Mariah Carey is looking back at her first marriage to Tommy Mottola.
The “Vision of Love” singer, 56, was married to music executive Mottola, 77, from 1993 to 1998, after he signed her to her first recording contract with Columbia Records years earlier.
Over the years, Carey has alluded to Mottola exercising control over her music career, as well as in their marriage, even comparing their Bedford, New York, mansion to the infamous Sing Sing prison.
“Sometimes I feel angry about that time, but I think I’ve made peace with it – in any case, I vowed I’d stop talking about it,” the Grammy winner shared in rare comments about the marriage in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar published on Monday, July 28.
Mariah Carey’s Family Guide: The Singer’s Late Parents, Siblings and Kids
As for how she copes with her negative feelings about that period of her life, Carey said, “Humor is my release, and people who know me know that. I’ll make little jokes about what happened because otherwise I could make every day a sob story. … It’s a coping mechanism, but it’s in my nature to laugh.”
Carey was an immediate success when she released her self-titled debut album in 1990, followed by several more No. 1 hits on the Billboard 200 albums chart. However, she claims that Mottola shielded her from her burgeoning superstardom in the early phase of her career.
In one particular incident, the singer recalls being in Schenectady, New York, to record a performance for a Thanksgiving television broadcast. Upon arrival, she noticed the ample security in place to manage the crowds that had flocked to see her. According to Harper’s Bazaar, it was then that she realized how famous she was.
“And that was just shocking, because nobody had ever told me, ‘Hey, these people are outside the store, and they all want to buy your record,’” Carey said.
Carey and Mottola eventually separated in 1997, which is around the same time the songstress began to break away from pop ballads and explore different genres — something her husband previously discouraged.
“I wanted to do more R&B, more urban music, and any time I would bring that up, it would get shot down,” she said. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like the music I was making – I just felt there was more inside me that I wanted to release.”
Carey’s 1997 album Butterfly, featuring the hit song “Honey,” was the first step to cultivating the R&B-tinged sound she is known for to this day. “I felt free for the first time,” she said.
Mariah Carey’s Dating History: Derek Jeter, Nick Cannon, More
Carey remarried a decade after her divorce from Mottola, tying the knot with Nick Cannon in 2008. The couple welcomed twins Moroccan and Monroe, now, 14, in 2011. She and Cannon separated in 2014 and their divorce was finalized in 2016.
Mottola, for his part, has been married to Mexican singer and actress Thalía since 2000.
