Mariah Carey just turned a long‑whispered in‑joke into the emotional centerpiece of her MusiCares Person of the Year tribute. At the Los Angeles Convention Center gala two nights before the Grammys, the organization honored her five‑decade run of pop, R&B, gospel and hip‑hop hits—then surprised her by blasting cuts from her “secret” 90s grunge album while she watched from a front‑row table.
Back in 1995, Carey quietly recorded and co‑produced a grunge record called Someone’s Ugly Daughter with her friend Clarissa Dane under the band name Chick, a side project she only fully claimed in her 2020 memoir. For the MusiCares tribute, Foo Fighters tore through tracks like Someone’s Ugly Daughter and Love Is a Scam with Taylor Momsen on lead vocals, as Carey stood and sang along. According to coverage from outlets like the Associated Press, it was the rare moment in a tribute set packed with ballads and big‑voice covers that actually got the night’s honoree visibly giddy.
The rest of the evening functioned like a living résumé and thank‑you note. Babyface called her “one of one” and “a blueprint of a great songwriter,” while a lineup that included Foo Fighters, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, Laufey, Adam Lambert and more took turns reworking hits from across her catalog. MusiCares framed the award as a recognition of both her chart run and her philanthropy, placing her in a hall of fame that already includes names like Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton and Tom Petty.
Onstage, Carey told the crowd the honor was “one of the most significant moments of my life and career,” and joked that it felt surreal to sit back and hear her own work reinterpreted after so many years of driving every detail herself. The decision to fold in the grunge material she once had to hide under a pseudonym underscored how much of her story is only now being fully acknowledged—turning a black‑tie Grammy‑week staple into a winking, very Mariah reclamation of an era where she wasn’t allowed to be as weird or as loud as she wanted.
