The Meaning of Mariah Carey

Puerto Rico. At our next therapy session, I announced to Tommy that I needed to go on a trip. I made the case that it was time for him to honor the scope of our new agreement: he was supposed to let me go, and we could see other people. I’d been out alone socially, I’d been in recording sessions without him picking me up, I’d been taking acting classes and spending the night at my teacher’s house (right), and now it was time to go somewhere, just for me. (Okay, maybe I felt a teeny bit bad about that last part—but ya gotta do what ya gotta do to survive.) I made it sound super reasonable: perhaps me and my assistant, or maybe another girlfriend, would go away for the weekend, to somewhere where I could swim in the ocean and chill in the sun and write (keeping in mind I’d never done anything like that while at Sing Sing, never)—somewhere beautiful and close, like Puerto Rico. My assistant was totally into it. She was still young herself, and this was a legitimate secret romance. We were all caught up.

We stayed at the El Conquistador Resort, a lovely collection of villas in a gorgeous, classic, old-style Spanish-Caribbean hotel on a lush private island. It was tucked into green hills and right on an exclusive beach. We decided to go to the popular dance club Egipto, which was in Old San Juan, nearly an hour away. It was designed like an Egyptian temple, and as if in a scene in Antony and Cleopatra, in walked Derek. We had not orchestrated this meeting, but I just knew. I so believed in my heart he would be there at the club that I had had my assistant book a villa at another resort, El San Juan Hotel, that was nearby. We stayed at the club briefly, and I informed him I had secured a little hideaway.

So there we were again, sneaking around to avoid my security. We went out the back door of the club and walked through a maze of small pathways through the palm trees and blooming bushes to the resort and my villa, accompanied by sultry night air. We got back to my room, and that familiar dance of the butterflies began. Being alone with someone I had a genuine attraction to was all so new to me. And again, I threw caution to the Caribbean breeze and surrendered into his arms and the moment. We lay for the night in one embrace, engaging in one, single, long kiss. It was the sexiest moment—without sex.

I knew my security saw me and saw Derek leave my room in the morning, but I finally felt something stronger than fear of Tommy’s revenge. Now that I had it, I couldn’t imagine life without this feeling. Desire became my reason for living, my all. Sleep didn’t come on the plane ride back to New York, but a song did. I started writing.

I am thinking of you

In my sleepless solitude tonight

If it’s wrong to love you

Then my heart just won’t let me be right

’Cause I’ve drowned in you

And I won’t pull through

Without you by my side

—“My All”

Going to Puerto Rico was a paradigm shift. After that trip, I strategized and carried out another coup on behalf of my heart: I put everything I was feeling at that time into a song. It was a gigantic risk, because I knew Tommy assumed I was having a sexual affair (even though, technically, I wasn’t yet). It was also a revelation. There was an excitement and purpose awake in me that fueled me to a new level in my creativity. I was hearing different melodies, and I had new, real experiences to draw from. So I did something dangerous and beautiful for me—and everyone was scared for me.

I’d give my all to have

Just one more night with you

I’d risk my life to feel

Your body next to mine

’Cause I can’t go on

Living in the memory of our song

I’d give my all for your love tonight

There would be hell to pay, I knew. I truly believed I was actually risking my life, but I felt life wasn’t worth living if I couldn’t have what I’d had that night. “My All” was the realest, boldest, most passionate love song I’d ever written. I brought to it the Spanish undertones, the warm breeze, the ecstasy of desire, and the agony of separation that I remembered so clearly.

Baby can you feel me?

Imagining I’m looking in your eyes

I can see you clearly

Vividly emblazoned in my mind

And yet you’re so far, like a distant star

I’m wishing on tonight

I’d give my all to have

Just one more night with you

—“My All”

This song was about life and death, and I didn’t want it to get lost in any over-the-top schmaltz. I needed it to be strong and simple. I wanted the vocals to be the centerpiece, the focal point in the mix, with a stripped-down track behind them. It was all about the emotion, the soul, and I sang it as if my life depended on it.

I first played the song for Tommy and Don Ienner, the then chairman of the Columbia Records Group, in the Range Rover, on our way to a restaurant in upstate New York. Don knew it was a hit. Tommy knew it could never be about him. A new place inside of me as an artist that had previously been sealed off was now fully exposed. And “My All” was a hit, a platinum hit. Later, Jermaine (Dupri), The-Dream, and Floyd “Money” Mayweather, three solid dudes, told me “My All” is their favorite song of mine. As creators, they know love is life, and there’s nothing more real than that.

I had already begun working on Butterfly before my encounters with Derek, but they inspired some of the growing maturity and complexity in my songwriting and structures. The narratives and the melodies were coming from a fresher place. I was hearing things