"Fly Away Mariah Carey's Butterfly"

Mariah Carey was supposed to be the Princess of Pop, but somewhere along
the way she become the songbird in the gilded cage.  And then she flew
away.

Perception and reality can be funny things in the music business.  For
many years the majority of music fans have seen Mariah Carey as the
epitome of conservative, white-bread American pop.  Her biggest hits
were either sanitised dance-pop or big, overblown ballads.  The records
sold millions, Mariah lived a fairytale existence (even marrying Tommy
Mottola, the 40-something boss of her record company).  They built an
enormous house.  It all seemed perfect.

The reality was different.  Mariah Carey was, in fact, a poor kid from a
broken, multi-racial family who struggled for years at the bottom rungs
of the music business before she finally attracted the attention of her
record company.  For he first four albums, Carey seemed content to be
the safe, predictable pop diva that the marketing people wanted us to
see; the albums were certainly selling tens of millions, and the singer
was recognised as being one of the greatest talents of her generation.
But starting with the release of her 1995 album Fantasy, Mariah Carey
slowly began forcing more and more of her musical personality into her
albums, exploring the r&b and hip hop that she'd grown up with.

It was all part of a personal rebellion that culminated in her very
public split from Mottola earlier this year.  And now comes a new album,
Butterfly, that reveals Mariah Carey spreading her wings.  You only have
to listen to the album's first single, Honey, to know that changes are
afoot.

"I know I have this image, this unreachable Cindarella, but that's just
something that someone made up and it kinda stuck for awhile," says
Mariah today.

"I mean, that isn't my upbringing.  I went through a lot and saw a lot
of things, my life was far from sheltered or privileged, so when I work
with uban acts, people who have come up from the streets and worked hard
to get where they are, I feel as if we have a lot in common.  It was
never part of my personality to be this remote princess.  I'd rather be
with the people my own age doing the kind of music that I like to listen
to."

"I grew up in New York, I've been listening to urban music, hip hop,
since it was invented - so it's not like I suddenly changed or decided
that I'd like to do this kind of music overnight.  The problem was that
the label got used to a particular thing that worked for me
commercially, and there's always going to be some pressure to keep doing
that because it works.  What people need to realise is that the audience
is capable of dealing with change."

That's about as close as Mariah Carey ever gets to discussing the
breakup of her marriage and her creative rebirth; she is, after all,
well-trained in the art of not giving too much away.  But she is proud
of the creative contribution she has made to her last two albums, and
says she's itching to flex her musical muscle.

"There are so many things about this album that are really personal and
I've lived with this album more than almost anything else I've done,"
she says.  "So much of me has gone into making this album that I almost
can't believe it's going to come out."

Working with high-profile collaborators like Sean 'Puffy' Coombs (aka
Puff Daddy), David Morales and Jermaine Dupri, Carey has fashioned a
brace of up-tempo dance tunes that tread the line between hip hop
credibility and pop sheen.  And because she's never be so stupid as to
cut the rug from under her traditional fanbase, she has also included a
number of ballads written with her longtime songwriting partner, Walter
Afanasieff.  The result is an album that makes considerable musical
progress whilst still maintaining a strong commerical appeal.

And this time, she promises, an Australian tour will happen.  "I'm
coming, I'm coming," she laughs.  "We'll do all the songs that have been
popular over the years - from Vision Of Love right through to the
present.  I'm very conscious of the fact that Australia has never seen
me live, so I'm putting together a show that will disappoint no-one."