mum raising her, albeit not in the greatest way by the sound of it, but come on).

r25 the book was co-authored by Michaela Angela Davis, who is a social justice activist, so there's that.

It's interesting that she left out her high school years completely in the book. Probably because she went to high school in Long Island where she was popular and her closest friends were white.

Mariah is fairly white herself R26.

She said she grew up in a predominantly Caucasian area. (Her mom is Caucasian.) She said that people knew she wasn't 100% white / part black and that people (some, at least) gave her a hard time. This would have been the '70s or so and I can believe that.

It's not like she sought out only Caucasian people to hang out with.

I think she is so vain about her age that she leaves out things that would be time markers, like year of high school graduation.

MEMOIRS OF A FAT WHORE

meow in paperback

Lurid sis's inevitable lurid lawsuit over lurid claims in lurid memoir....

Her mother was a failed diva wannabe. Dad wasn't around, brother and sister have mental issues. Mariah described her trip to the "spa" as a slight diva fit. The book was filled with half truths, deliberate omissions and carefully constructed facts. Amusing but hardly relevatory.

It was a very interesting read, and it was much better than I thought it would have been.

But once she gets involved with Mottola, you can tell there are parts that are left out. For instance, not mentioning that he was married with kids when she got together with him. And she mentions that everyone was always walking on eggshells around him, but she never really goes into depth about why everyone is like that.

And the recap of the Divas Live concerts. It was not Aretha's show like she paints it out to be, and Celine wasn't out of line for simply singing with Aretha Franklin. And the rumors surrounding Mariah's behavior towards Donna Summer at the Diana Ross show make her recollection of it a little suspect.

But yeah, it's clear she came from a very dysfunctional environment. Both parents clearly had issues. It's a miracle she even turned out the way she has.

[quote]the police and white people are bad; her white mum is bad, her black father is good

She alludes to her father possibly abusing the siblings, and also says that he pretty much abandoned her for years once she became a teenager. I don't think either parent was painted well by her.

I don’t trust people who write memoirs yet can’t fess up to anything that they’ve done wrong in their life. If she had written about mistakes she’s made I might have been willing to believe her but when someone makes themselves out to be an angel, I take what they say with a grain of salt.

R31 I think the earlier stuff was much more revelatory, but once she got famous, it's clear that she left stuff out or half truthed some things.

I wish she would have been more honest about her bipolar disorder and the 2001 incident. She had been leaving rambling messages on her website (I remember Howard Stern talking about them and even playing some) But it's possible that she really hasn't come to terms fully with it yet herself either.

I've enjoyed listening to it.

R32: agree on the Divas Live Celine digs. She came across as pointlessly bitchy mentioning it and Celine seems like an easy target. Maybe this is a leap but as the whole tone of the book is very let’s-push-the-BLM-narrative by that point I wondered if it was another subtle ‘white person bad vs black person good’ point.

I was a huge Mariah fan growing up and listen to her all the time still (yep even her more recent stuff) but reading the book made me really dislike her personality by the time I finished it. Maybe in part because having followed her career since the early 90s, the BS, conveniently left out stuff, half-truths etc were so obvious.

R32: maybe I’m touchy on the BLM stuff as I didn’t think the father came across too badly, or more that it felt she tried to hide just how bad he was but didn’t hesitate to say exactly what she thought her mother did badly. i guess her father is dead so that may also be why she's less critical of him. I’d say I’d read it again to see if I’m being unfair but it wasn't that good a read to bother.

I recall the Celine stuff but what about Donna Summer on the other Divas Live show? Please tell me Miss Mariah was not giving Donna attitude? That Divas Live was an absolute mess, but Donna was the only good thing about it. She was the only singer who sounded good and was a complete professional that night. Mariah was a hot mess on both Divas Live performances.

Mariah is like Aretha - so threatened by other female artists. She was threatened by Celine that night because a) Celine sounded good and she didn't and b) Celine was at her absolute peak at that time so she was major competition to Mariah.

I know all the Lambs will defend her and see her with rose colored glasses because they think she’s perfect, but she really doesn’t have a great personality. “Diva” is code word for bitch. I don’t like her attitude. And I say that as someone who liked her music in the 90’s. And honestly, I get tired of her acting like she’s the only one who had hard times growing up. She was a millionaire and her dream career by the time she was 20, so she can miss me with the sob stories.

Is there anywhere in the book where she actually talks about being grateful for all the good things that have happened to her and admitting she has it better than most people?

Correct me if I’m remembering wrong, but did she say that she refuses to take medication for her bipolar disorder and just prays instead?

r34 is right. She'll never fully go into detail about the 2001 episode, which is fine, it's her right. But whenever she discusses it, she talks in vague terms and always throws in a joke, like the fact that Glitter was released on 9/11, poor me, etc.

I think her discussing her issues would endear her to a lot of people, and it would help a lot of people who have bipolar disorder and help remove stigmas attached to it.

R41 Exactly. It would make her seem more human.

R13 Notice how that outfit tricks the eye into making you think the waist is narrower than it is? Mae West used to wear gowns that did that.

Mariah Carey has used race as her crutch throughout her career, and her audience, black & white scoops it right up. When she first arrived no one knew, because she wasn't telling, that she was biracial. I have no doubt that she identified more white while she was in high school & suffered little for being bicarial. I bet the fat kids were ridiculed far more than biracial Mariah was. Then, after her records started to become more hip-hop, her biracial-ness & all it's harrowing aspects upon her were suddenly in the first paragraph of her no-one-understand-the-pain narrative.

That’s not true, R44. Maybe her label downplayed her black side but from her very first interviews she said her dad was black and her mom was white. I’m not a lamb at all, but I don’t think she hid that she was biracial. Around 4:25.

R45...You're correct. Wrong wording on my part, with "wasn't telling". What I mean is it wasn't a talking point in the beginning of her career like it had become it her later career.

I’d like to piss on her book

[quote]Is there anywhere in the book where she actually talks about being grateful for all the good things that have happened to her and admitting she has it better than most people?

Yes she says it several times actually.

After reading Marianne Faithful's autobiography, I decided to learn as little as possible about the singers/actors/sports stars whose work I admired. I don't need to know about their personal lives to admire what they do.

*Faithfull--it failed spellcheck.

r44 is an idiot as evidenced by writing "bicarial" instead of biracial.

Her friends invited her to a sleepover, asked her to come into a room, and started chanting the N word at her. Don't act like you know what happened when you obviously don't.

She never used her race as a crutch and no one ever scooped it up. They liked her amazing voice, songwriting talent, and "it factor." None of which you had before you turned into a bitter, white, elder gay.

Solid like a big log turd

I'm interested.

I purchased Demi Moore's memoir from apple, it's interesting reading but not well written.

One of the best written celeb memoir I've read is Mia Farrow's, "What Falls Away".

Demi Moore's was ok but she glosses over a lot, just like Mariah does.

Carey grew up in white trash wrong Island, she had no choice but to keep her heritage on the low.