Amid the glitz of her current tour, diva Mariah Carey tells Page Six that she suffers from “low self-esteem” and remembers what it was like being a broke aspiring singer.
At Madison Square Garden on Saturday, Carey exclusively told us, in an all-white room filled with Jo Malone candles, “I just feel like I am a regular human being and I deserve the same respect as anybody else. I have always had low self-esteem, and people do not recognize that.”
But she added, “I can’t measure what type of respect I deserve — I really can’t.”
Carey’s on the road with Lionel Richie for their All the Hits tour.
One review called her MSG set a “bizarre yet entertaining hour,” while another praised its “full-schmaltz escapism,” with Carey sitting on a throne as a team touches up her makeup and being carried around by hunks.
Carey says that on the inside she feels less regal. “Growing up different, being biracial, having the whole thing where I did not know if I fit in . . . That is why music became such a big part of my life, because it helped me overcome those issues,” she told us. “Sometimes it is hard to let your guard down.”
Of those around her, she says, “I do think to myself, ‘Did they mean this? Or do they not really mean it?’ And that is with everybody — it is not just with three people or just one.”
Before she made it, “I remember it not being easy getting a record deal. Making demos in the middle of the night, sleeping on the floor in the studio, being broke with no food. My go-to meal was [Newman’s Own] sauce. Me and my friend would split the pasta and sauce for, like, a week. Or it was, like, a bagel and iced tea . . . The guy would give it to me at the deli for free.”
These days, “I am working on a new fragrance. I don’t have a name . . . But it is with Elizabeth Arden. It smells like success. There is also a secret song I have been working on.”
Spies said that Carey was later at Philippe with younger beau Bryan Tanaka, where “they snuggled and kissed through the post-concert party.” Because of Carey’s towering heels and tight dress, Tanaka had to help her up and down the stairs.