The pop star also revealed an unreleased grunge album from the mid-’90s during her appearance on The Tonight Show
Mariah Carey stopped by The Tonight Show to perform her recent track “Play This Song” with Anderson .Paak and house band the Roots. The singer, clad in a gold gown, took center stage to showcase the song with the help of Paak, who played the grand piano alongside her.
“Play This Song” comes off Carey’s long-awaited 16th album, Here for It All. The album, out now, features 11 songs, including collaborations with Paak and the Clark Sisters. It marks the pop singer’s follow-up album to 2018’s Caution. In the seven years since releasing Caution, Carey hasn’t shared much new solo music, though she has dropped anniversary reissues of several classic albums, the 2020 compilation The Rarities, and plenty of Christmas music. She’s also guested on remixes of songs by Ariana Grande and Latto.
Carey sat down with The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon to discuss the album and her family. She also responded to the viral BBC interview in which she was asked about Katy Perry going to space. The interviewer asked Carey if she wanted to also go to space and she responded, “I think I’ve done enough.”
“Well, I mean, we’re going to space now?” Carey replied. “What are we doing?”
Elsewhere in the interview, Carey reflected on an unreleased album she made in the ’90s. “I was just rebelling because I was working on Daydream and I was doing, like, ‘Always Be My Baby’ and ‘Fantasy’ and those kinds of songs and I loved doing that,” she recalled. If the band was still available at the end of the night she would ask them to play grunge rock music “just so I can get it out of my head.”
She allowed Fallon to play a snippet of one of the tracks, noting that she doesn’t know which record label owns the music. “It never was released,” she said. “I kind of regret not putting it out.”
