Mariah Carey Teases Her Unreleased ’90s Grunge Album on ‘The Tonight Show’

Will Mariah Carey‘s unreleased grunge album finally see the light of day?

In a new interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, the Songbird Supreme, 56, opened up about making her unreleased grunge album Someone’s Ugly Daughter in the ’90s and even played a clip of its track “Prom Queen” for the audience.

Fallon, 51, brought up the album by noting that Questlove recently played him a few tracks, which he loved. He then held up the cover, which features a lipstick drawing as well as a kiss print and a dead cockroach.

“Someone’s Ugly Daughter is the title. Never released. But I do like the cover, and I drew this cover. I didn’t draw the roach. The roach is real,” said Carey of the album, attributed to the band Chick.

The Grammy winner recalled making the project. “I was just rebelling because I was working on Daydream, and I was doing, like, ‘Always Be My Baby’ and ‘Fantasy,’ and those kind of songs, and I loved doing that,” she said. “But at the end of the night, when the band was still there, I’d say, ‘Can you play, like, [vocalizes]?’ You know, just play this so that I can get out of my head.”

Questlove chimed in, “It’s her best record.”

Fans have long known about the album and heard versions of its songs featuring lead vocals by Carey’s friend, Clarissa Dane. But the “Obsessed” singer recently played a few snippets of her vocal takes at Apple Music’s Flowers event in New York City earlier this month.

During the Tonight Show interview, she allowed Fallon to play a clip of the song “Prom Queen” for the audience. “I just want to say I don’t know which record label this is owned by,” said Carey. “I don’t think it’s any of them because it’s just the way that it went down, but let’s discuss. It was never released.”

Fallon suggested she release Someone’s Ugly Daughter as a Christmas gift to listeners, but she explained the project “doesn’t really go with the season. It’s more Halloween.”

“Prom Queen” features lyrics about a teenage boy figuring out his identity. ““On the day he turned 16 / He washed his face and brushed his teeth / Looked in the mirror, longingly / Said ‘I could be the next prom queen’ / Yeah, I can be anything that I want to be / Someday I will show them all,” she sings on the track.

Carey then added of the album, “I always regretted not putting it out, but they kind of stopped me at that point. You know, it was Sony at the time. We love the Sony now, but back then… a little controlling.”

“We can put it out, yes,” she continued, “on Jimmy Fallon records.”

Elsewhere during Carey’s latest appearance on The Tonight Show, she performed “Play This Song” with Anderson .Paak from her new album, Here for It All, which came out on Friday, Sept. 26.

In a December 2024 interview with PEOPLE, Carey opened up about Someone’s Ugly Daughter. “People have been asking me about it, and it’s something that I love so much,” she said. “And we might see it in 2025, probably a little bit later than that.”