Theorizing About Mariah Carey's Equation

Mariah Carey has a thing for butterflies.

She wrote a song about them. She named an album after them. And it's a butterfly-titled room in which the 38-year-old diva stores all the keepsakes sent by her fans—letters, books, even recipes for chocolate fudge waffles.

"That's not going to get me anywhere," Carey says with a laugh in Interview magazine. "I just think it's great that they [the fans] took the time to do these things. And why not have a little room devoted to it?"

It might seem strange that Carey, nicknamed "The Voice," would show such an affinity for butterflies—who, except for the tiny whooshing sound their wings make when they flap around, are exceptionally quiet creatures.

But perhaps it makes sense. Butterflies are beautiful and carefree. Yet before they get to that point, they must endure a long, conceivably frightening period of transformation. And transformation is something Carey's familiar with.

Crawling Toward Stardom
Carey, the youngest child of an Irish opera singer and an Afro-Venezuelan engineer, is said by Rolling Stone to have a "seven-octave voice that she put[s] through stratospheric gymnastics." Her vocal range may, in fact, be only five octaves. (Most of us have ranges around two.) This is a woman who can sing at a pitch where most of us can only whistle. And it's her mighty voice that has propelled Carey to unprecedented success: She recently charted her 18th No. 1 single, vaulting past Elvis Presley on the all-time list for most chart-toppers. The folks above Carey on this hallowed list? A little band named The Beatles.

But for all her honed talent and God-given abilities, Carey's early biography reads like an improbable fairy tale. After all, the music biz is notoriously hard to break into, and there was no star-making American Idol in Carey's youth. Shortly after she graduated high school, Carey became a backup singer for Brenda K. Starr and apparently made a good impression: When Carey and Starr ran into Columbia Records executive Tony Mottola at a 1988 party, Starr handed Mottola Carey's demo tape, which Mottola listened to on the drive home. He was so impressed with Carey's voice that he drove back to the party, determined to sign Carey to a recording contract then and there. Carey eventually did sign on the dotted line—a few days later.

Flying High, Falling Fast
In 1990, Columbia released Carey's self-titled debut album, which spent several weeks atop Billboard's album chart and boasted four No. 1 singles. It was just the beginning for the New York songstress, who became the 1990s' most successful artist. She married Mottola in 1993 in a wedding that made Cinderella's Big Day look like a Saturday trip to the grocery store.

But all was not chocolate fudge waffles. Carey separated from Mottola in 1997 and shortly thereafter released Butterfly, her most personal album to that point. The title song contains such lyrics as, "Fly abandonedly into the sun/If you should return to me/We truly were meant to be."

"I was writing the song 'Butterfly' wishing that that's what he would say to me," Carey told Interview. "At that point I really believed that I was going to go back to the marriage. I didn't think I was going to leave forever."

Separation became divorce and Carey plunged on with her career. For a time, she continued to rule the charts. But when the century turned, so did Carey's fortunes. In 2001, she starred in Glitter (a movie based loosely on her life) that turned into the mother of all bombs. Critics were raking her music across the coals, too. She signed an $80 million contract with Virgin Records, but Virgin was so anxious to scrap the deal months later that they bought Carey out for $28 million. Carey began behaving erratically, doing an impromptu striptease on an MTV show and then feigning surprise when folks took exception. "The only thing I wish I had done is had a better camera angle," she told MTV.

That same year she suffered a very public breakdown. Carey practically vanished—only to surge back onto the scene with her 2005 critically acclaimed comeback, The Emancipation of Mimi.

"I believe that it happened for a reason," Carey says of the breakdown. "I believe that it had to happen because The Emancipation of Mimi was such a gift."

One Theory of Relativity
Carey's personal and professional trajectory since Emancipation continues to be unreliable. Commercially, Carey's taken flight again. Her newest album, E=MC2, sold nearly a half-million copies in its first week and is getting raves from both critics and fans. But while Carey proved she still has the magic touch, she appears to have lost something else. Namely, her clothes.

Carey's a curious creature, posing nude one moment, praising God the next. She credits God for helping her through dark times, then sees nothing wrong with getting down and dirty in her latest video. She took it all off for the cover of Interview this past fall, her body only partially obscured by what looks to be a gigantic doily. And the album art for E=MC2 follows the same pattern, Carey's critical body parts this time covered with a feathery boa-like thing. Her first single off the album, "Touch My Body," contains, among others, this lyric: "Touch my body, put me on the floor, wrestle me around, play with me some more."

Merging Caterpillar, Chrysalis and Butterfly
That means Carey's sending some pretty confusing signals. Especially because part of her equation is bombarding fans with Bible verses. "I Wish You Well" includes references to Proverbs 19:29; John, 4:4, Philippians 4:9 and Psalm 129:2. And she includes Isaiah 12:5 in her liner notes. It reads, "Sing to the Lord for He has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world."

In Interview, Carey says that her TV is often tuned to the PTL (Praise the Lord) Network, and she says she reads a chapter of the Bible every night. Her career, Carey acknowledges, has been a "gift from God."

"I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual and I have an enormous amount of faith," she says. "I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I believe that faith really does work."

Mariah Carey, perhaps, is not so different from the millions of people she sings to. Perhaps she, like most of us, just sometimes forgets she doesn't have to stay a caterpillar for an entire lifetime.

The rub for fans, of course, is what happens when she forgets.