Before Mariah Carey rose to prominence in the early 90s as a chart-topping artist for Sony Music, she was working as a background singer while writing and recording her own material. In the oft-told story of her discovery, 18-year-old Carey handed Sony Records executive Tommy Mottola (her future husband) her demo tape at an industry party in New York City. Mottola listened to the tape in his limo after leaving the party and immediately turned around, but Carey had left.
Mottola would eventually track Carey down and sign her to Sony, where she would re-record several of the tracks from her demo tape for her debut album. Two of those tracks, "Vision of Love" and "Someday", went on to become number one singles.
The now-legendary tape has never been heard publicly, although Carey has said in multiple interviews that she preferred some of the demo tape tracks to the versions that ended up on the final album. The demo tape tracks are a sort of holy grail for devoted Mariah Carey fans, and that's why fans have taken notice of two videos posted on YouTube claiming to play snippets of the tracks.
The videos were posted the week of March 15th by a user named DalidaAn, an account created in September of 2009. The two videos are the only ones posted by the user. The first video, titled "Mariah Carey's demo tape", shows a finger pushing the play button on an old tape player. The snippet that plays is "Vanishing", a cut off Carey's debut.
The second video, titled "Part 2", plays a version of "Someday", the third single off Carey's debut album and her third consecutive number one. The same week the videos were posted, Carey tweeted that she was listening to an unreleased track from her demo tape.
Carey recently returned to Sony Music under their label Epic, and she plans to release an updated album of all her number one singles plus some new material to coincide with her residency at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. The timing of Mariah's tweet, the posting of the videos, and her return to her former label have fans speculating that Carey herself may be leaking the tracks.
