While working on her 1995 album 'Daydream', Mariah Carey's long-time writing partner and producer Walter Afanasieff mentioned that they explored the notion of making punk music just for fun, inspired by bands like Hole, Garbage, and Sleater-Kinney. In her memoir, Carey stated that she was "playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light white female singers who were popular at the time," allowing herself to express her misery and be carefree with her feelings throughout the creation of the album, which was to be titled 'Eel Tree'. The band was to be named Chick, and guitarist Gary Cirimelli noted how impromptu the whole project was, bringing hem back to just playing for fun. After working on 'Daydream' during the day, everyone would switch to recording the grunge album around midnight, even going as late as six in the morning, pulling in studio staff, interns, friends hanging around, and people with Mariah, to contribute background vocals and ad-libs, even if they couldn't sing. The album was released in September 1995, and 'Malibu' was released as the first single, being serviced to alternative rock radio stations, where it fared poorly. It has been suggested that Sony just wanted the project to go away, as they felt like it was a threat to the pop sales, and so did little to promote the album. They had already refused to release the record with Carey's vocals as the lead, meaning that as a compromise, she enlisted friend Clarissa Dane to provide lead vocals, while leaving her own background vocals.
They renamed the album from 'Eel Tree' to 'Someone's Ugly Daughter' Chick, and the label made Carey sanitize many of the more explicit lyrics on her songs. As she later said, "back then, everything was super-controlled by the powers that be. I never really was like, 'Oh, we’re going to release it' but then I was like, I should release it. I should do it under an alias. Let people discover it and whatever, but that got squashed". She felt that it was a sign of what they could do without the interference of record label executives, and her then-husband and CEO of Sony Music, Tommy Mottola. Due to the Sony's dissatisfaction with the album and the single's poor performance on radio, critical reaction in the US was muted. although 'Malibu', garnered a positive review in Billboard magazine. In 2020, after Carey revealed her involvement in the album, Pitchfork reported that copies soon started to appear on Amazon and eBay, with prices of up to $800.00. Aside from Clarissa Dane and technical staff, those involved in the project used pseudonyms, meaning the identities of those credited are not known, apart from W. Vlad, who is Walter Afanasieff, who was Carey's main collaborator at the time of the project's recording, and W. Chester, who is Gary Cirimelli. D. Sue is believed to be Carey, due to the name being credited as both a backing vocalist and as a writer on every original track, consistent with Carey's comments on the creation of the project, and she is also believed to be credited on the project as Chick, the name listed as being responsible for the album's production and art direction. Outside of physical copies made at the time, the album is not available on streaming services, so it's quite hard to track down a copy, and even though lead vocals are not by Carey, the fact that she wrote all the songs bar a cover of Cheap Trick's 'Surrender' will make this a must-hear for her fans.
Track listing
01 Joe
02 Love Is A Scam
03 Violent
04 Malibu
05 Demented
06 Freak
07 Agony
08 Surrender
09 Hermit
10 Prom Queen
11 Stork: Orphan In My Room
