Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • The Meaning of Mariah Carey

  • By: Mariah Carey
  • Narrated by: Mariah Carey
  • Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (1,832 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
The Meaning of Mariah Carey cover art

The Meaning of Mariah Carey

By: Mariah Carey
Narrated by: Mariah Carey
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £25.99

Buy Now for £25.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Kerry Katona: Whole Again cover art
Gentle on My Mind cover art
Brutally Honest cover art
We're Going to Need More Wine cover art
Master of Ceremonies cover art
Coreyography cover art
Unprotected cover art
A Song for You cover art
Broken Horses cover art
Open Book cover art
Just as I Am cover art
Born to Run cover art
Without You cover art
No Walls and the Recurring Dream cover art
The Last Black Unicorn cover art
Soul Survivor: The Autobiography cover art

About the Author and Performer

Mariah Carey is an American artist of Black and Irish ancestry. She is an award-winning singer, songwriter, producer, actress, entrepreneur and philanthropist. She has recorded 15 studio albums and holds numerous industry records, including the most number-one singles of any solo artist in history. She has received many accolades, honours and distinctions throughout her career, including the Congressional Award for her charitable work with youth through the Fresh Air Fund's Camp Mariah. She is an inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Carey remains forever thankful and fiercely loyal to her global family of fans. Ms. Carey is the mother of two children, Moroccan and Monroe.

Summary

It took me a lifetime to have the courage and the clarity to write my memoir. I want to tell the story of the moments - the ups and downs, the triumphs and traumas, the debacles and the dreams - that contributed to the person I am today. Though there have been countless stories about me throughout my career and very public personal life, it’s been impossible to communicate the complexities and depths of my experience in any single magazine article or a 10-minute television interview. And even then, my words were filtered through someone else’s lens, largely satisfying someone else’s assignment to define me. 

This book is composed of my memories, my mishaps, my struggles, my survival, and my songs. Unfiltered. I went deep into my childhood and gave the scared little girl inside of me a big voice. I let the abandoned and ambitious adolescent have her say, and the betrayed and triumphant woman I became tell her side. 

Writing this memoir was incredibly hard, humbling and healing. My sincere hope is that you are moved to a new understanding, not only about me, but also about the resilience of the human spirit. 

Love,

Mariah

©2020 Mariah Carey (P)2020 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about The Meaning of Mariah Carey

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1,585
  • 4 Stars
    162
  • 3 Stars
    57
  • 2 Stars
    15
  • 1 Stars
    13
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1,477
  • 4 Stars
    79
  • 3 Stars
    30
  • 2 Stars
    5
  • 1 Stars
    9
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1,368
  • 4 Stars
    157
  • 3 Stars
    43
  • 2 Stars
    11
  • 1 Stars
    14

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Living life from Christmas to Christmas

This is the heavily promoted autobiography of Mariah Carey narrated by the author including sections in this audio version where she sings excerpts from her songs to punctuate her life story. We hear how young Mariah, being of mixed heritage, grew up in a mainly white neighbourhood and her early encounters with racism and the pain, resentment and jealousy she experienced as a result of her parents splitting. Despite being scared and scarred, Mariah took comfort in her singing. She vowed never to be promiscuous and avoided and refused drugs. She arrived penniless in New York City with one pair of shoes and took waitress jobs to get by. There is little in these memoirs regarding exactly how she made it to the big time, presumably being married to her first husband Tommy Mottola, CEO of Sony Music, must have helped her in her early days.

Following her relationship break-up with her husband and the breakdown of her relationship with her mother, Mariah turned to God. We hear how she continues to work daily on her emotional recovery and her life has become a psychological thriller. Mariah Carey is not shy when it comes to talking about her achievements in the music industry and she rattles off impressive sales statistics for each record through her career. Mariah Carey is undoubtedly talented and comes over as you would expect; confident, forthright, and, yes, a bit of a diva.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Enchanting and raw

This is probably the best advertisement for audiobooks that you can get. The amount of care put into this audiobook conversion helps it stand on its own as a separate body of work from the memoir. The musical flourishes, the cracks in her voice, the mischievous intonation at certain key points in the story really take the emotion and meaning of the text to a whole new level.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Struggled to stay interested

Focused heavily on the black/white divide which got boring after a while as it got in the way of her story. Each person was classified as black or white, when there didn't seem to be a need to mention what colour the person happened to be. Struggled to finish it for this reason as it felt more political than personal. Disappointing.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Buy it!

Outstandingly well read!! Loved it. I wish MC could narrate every book I listen to!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Pre-ordered immediately and I don't regret it.

Long-term fan of Mariah. She seems to be in such a good place the past couple of years, which is heart-warming. I admire her resilience and work ethic so much, she's inspirational to me.

Beautifully and candidly told in Mariah's gorgeous speaking voice. This dive into her childhood struggles and the ups and downs of her adult life and career gives deeper context to her massive anthology of songs, so many of which are revealed to be more personal and based on her real life than we thought.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

The life story that Mariah Carey wanted to tell

It's consistently engaging, it's not boring and it's a reasonably well paced narrative. I thought a bit too much emphasis was placed on the childhood years - a great length went to in convincing us about a traumatic formative phase.

I did find myself questioning the honesty of the account. The recollection contains absolutely no self criticism, no feelings of guilt, no apologies, and no admissions of the writer ever getting anything wrong.

laced within the text are enough give away pieces to reveal insights into Mariah Carey and how she treats her employees and staff. While her time with Tommy Motola held many good reasons for her to slip her security team - why did she do that to the security team she employed for herself? She paints the picture of a star who is an absolute nightmare to protect or advise, out running them for fun in Lamborghini's.

Her breakdown was effectively denied and thrown back at her brother and mother as a manipulative conspiracy. Her arrival at a clinical facility was a mistake - she thought the police had taken her to a spar resort?

Her failed 'Glitter' experiment/ego project - it failed partly because of (wait for it) 9/11.

I'm sorry - while I don't want to completely discredit everything within this book, it is highly sanitised, it is carefully edited and prepared. At times it's far fetched and fanciful.

The issues around race are problematic - I'm not black, but if I was black or mixed race, I am not sure that I would appreciate the license that MC takes with her heritage. I am not entirely sure that her claims of being subjected to racial prejudice are always entirely credible. At times white people are unfair to her, black people are unfair to her, being mixed race is the heaviest burden of all. She repeatedly drags the cops for being unfair to her but struggles to substantiate that take or present the receipts.

Don't get me wrong - I acknowledge and recognise the issues of institutional racism in America, I just don't see Mariah Carey being the victim of it and I don't think many working class people of colour will hold much sympathy for her struggle.

Throughout I did feel that Mariah Carey was guilty of too much 'poor me'. Under pressure in her life, she recounts fleeing her mansion to an "ordinary hotel room". How many people live under such incredible pressure and financial worries and dream of such an ability to escape or just one night in a hotel room that MC considers "ordinary".

So I read this as a very 'adolescent' account that leaves me reading MC in many of the ways she has already been depicted in the media - quite spoiled, self indulgent, entitled, and lacking genuine objectivity.

Autobiographical accounts can suffer with this. They don't always, they don't have to. This one does.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • MC
  • 24-02-21

Raw, honest and real!!

If you want the tea ☕️ on Mariah’s life then this book is a must read. Right from her own childhood to having her own kids Mariah spills it all - the highs the lows and everything in between, it’s all in there. It’s very honest, raw and real and the audio book is just on another level with how it’s been produced with her music and singing. Would highly recommend the book but more so the audio book to bring the stories alive in Mariah’s own voice (singing and speaking) and in a way that she can only do!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Phenomenal

it's so touching and emotional so far, the connections to her music are so well done.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

One of the worst biographies I ever read

A biography that shows a singer who wants to be known as a 'diva'. For more she wants to compare with Michael Jackson or Aretha Franklin, sorry to say... nothing near.
I like Mariah's songs, but this autobiography just shows how her ego is bigger than any life besides hers. Disturbing to hear during the 9/11 attacks how she felt her problems were the 'problem'. Is you know someone you died, how can you listen to this rubbish!? I don't recommend this.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Mariah did that!

Best audiobook I’ve heard in a long time. I got so much more out of this than I would have reading the book, because of the ad libs and sing along.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful