Uh, Oh! What Mariah Carey's Sayin' About Debbie Gibson!

Uh, Oh! What Mariah Carey's Sayin' About Debbie Gibson!
Teen Machine - May 1991 Issue
Mariah Carey has made it big - fast! At the time of this writing, her self-titled album is Number Three on Billboard's pop-album chart and has already gone double-platinum.

Naturally, when a star shoots up as quick as Mariah has, people start talking, gossiping, looking for dirt. Lately, when Mariah was talking about how it was for her coming up, she said "I'd be sitting there watching some video - Debbie Gibson or something - and I'd be fuming furiously like, 'Why do I have to sit here and waitress while these people are doing videos?' I was sooo pissed." Now, some people seem to think that this comment was meant as some sort of direct insult against Debbie. After all, why when Mariah was just starting out should she not have been jealous of Debbie's success? They're both 20-year-old singers from Long Island, and who knows? These girls could go way back. Maybe they went to preschool together or something. If so, they're keeping it quiet. However, Debbit Gibson told TM recently that the tape of her personal stereo was Mariah's record, and that Deb really enjoyed listening to it. Other similarities? Both girls got into music early in their lives - Mariah being the daughter of an opera singer, growing up listening to Billie Holiday and other jazz greats, and Debbie talking all kinds of voice and piano lessons. One difference in the personal lives of these two is that Mariah left home at seventeen, the day after graduating from high school, to move to New York City to try to make her dream come true. In contrast, by the time Debbie was 17, she was already a major teen star, and today she still lives at home. Of course, the girls' singing styles are different, with Mariah singing mainly R&B and Debbie venturing more toward hip-hop/dance these days.

The fact that Mariah sings R&B and looks white has caused many people to comment in the early stages of her chart success. One magazine called her a "white girl who can sing," and this led Mariah to proclaim the following: "My father is black and Brazilian. My mother is Irish and an opera singer. I am me. My father was was very upset about what [the magazine] wrote. It seems that most people don't know much about interracial children."

"I worked hard for a very long time," says Mariah, clarifying that although her album was a quick success, the glory didn't come effortlessly. "I knew I had to stay with it. If you don't believe in yourself, you never get anywhere. That's one thing my mother taught me." Maybe that's why being first from her over-20 waitressing jobs didn't discourage her during the time she was poor and shopping her demo at different record companies in the big apple.

That Mariah didn't give up and finally got someone to listen to her demo proves that a little envy can fuel a big dream. Whether or not there is any connection between Mariah and Debbie's past seems unimportant when you consider that there's plenty of room for both these talents in the world of pop music. "I knew it wasn't a pipe dream," says Mariah. "I never wanted anything else and I never had any other interests."




Many thanks to Kerry from Mariah Carey Collection for the scans.