BEVERLY HILLS, California — Mariah Carey looked like a blonde-streaked tornado in hot pants. You could almost see the flames clicking off the back of her high heels as she burst through the door and twirled into her specially prepared bedroom in an exclusive bungalow at the chi-chi Beverly Hills Hotel in early May. After a full day of schmoozing all her new friends at her new label, Virgin Records, Mariah was getting ready to do six hours of interviews and then hit the studio for additional recording sessions for her album, Glitter. She'd been up most of the night before working on the video for the record's first single, "Loverboy."
Her cast of half a dozen minders and makeup folks spent an hour changing her look before Mariah sat for the first interview. Used to the constant tugs, pulls and primps, Mariah seemed oblivious as she sent and received dozens of two-way pages. Six hours and two wardrobe and makeup changes later, she poured herself into a limo to rush to the 1 a.m. recording session. In between, she patiently answered the same questions three and four times and insisted to her manager that she needed a specific type of portable studio for her trailer on the next morning's continuing "Loverboy" shoot. She also obsessed over her role in the indie drama "Wisegirls," the final mixes of the Glitter album and the promotional duties for her first big-screen starring role in the "Glitter" movie.
There's burning the candle at both ends ... then there's taking a blowtorch to it. By the time she bounded out of the limo to enter the studio, Mariah admitted to being pretty burnt out. "I'm honestly really, really delirious and stressed out and overworked and doing too much," Carey said two months before she was checked into a New York hospital after suffering what her publicist termed an "emotional and physical breakdown."
Mariah told Gil Kaufman and Matt Anderson that while making "Glitter" was more work than she ever imagined, these are some of the best times of her life. But even as she enthused about her movies and her new music, it was clear behind her pained smile that the pressure was mounting. "I haven't slept in, like, two weeks, and that's an important detail for you to know," she said, grabbing the tape recorder and talking directly to her fans. "I want them to know that this is a freaking complete clown fest," she said, adding that if she wasn't running so hard she'd "be crying on the floor, OK?"
