‘If they think that, they haven’t seen either one of us on an interview,’ she says of her more negative new tunes.
Sixteen months after her last studio album debuted in the top spot on the Billboard 200, Mariah Carey returned Tuesday (September 29) with Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, her first disc since she and Nick Cannon tied the knot in the spring of 2008. Though the multiplatinum songstress seems to have found domestic bliss in her own life, her new album is filled with slow jams and poppy dance tunes about unhealthy relationships, broken hearts and infidelity.
But Mimi isn’t worried that any of her fans will make the mistake of thinking these new songs reflect the current state of her love life or that her marriage might be on the rocks. “If they think that, they haven’t seen either one of us on an interview,” Carey told MTV News. “And I doubt that!”
Rather than reflecting this latest phase of happy coupledom, Carey said the autobiographical elements of the new album extend back to the earliest years of her life. “I’m always writing things down,” she explained. “I’ve been doing that since I was 6 years old. [In Memoirs], I’m kind of looking at my life and going, ‘That was a stupid thing to do. Let me write about it.’ I remember this, ‘Oh, I wrote about this, let me finish the song.’ ”
Co-producing much of the album with industry heavyweights Tricky and The-Dream allowed the 39-year-old Carey to return to this decades-in-the-making material. “I really enjoyed working with them because I felt like they, in a way, just by collaborating with me, allowed me the freedom to express myself in a way that I may not have felt empowered enough to do in the past,” she said.
Seriously what idiots would think this?
