Mariah Carey got her Flowers on Wednesday: She appeared on Apple Music’s Flowers as the series’ first guest, where she was interviewed by SZA for the livestreamed event.
The pair were in the studio the night before, SZA revealed during their conversation, where they listened to Carey’s new album and also discussed Carey’s secret “grunge” album she recorded back in the late Nineties, Someone’s Ugly Daughter, which she recorded under the name Chick and recorded as she was making 1995’s Daydream.
As for her new material, Carey revealed her favorite song from the new effort is the title track from Here for It All. “That’s my favorite, and that’s why I named it Here for It All ‘cause I didn’t want people to pass it by,” Carey said. “Because I was going to put it as the end song, and then I did, just to make sure people heard it.” Later, the played a snippet of the track, with SZA commenting about the gospel breakdown in it.
They also discussed Carey’s faith and the track “Jesus I Do,” which features the Clark Sisters, who Carey said she had been “worshipping for years and years.”
SZA asked about Carey’s note choices, which Carey said comes as she’s writing. “It’s interesting, because a lot of it’s born when I’m writing the song, you know. And there’s a melody that is just come to me,” she said. “And it stays in the song and it, you know, when the song becomes whatever it’s going to become, that’s it.”
As for her ad-libs, she added: “I don’t know that I think about it. It’s just something that comes to me during the the moment of creating the song. So it’s all one thing is what I was trying to say before. … But, yeah, it’s all one moment for me most of the time.”
At one point, SZA asked Carey what “the most important thing that your mother taught you about life and about music and singing in general?” Carey’s mother Patricia was an opera singer and vocal coach. Patricia died in August 2024, the same day Carey’s estranged sister, Alison, died. “We had a very interesting relationship, and then she just passed away last year,” Carey said of her mother.
“I think one of the main things that she said, the one thing she said to me, and it was clear, and it was right there, she said, ‘Don’t say if I make it, say when I make it,” she continued, which brought tears to her eyes.
The full taped livestream is currently available to Apple Music subscribers. Carey’s 16th studio album, Here for It All, arrives on Friday.
