I began to discover how to create nuances and textures in vocal arrangements and how to use my voice to build layers, like a painter. This was a major moment that began my journey and my drive to succeed. Mariah wasn’t striving to be a singer who only sang other people’s songs like Diana Ross, or one who relied on Svengali-like producers to set their sound. Even at this novice stage, her vision was to be a singer, writer, and producer, responsible for her vocal craft and musical direction. The first step towards achieving that dream would be recording demos of her own compositions. Mariah’s collaborators at this time included two brothers, described in her memoir as “these young Wayne’s World type guys,” who paid her to sing on their demos. The arrangement was mutually beneficial, yet an odd fit. “They were into wild, loud guitar riffs and stuff, while I lived for the radio,” she recalled. “Though our tastes were different, I was learning how to adapt my voice to the task, whatever it was. One day, while working on one of their mishmashes of a song, I told them I was a songwriter too. I figured if we could work on their corny stuff, why couldn’t we work on [mine]?” The first original composition Mariah recorded was the suitably named “To Begin,” written when she was about fourteen. “It was never released but I still remember it and may revisit it at some point,” she told Rolling Stone in 2022. At fifteen, she recorded an early version of “Alone in Love,” a track she’d revisit on her 1990 debut. By her sixteenth birthday, Mariah had outgrown what the studio scene on Long Island had to offer. She had her sights set on the city . ONE STEP CLOSER
For a suburb often derided as a cultural wasteland, Long Island produced an uncanny portion of the music acts populating the airwaves in the 1980s, including Pat Benatar, Eddie Money, the Stray Cats, teen pop queen Debbie Gibson, and blue-eyed diva Taylor Dayne. The latter part of the decade brought the rise of Public Enemy, Rakim (Eric B. hailed from Queens), EPMD, and De La Soul, as “Strong Island” added its flavor to hip-hop’s lexicon. No one loomed larger locally than Billy Joel, a graduate of the area’s live music scene who bookended the decade with #1 hits, including 1980’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” and “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in 1989. “When you talk about the Long Island music scene, it’s rock, but it’s everything,” says guitarist Paul Pesco, a family friend of the Careys from their Northport days, who later played on Mariah’s Emotions and Music Box albums. “John Coltrane lived in [nearby hamlet Dix Hills]. He went up into the attic, had this little studio, and that’s where he composed A Love Supreme . Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke both lived in Huntington. Their numbers were listed in the phone book.” By her teens, Mariah was actively seeking opportunities to gain professional music experience. She recorded jingles for local businesses, sang background for other artists, and provided reference vocals for producers looking to shop songs to labels. What she lacked in considerable income from these gigs, she gained tenfold in an understanding of the mechanics of the recording studio and access to a network of musicians who could provide her with free studio time to work on her own material. Writing in The Meaning of Mariah Carey , she recalled her first professional recording session, singing background vocals on a cover version of Peabo Bryson’s “Feel the Fire,” while in the seventh grade:
The session took place in a dinky little home studio, but it was a real job, and I got paid real money. It was also when
It was summer 1985, and Paul Pesco had just gotten off the road with
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( top ) Inserts from Mariah’s Music Box (1993) and Butterfly (1997) albums.
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