Mariah Carey Talks How She Wrote “Hero,” a Patrick Swayze Memory, and Becoming Queen of Christmas

In the modern pantheon of Las Vegas residences, few come within a dice roll of Mariah Carey’s.

Sin City is a familiar place for the Grammy Award winner, who made her Las Vegas debut with a four-night residency, Live at the Pearl, in 2009, and more than a decade later, she’s still at it. This year found Carey in her fifth residency—a showcase to commemorate the 19th anniversary of her blockbuster album The Emancipation of Mimi, aptly dubbed the Celebration of Mimi. After wrapping its 2024 run at the Dolby Live in August, the concert will return for an encore this coming January and February.

But before she heads back to the Strip, Carey is preparing to celebrate another anniversary. This October marks 30 years of—cue that twinkling snow globe—“All I Want for Christmas Is You,” and she’s taking another holiday-themed tour on the road.

To bring it to life, she’s been “planning and plotting all year for the people,” she tells Vanity Fair. “I really do love Christmas so much. And this year, for the anniversary, being able to perform for people who come out to the shows is exciting.”

When I reach Carey via Zoom this particular Wednesday evening (she’s famously a night owl), she beams in from a recording studio to talk about what you’ll find in her Las Vegas dressing room, appearing on Saturday Night Live, and when to expect new music.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Vanity Fair: When was your first time in Vegas? Did you ever visit before you initially broke out?

Mariah Carey: No, I didn’t have the time for that back then. But I do remember going to the Billboard Music Awards and they were in Vegas. I was with Stevie Wonder; he gave me an award and it was pretty amazing. It was, like, ’98 or something, but I’m not good with knowing dates.

Why keep on returning? Is there an allure to being in one place where everybody comes to you?

I mean, there’s an allure to that, being in one place and everybody coming to you. But you know, we started doing these residencies a couple years back, and then we just continued [because we enjoyed them].

Alright, take us into your dressing room at Dolby Live. What would one find?

Oh my God. I wish I could just invite you there. Well, what’s in there? There’s pink couches; there’s a hair and makeup station and tables. It’s not glamour, but it’s alright.

Do you have anything on the wall that psychs you up for the show?

I could lie, but I’m just going to say no [laughs].

Former president Obama would listen to Frank Sinatra before he’d give major speeches. Do you have anything on beforehand to get you in the right headspace, or are you quiet?

No, I listen to music. It’ll just be whatever’s on, but I often listen to Prince back there.

How many wardrobe changes of dresses and gowns, beautiful gowns—

Beautiful gowns.

—do you have? Are you switching it up per show?

I’ve been switching it up lately. There’s a few different beautiful gowns. I don’t know if they’re beautiful, but they’ll do.

When you first started writing music, did you have any songwriter idols that you aspired to be like? Or were you just writing to facilitate your own path and you weren’t thinking of other songwriters?

I was definitely not trying to follow in anyone’s footsteps. It was always something that was near and dear to me, writing songs and singing the ones I wrote. I wrote for my friend Trey Lorenz; he made an album, and he and I wrote some songs together. But it was really just about my own self-expression, you know?

Why was that important to you?

It started when I was in seventh grade. I just started writing, and I think I always thought that every singer writes their own songs. Like, of course they do! But they don’t. But I continue writing to this day. I just have an idea and kind of broaden it from where it starts out. And if I’m writing with someone else, that can be fun. But I really like writing on my own the most.

Let’s say when you were working on “Hero,” for example. Did you start out saying “I want to write an emotional ballad” and go from there?

For “Hero,” I was in the studio and some people from Sony Pictures came by and were telling me about the movie Hero with Dustin Hoffman. It was about this guy who saves a bunch of people and da-da-da. I walked out the room, went to the bathroom, and came back. The idea came to me: [sings] “A hero comes along.” I walked back into the room and I started singing it to Walter Afanasieff, who I used to work with. I said, “This is the [kind of] song that we should do.” So we just laid it out and later on I finished it, but it was a pretty fast one.

Do you feel the same emotions performing “Hero” now compared to when it first came out?

It’s not exactly the same, but when people are reacting in the audience, it makes me happy. I performed “Hero” for President Obama during the inauguration, so that was a great moment. And then another time with “Hero” was a performance I did for Bill Clinton, and it was for friends and family of police who had lost family members. Other than that…it’s been a long career!

I have a few more nerdy questions about songwriting.

I love that you’re asking me about songwriting. Thank you.

Of course! What has been the quickest song you ever wrote that just came together? I know some of them just tend to fall into place.

Yeah, and that’s kind of what I was saying with “Hero.” That one kind of just fell into place. Even though I finished it later, it did initially come to me. That was one of them. As for other ones, in that era I had a lot of songs that just came to me quickly. Honestly, I would have to say that “Hero” was the fastest one.

What about longest? Any songs a decade or more in the making?

Yeah, with my song “Close My Eyes” from Butterfly, I had started writing it, like, four years before I picked it back up again, before I decided to finish it. It really went with the experiences in my life at the time and what I had been through. So it was a four-year-long process with that one, but it was something that was very personal. And a lot of my true fans like it because it’s very much a representation of me.

Are there wildly different versions or demos of your hits that you fully deconstructed before they were released? For example, turning a ballad into a faster track, or a song meant for the club and slowing it down a bit?

Well, with remixes being such a thing, there are very many different versions of certain songs. Like “Dreamlover,” the album version is totally different from the David Morales remix and I resang it. There’s a lot of remixes that completely change the song, but they have the same spirit somehow.

Speaking of “Dreamlover,” I have a question about that one. Why is it one word? My guess is that you didn’t want to have the same title as the Bobby Darin song “Dream Lover.”

That had something to do with it! Even though I didn’t even know that song, I [eventually] found out about it. I don’t know. I wanted it to be one word; I just liked that better. I just like a one-word-titled song.

Your annual November 1 video announcing the Christmas season, “It’s Time,” is highly anticipated. Now it’s a genre all its own, with other people using that same concept to tease something. Where did the idea come from to put the initial one out?

Well, it started out because I would walk around saying, “Not yet…” as if to say, “It’s not time yet.” Like, if people were playing Christmas music [before the season had begun], I’d say, “Not yet…” So me and the team sat down and decided, Okay, we’ll make a “it’s time” video to signal when it’s time.

I know that every year during the holidays, your tradition is to cook your father’s recipe for linguine with white clam sauce.

Yes. How do you know this?

I remember you saying this a while ago, and it stuck in my mind because my father makes the same thing for Christmas Eve. But I’m wondering how you make it? Are you using canned clams or fresh clams flown in from, like, Canada?

Wait, are the clams in Canada better than the clams from the US?

I don’t know. I was thinking about a place with the freshest water.

A freshwater place, yeah. Funny you should ask, because last night I asked the cook here to make me that recipe, but they never! Get it! Right! So I have to make it for myself. It’s just not the same. No offense to anybody, but I just have to do my own way. It’s a very simple recipe, and it’s about really getting the grit out of the clams. And no, I do not use canned clams.

Are you using garlic or parsley?

Yeah, garlic, parsley, and onions, but very minced.

Thank you for the recipe. I know you’re in the studio today. So what can we expect: Do we have new music coming out?

We have new music coming out…

Tell me everything! Let’s announce it right now.

I don’t want people to say I’m threatening them with an album, because that happened last year. So just say we have new music coming out and I’m very excited about it. I can’t wait to put it out, but it won’t be for at least until next year.

So then no new Christmas music this year?

Well, I did write a Christmas song this year, but I don’t know how we’d talk about that. Because I can’t talk about these things, because then people get mad at me and say I’m teasing them.

I have one more question for you, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. For your debut on the show, you were a musical guest during season 16, promoting your debut album, and it was a big show: Patrick Swayze hosted, and he and Chris Farley performed the infamous Chippendales Audition sketch that night. What memories do you have of that week, since you were brand-new to the scene?

I remember meeting Patrick Swayze and that moment being so surreal for me. I was so new at being on huge worldwide TV shows, I didn’t know what that was about. But I really leaned into the performance of it and the singing. I think I was doing “Vision of Love” and “Vanishing,” and I think during the commercial break we did “All in Your Mind” with my backup singers.

Would you get, for lack of a better term, butterflies during those early days, especially this era of your debut album?

[Laughs] I would definitely get butterflies, but not that bad. I don’t know how, but I got through it.