It’s hard to believe
Mariah Carey had any other career before becoming a singer-songwriter-actress triple threat, considering that her first album “Someday” was released when she was just 20. According to her, before she landed a record deal, she tried her hand at a backup career just in case her singing dreams didn’t land, and despite her reputation as a diva and perfectionist who needs to get everything *just so* she was an utter failure at this plan B profession. We don’t believe she could fail at any job with such drive and ambition, but please Mariah, tell us.“I knew I would be a horrible waitress, which I was,” she told
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with a giggle.
“First of all, I hated it, so that contributed to it,” she continued. “But one of the things is—and this is sad because I also failed remedial math even though my father was an aeronautical engineer, I didn’t get any of that—I couldn’t work the cash register properly! And the girls who really cared about the job and were there waitressing—and were all older than me, because I was a kid doing this, since I started in the industry so young—they were like, ‘Oh my gosh this girl is messing up our orders! She’s messing everything up!’”“And plus one other thing, no one could remember my name! I didn’t want to have to always explain, ‘Oh Mariah, and this is how you pronounce it.’ Because back then nobody had that name. So oftentimes I would make up a name, and say Debbie, something more common. And then I would forget the name I told that table!” she laughed.“So they’d be like, ‘Debbie!’ and I was sitting there, listening to my demo, not even aware that someone’s calling me. ‘Oh yeah, I told them my name was Debbie, that’s right.’”This is your reminder to always tip your servers handsomely.[video_embed id='2045414']RELATED: Mariah Carey's book comes with tissues, according to Billy Eichner [/video_embed]Mimi also admitted that she tried her hand at another plan B because waitressing was just too excruciating.“You attended 500 hours of beauty school,” Stephen mentioned. “So you’re literally a beauty school drop out.”Running with that
Grease reference, Mimi put on Frenchie's accent to confirm, “500 hours, yesss. Yes I am.”She went on to explain that, as a mixed-race woman trying to break into an industry that didn’t know how to pigeon-hole her, she figured being a beautician might boost her self-esteem and give her a fallback. “I’ve been saying this for years, I had so many weird things surrounding my identity and figuring out my hair and how to do makeup and stuff like that. Because I never felt pretty or like I fit in one particular group or whatever. But I always knew I wanted to be a singer so I was like okay, beauty school in the interim will be helpful because I knew I would be a horrible waitress!”With her new
memoir, her
new album, and even a
secret album revelation, we are loving all of these previously-hush-hush details about Mariah’s life![video_embed id='2044336']BEFORE YOU GO: This hilarious TikTok sums up 2020 perfectly [/video_embed]
