#obsessed. i want to propose marriage to whoever wrote this

[darcyolsson]

the puss in boots movie was very good btw it made me cry lol

[stereostevie]

A brutal childhood, a traumatic marriage, decades of racism: the singer has overcome it all on her way to the top. She lets rip about the people who have wronged her and the self-belief that sustains her.

It is a rainy Thursday afternoon and Mariah Carey is talking to me from her home in Los Angeles, her voice coming through my laptop. Is this the real life or is this just fantasy? (Sweet, sweet fantasy …) “Hello, good morning, good afternoon, this is a little unusual,” says a gravelly voiced Carey. You’re telling me, Mariah.

We are talking by video chat, but – as specified by Carey – without the video turned on, so it is pure chat. Despite her ability to hit the high notes, Carey has always described herself as an alto. Yet even taking that into account, her voice today sounds pretty husky. Is she feeling OK?

“It’s 6am here, and I’m awake in the bright light and it’s fabulous and I love it,” she says and makes an exaggerated groan.

I’m sorry you had to get up so early for this interview, I say.

“Well, darling, then let’s not book interviews at 6am if you’re worried! But please, it’s not you,” she says, and indeed it isn’t. The time and date of our interview have moved around so many times to accommodate Carey’s ever-shifting schedule that, for a while, it looked as if it wouldn’t happen at all. But at the last minute, it was decided we would talk at 6am her time, which I was promised would be fine because Carey is a self-described “nocturnal person”, so that would be 6pm for her. Alas, for reasons too complicated to get into, for one night only, Carey was a non-nocturnal person, so now 6am is just 6am.

“Typically I would have been working [all night] until now, but we had a situation and I couldn’t. Then I tried to get some sleep, but actually I watched the interview I did with Oprah. But it’s OK, it was just one night [of no sleep] and here I am,” she says. You don’t become one of the most successful singer-songwriters of all time – she has sold more than 200m records, and only the Beatles have had more US No 1 songs – without being a trouper.

Carey, 50, has spent lockdown with her nine-year-old twins, Monroe, named for Carey’s hero, Marilyn Monroe, and Moroccan, named partly for one of her favourite rooms in one of her houses, the Moroccan room, “where so many creative and magical moments have happened, including Nick presenting me with my candy bling”. Nick is Nick Cannon, the twins’ father, and “candy bling” is Carey’s term for her engagement ring, which Cannon hid inside a sweet before proposing. Carey liked Cannon’s proposal so much that she even wrote a song about it, called Candy Bling. The marriage proved less enduring and the couple divorced in 2016.

“Honestly, I don’t miss anyone outside, so I don’t care about lockdown,” she says with a throaty laugh. “But it’s difficult for the kids, because they’re used to three-times-a-year Disney World moments and stuff like that, and that’s just not the current state of affairs.” It is not. So Carey is conducting the promotional tour for her memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, from her kitchen table, and if she has her way – and who would dare to argue? – this will be the last round of interviews she ever does.

“No offence to doing interviews, but what would be the point? I can’t articulate it better than I already have [in the book]. From now on, I’m like, ‘Please refer to page 29,’ you know what I mean?” she says. Carey’s deliciously shady put-downs are legend: her “I don’t know her”, when asked almost two decades ago about Jennifer Lopez is still the internet’s most beloved diss. Speaking of Lopez, her name is notably not in Carey’s memoir. Instead, when recalling the hoo-hah that led to their fallout, when a sample Carey had planned to use on her single, Loverboy, appeared on Lopez’s I’m Real, Carey refers to her as a “female entertainer (whom I don’t know).” So is her official position still that she has never heard of Lopez?

There is a pause, then stifled laughter. “Oh my gosh, can you hear that music in the background? It’s Sam Cooke! It’s fantastic!” she giggles.

Not only has Carey not heard of Lopez, she cannot even hear questions about her, it seems.

Carey’s memoir is about a lot more than score-settling (although she makes time for that, too.) “I don’t think anyone could have known where I was coming from, because I was always very, I don’t know if it was protective, but I was cryptic about the past, let’s say,” she says. No more. The youngest child of an African American father and a white mother, Carey was three when her parents split up. Her childhood was threaded through with neglect and violence, not least from her older siblings. When she was six, she says, her older brother knocked her mother unconscious; when she was 12, her older sister allegedly drugged her and left her with creepy men.

“I think my staying up all night started from having such a dysfunctional family. Oftentimes, whoever was in the house was doing whatever it was that they were doing, and that felt kinda unsafe to me, so I started staying up,” she says. Another legacy of this time is Carey’s obsessive adoration of Christmas, because her childhood Christmases were so miserable. When she wrote the monster hit All I Want for Christmas Is You, she wanted, she says in her book, “to write a song that would make me feel like a carefree young girl at Christmas”.

As a child, her biracial identity made her feel she did not belong anywhere: she was so self-conscious about not being black enough that she wouldn’t even dance, as she associated that with black culture; meanwhile, white girls at school taunted her with the N-word. In one of Carey’s – and my – favourite chapters, she describes how her mother did not know how to look after her young daughter’s textured hair, so it was often matted. Carey would look enviously at the white women in shampoo adverts on TV with their flowing hair. “I am still obsessed with blowing hair, as evidenced by the wind machines employed in every photoshoot of me ever,” she writes.

One of the most painful moments in the book comes in 2001 when Carey is having what the press described as an emotional breakdown. (Carey writes that she did not have a breakdown, but “was broken down by the very people who were supposed to keep me whole.”) During this episode, she rages at her mother, who calls the police. The police take her mother’s side: “Even Mariah Carey couldn’t compete with a nameless white woman in distress,” Carey writes. Is that how she experienced it at the time, or is that how she feels generally, that not even she is safe if a white woman complains?

There is the briefest of pauses. “Those are my words, so please refer to page 29,” Carey says.

Race is very much the running theme in Carey’s memoir. This might come as some surprise to those who know her solely from the mega pop hits such as Hero and We Belong Together, as opposed to the more revealing songs, such as 1997’s Outside, which addressed her feelings of racial ambiguity (sample lyric: “Neither here nor there / Always somewhat out of place everywhere”). “I can’t help that I’m ambiguous-looking,” she says, “and most people would assume that it’s been to my benefit, and maybe it has in some ways. But it’s also been a lifelong quest to feel like I belong to any specific group. It shouldn’t have to be such a freaking thing – and please edit out the fact that I said ‘freaking’. I’m not very eloquent right now.” I ask if she was at all influenced during the writing of her book by the rise of Black Lives Matter. She dismisses the question: “Interestingly, this book predates everything that’s happening now, and the book just happened to be very timely.” In other words, Carey hasn’t caught up to the times, the times have caught up to Carey.

Despite her omnipresence over the past three decades, it is possible that you have not thought about her ethnicity. This, Carey says, has been part of the problem: from the start, she was marketed by “the powerful corporate entities” in a way that played down her racial identity. What made this even more complicated for her was that the most powerful corporate entity in charge of her career at the beginning was her first husband, Tommy Mottola, then the CEO of Sony Music.

Carey’s discovery by Mottola is the stuff of music industry legend. The then unknown aspiring singer gave him a tape of her music at a party in 1988. Mottola tracked her down, signed her and, a few years later, married her. She was 23 and he was 44. Within just a few pages in her memoir, she goes from wearing her mother’s busted shoes to work to living in a $30m mansion with Mottola, which she decorated with enthusiasm: “Though by no stretch do I like a rustic look, I do have a preference for tumbled marble on my kitchen floors,” she writes. Adjusting to the high life was not difficult.

The hits – I’ll Be There, Emotions, One Sweet Day – were unstoppable. The Mottola-Carey marriage did not fare as well, imploding in 1997. Carey expands at some length on her previous allusions to Mottola’s controlling tendencies, claiming he would spy on her and that she was effectively a prisoner in the house. In his 2013 memoir, Mottola admits his relationship with Carey was “absolutely wrong and inappropriate” and adds: “If it seemed like I was controlling, I apologise. Was I obsessive? Yes, but that was also a part of the reason for her success.” Carey points out that she went on to have nine hit albums without Mottola’s controlling obsession. She writes that Mottola tried to “wash the urban” off her, recoiling at Carey’s increasing leaning towards hip-hop and collaborations with African American artists such as ODB. “I believe I said ‘urban, translation black,’ just in case anyone thinks I don’t know,” Carey corrects me. Does she think that was just for commercial purposes, or was something else going on with Mottola? “In my opinion there was a lot of other stuff going on there,” she says.

It must have been pretty upsetting to revisit that period during the writing, I say.

“Yes it was traumatic, but was it harder than some of the other things I’ve gone through? Maybe yeah, actually,” she says with a rueful laugh. “I don’t know if I’ll ever fully recover from the damage of that emotional abuse. But in my school of thought, you have to be a forgiving person.”

Carey is extraordinarily honest in her memoir, but the book is almost as striking for what she does not include as what she does. A lot of attention has focused on her confirmation that she did, as long rumoured, have a fling with the former baseball star Derek Jeter (“I’m not being shady, but he had on pointy shoes,” she recalls a little shadily of their first meeting.) But there is no mention of other boyfriends, such as her former fiancé, the Australian billionaire James Packer.

“If it was a relationship that mattered, it’s in the book. If not, it didn’t occur,” she says.

But you were engaged to Packer, I say.

“We didn’t have a physical relationship, to be honest with you,” she says.

And that is that.

Carey’s singing voice made her famous, but her penchant for being thrillingly, hilariously high-maintenance played its own part in shaping her legend. On an episode of MTV Cribs, she explained that she had a chaise longue in her kitchen because “I have a rule against sitting up straight”, and she has talked about bathing only in milk. Does she think she is high-maintenance – and, if so, does she think it is because she came from nothing?

“You know what? I don’t give a shit. I fucking am high-maintenance because I deserve to be at this point. That may sound arrogant, but I hope you frame it within the context of coming from nothing. If I can’t be high-maintenance after working my ass off my entire life, oh, I’m sorry – I didn’t realise we all had to be low-maintenance. Hell, no! I was always high-maintenance, it’s just I didn’t have anyone to do the maintenance when I was growing up!” she says and cackles with delight.

By now it is almost 7am for her and she is wide awake. I tell her I enjoyed all the references in her book to her enjoying “a splash of wine”.

“Oh, do you? Do you love a splash for yourself?” she asks, pleased.

I do, but I was intrigued by her description of a night out with her friends, including Cam’Ron and Juelz Santana, when they were all “high” on “purple treats”. What were these “purple treats”?

“A legal substance in California known as mari-ju-ana. It’s called purple because that’s the particular weed they liked,” she says.

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And did she like it?

“Are you enquiring for yourself or are you asking if I enjoyed it?” she says, mock coy.

I am asking if you enjoyed it, Mariah.

“No, I hated it,” she deadpans, then laughs. “I’m sorry, but it’s obvious!”

I have been interviewing famous people for a long time, but talking with Carey is the closest I have come to how I imagine it would have been to spend time with Bette Davis or Aretha Franklin. There are lots of ridiculous modern celebrities, but Carey is not like that. With her mix of slightly self-parodic ridiculousness undercut with no-messin’, true-to-herself honesty, she is a proper grande dame of the old school. A diva, in other words. It is a term she has laboured under throughout her career, and it is unlikely she will escape it, even if people now finally know where she is coming from. Does she mind the D-word?

“No! Who the fuck cares?” she laughs. “Honestly! ‘Oh my God, they’re calling me a diva – I think I’m going to cry!’ You think in the grand scheme of things in my life that really matters to me, being called a diva? I am, bitches, that’s right!”

The Meaning of Mariah Carey (Macmillan, £20) and The Rarities (Sony Music) are out now.

• This article was amended on 5 October 2020 to clarify that it is in the United States where Mariah Carey is second only to the Beatles in terms of having the most No 1 singles.

[obsessedwithbbandsuju]

Kwon Jiyong/Son Taeyeon Information

This is a collection of all the information of my OFC Son Taeyeon’s timeline and relationship with G-Dragon. It’s still under construction and will probably be for a long time, but I just wanted to get it out there. 

Disclaimer: This is nothing more than a form of fun self-indulgence. Whoever GD is with or will be with, I cheer their relationship on always and hope he can find happiness with someone. He really does deserve it.

Note: All of the ages in this timeline are in South-Korean reckoning, which generally means the people are one year older than they would be in western reckoning

Last Updated: 6/14/20

Summary

Jiyong and Taeyeon meet in Seoul, South Korea, when Jiyong is ten and Taeyeon is five, due to the fact that their fathers were close in high school and college

Their fathers spent a lot of time together catching up, so Taeyeon and Jiyong became fairly close too — as close as a five-year-old and ten-year-old can get

Shortly after the birth of Taeyeon’s younger brother, Son Taeyong, Taeyeon’s mother dies; Taeyeon and her father and brother move away to the United States, and Taeyeon and Jiyong lose contact

In 2004, when Taeyeon is twelve and Jiyong seventeen, Taeyeon is accepted into YG Entertainment and they meet again

At first, they’re both awkward, but it doesn’t take long for them to become close again, helped by the fact that they both love songwriting and composing

The two of them are friends from then on, becoming increasingly closer

They occasionally go on variety shows together, and many people comment and note that they seem very close

Taeyeon features in the 2009 MV of a side track in Jiyong’s first solo Heartbreaker album, called She’s Gone, as the subject of GD’s character’s obsession

In 2010, Taeyeon features in the MV of a side track on GD & TOP’s first subunit album GD & TOP, again as the subject of Jiyong’s character’s obsession

In 2011, they both realize they’re developing romantic feelings for the other

Taeyeon and Jiyong spend a few months wondering if their feelings for each other are mutual

Both of them are perceptive people and catch the other’s subtle change in attitude toward themselves

Eventually, later in the same year (2011), Jiyong confesses to Taeyeon and she accepts; they begin dating 

The dating is discreet, however, as they’re both afraid of being caught by the media; it could be detrimental to their careers which have been extremely successful insofar, and both of them value their privacy

In the meantime, Taeyeon and Jiyong appeared on a few variety shows together, causing comments here and there about their chemistry

In 2012, YG debuts a unit group composed of the two of them, called Arcana

After their debut as a subunit, dating rumors about the two of them explode and are only exacerbated by their constant companionship while promoting the unit as well as the intimate choreography and lyrics of their first song

Nothing is confirmed, however, and Jiyong and Taeyeon continue their relationship privately, without revealing anything to the public

In late 2012, however, their relationship begins to take a turn; both of them are beginning to develop depression as a result of the constant stresses placed on them as the leaders of their extremely successful groups and the burden of managing their own careers, all since a very young age

Feeding the depression, both Jiyong and Taeyeon begin to feel distant and different from other people because of the extreme responsibilities and the sheer amount of expectations that the public and the people around them have placed on their shoulders since they were young

Because of these issues and their uncertainty and practical inability to handle them, they begin to close off and distance themselves from each other because they’re afraid of the other person seeing what they’re going through

Unfortunately, at the same time, both of them pretend that nothing is wrong; even when they appeared on variety shows together occasionally, they ignored and hid the tension between them

Eventually, in 2013, Taeyeon and Jiyong discuss the waning state of their relationship and decide to break up cleanly; it’s not a messy breakup, but a very bitter one

At first, they’re awkward all over again with each other, but eventually, they manage to come to a consensus and regain their friendship

They continue for a long time as friends, becoming even closer and more comfortable with each other over the years than they were before they dated 

As they bond, they see a lot of themselves in each other, and eventually find themselves considering the other to be the person who understands them the best, resulting in the only partially joking nickname that they call each other by: “my soulmate”

As a result of understanding each other more, Jiyong and Taeyeon come to realize that they never really fell out of love with the other, and the reason for their split when they were younger was more because they were too insecure and unstable to feel confident in maintaining a relationship with each other

Both of them deeply regret not trying harder to stay together, knowing that the other person made them happy and maybe, if they had just pushed through, things would have been alright

Despite the realization and the regret, neither Jiyong nor Taeyeon make any moves, not sure if the other feels the same way — although they’re still perceptive, even moreso, and they suspect that the feelings are mutual

In mid-2017, the two of them have a huge fight about their past relationship and barely speak to each other afterwards

For about a month, they avoid each other, but then Taeyeon suggests they meet up and they make up, albeit still feeling shaky with each other because of the magnitude of their fight

Both of them can feel more distance re-opening between them

On February 27th, 2018, Jiyong enlists in the military

During his absence, the two of them find themselves acutely missing each other and the place they had in each other’s hearts; both of them describe it as a feeling of having a hole inside them

This feeling of emptiness confirms to both of them what they’ve been almost certain of since they became close again after their breakup: they see the other as the one person in the world who understands them exactly

After Jiyong was discharged from the military, the two of them reunite, apologize again, and make up with each other properly

For a long time, neither says anything about their feelings for each other, despite knowing that they still love the other person and suspecting that the other person feels the same

They can’t bring themselves to express their feelings honestly because they’re afraid that they’ve come too far and would only hurt each other again if they tried to move past being friends in their current states (their depression and the alienation they both feel from other people thanks to shouldering so many expectations and so much responsibility at such a young age)

Eventually, though, they slip up and it ends with both of them admitting to each other that their split many years ago was because they were at such low points in their life that they didn’t feel like they could give the other person the proper relationship and love that they deserved

However, they still refrain from becoming romantic again, still caught up in the fear that getting back together would only hurt for everyone involved and might end messily, cutting them off for good

For years after that, they continue as they always were until Jiyong decides that he’s had enough

He tells Taeyeon upfront that he intends to start putting effort into rekindling a romantic relationship between them

At first, Taeyeon rejects his efforts, still afraid that they’d hurt each other more if they tried for something beyond friendship

Jiyong is consistent and stable in his efforts, coaxing her and reassuring her; with time, Taeyeon realizes that she wants something more with him, too

She finally accepts, and they enter a romantic relationship once again — one that’s much more stable and natural than what they had years ago

They reveal steadily to the public that they’re dating, similarly to Taeyang and Min Hyorin; naturally, the relationship is met with hate from some, but many people, especially their fans, support it after seeing Taeyeon and Jiyong so frequently together for so long and knowing how close they are

Both of them come to see how comfortable and happy they are with each other, and how their long friendship serves as a solid foundation for their romantic relationship because of how completely they know and understand each other

They have their ups and downs like any normal couple, but their maturity, experiences, and emotional intimacy even before starting to date again prevent them from growing apart like they did when they were younger

After years of dating, both of them start seriously considering proposing to each other; not quite as immediate marriage, but as a promise for the future

Eventually, Jiyong makes the first move and asks Taeyeon to marry him

It’s a simple proposal — they’re laying in bed together in Jiyong’s apartment, both of them exhausted after a day full of schedules, and Jiyong asks on impulse if she would spend the rest of her life with him 

Taeyeon accepts without hesitation, and they become engaged

For four years, they stay comfortably engaged, not in a rush to get married and willing to wait until they both feel ready 

After those four years, they mutually agree that they’re prepared to get married

They get married in a wedding venue a month later; it’s a small and private affair, since both of them agree that they prefer the intimacy, and they also want to avoid all the reporters and the media

Both of them keep their separate apartments even after they’re married since they live just one floor apart, but often spend time together at either one, depending on their mood

Songs from Taeyeon to Jiyong

A list of songs that Taeyeon wrote, composed, and produced with inspiration from her relationship with Jiyong

Heroine: Written a few months after Taeyeon and Jiyong broke up the first time, with Taeyeon expressing that no matter what hurts Jiyong caused her, both she and he need to go on

Stay: Written a few months after Taeyeon and Jiyong broke up the first time, expressing how, as they began to become distance from each other, Taeyeon could sense their relationship crumbling, but she wanted him to stay with her regardless

Rain: Written a few years after Taeyeon and Jiyong broke up the first time, talking about how their relationship is still something she muses about 

11:11: Written a few years after Taeyeon and Jiyong broke up the first time, talking about how, despite telling herself everything will get better eventually, memories of Jiyong and their past relationship still hurt her

Breathe (written, composed, and produced jointly by Taeyeon and Jiyong): Written a few years after Taeyeon and Jiyong broke up for the first time, talking about how their first breakup happened because they were at such bad places at the time; Taeyeon and Jiyong realized for sure that the other felt the same about them while writing this song together

Secret: Written after Taeyeon and Jiyong revealed their dating, talking about how being with him helps soothe her negative feelings

Drawing Our Moments: Written after Taeyeon and Jiyong revealed their dating, talking about what their time together means to Taeyeon

Gravity: Written after Taeyeon and Jiyong revealed their dating, talking about how their relationship keeps her grounded

Better Babe: Written after Taeyeon and Jiyong revealed their dating, talking about how Jiyong makes Taeyeon feel better

Love You Like Crazy: Written after Taeyeon and Jiyong revealed their dating, talking about how she needs him

Only One: Written after Taeyeon and Jiyong revealed their dating, describing how their mutual trust in each other gives them strength

Songs from Jiyong to Taeyeon

Bad Boy: Written during the period of difficulty during Jiyong and Taeyeon’s first relationship, expressing Jiyong’s apologetic feelings about feeling that he isn’t treating Taeyeon right, while still wanting her to stay with him

Blue: Written during the period of difficulty during Jiyong and Taeyeon’s first relationship, talking about the emptiness and pointlessness that Jiyong feels watching their relationship breaking down

Crooked: Written soon after after Jiyong and Taeyeon’s first breakup, expressing Jiyong’s resentful and angry feelings at how their relationship fell apart

If You: Written a few years after Jiyong and Taeyeon’s first breakup, expressing Jiyong’s regrets about their failed relationship and how he wishes they could try again

Let’s Not Fall In Love: Written a few years after Jiyong and Taeyeon’s first breakup, expressing how tentative Jiyong felt with their relationship back then, wanting to love Taeyeon but being afraid of getting in too deep, lest they hurt each other

Untitled, 2014: Written a few years after Jiyong and Taeyeon’s first breakup, inspired by the giant fight they had in mid-2017 that threatened their friendship until after Jiyong came back from the military, expressing how sorry Jiyong was for continuously hurting Taeyeon and how much he wished they could love each other like they did before they broke up

Quotes

Jiyong-oppa shuffled inside her apartment, his dark brown eyes dull with… well, dullness. Taeyeon knew that feeling – she was going through it right now. Not being tired exactly, but at the same time more tired than words could ever express. Not exhausted enough to fall asleep, but somehow much too exhausted to fall asleep. A feeling that felt like nothing – a feeling that came when you were just too done to bother with feelings. ‘Emptiness’ was the closest she could get to describing it in one word, but even that wasn’t quite right. Maybe emptiness if emptiness could be something physical, weighing you down inside, sapping any ounce of motivation you could find in yourself.

—Taeyeon, reflecting on the similar emotions between herself and Jiyong (from Not Quite)

It had all just… hurt. It had all just hurt so much that they decided to let each other go. He had been wandering aimlessly, so confused and so dissatisfied with everything and everyone that he gave up. On himself. On her. On them.

And now, he regretted it. Thinking of it now, they were happy together. Maybe they weren’t happy with themselves, not totally, but they had been happy with each other.

If only he had recognized that back then. If only he had decided to fight for the two of them.

—Jiyong muses about his past relationship with Taeyeon (from Too Late for Regrets)

“For me, it’s you.”

—Taeyeon

“It’s a relief that I have you.”

—Jiyong

“I don’t think I can let you go.”

—Jiyong to Taeyeon, when he expresses his desire to re-enter a romantic relationship with her

“I’m afraid. If we get this wrong again, it could be the end for us.”

“There’s no right and wrong. There’s only us.”

—Jiyong and Taeyeon, right before they agree to try again in a romantic relationship 

“Would you spend the rest of your life with me if you could?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you?”

—Jiyong proposes to Taeyeon

_______________________________

Credits:

Gravity, Better Babe, Rain, Secret, Love You Like Crazy, and Drawing Our Moments are songs by Taeyeon of SNSD; Heroine is a song by Sunmi; Breathe is a song of S.M. The Ballad, sung by Taeyeon of SNSD and Jonghyun of SHINee, Only One is sung by SNSD