Mariah Carey is looking back on a piece of advice from her late mother, Patricia Carey.
The Songbird Supreme spoke to SZA about her life, career and upcoming album Here for It All for Apple Music’s Flowers event at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Wednesday, Sept. 24. At one point in the conversation, Mariah teared up recalling advice Patricia, who died in 2024, used to give her.
“I think one of the main things that she said, the one thing she said to me, and it was clear, and it was right there,” Mariah, 56, told SZA, 35. “She said, ‘Don’t say if I make it. Say when I make it.’ So… I’m going to get emotional.”
The “Snooze” singer then comforted her. “Literally, we love you. A mother is everyone’s most precious gift, just as you weren’t the most precious gift to your children, just as you’ve been a mother to [your fans],” she said. “May I hug you?”
They embraced, and SZA added of Patricia, “I’m sure she’s incredibly proud of you, of how you’re mothering [twins Moroccan and Monroe] and carrying yourself in the world. You’re doing an amazing job.”
Elsewhere during the event, Mariah spoke about Patricia’s career and its connection to her own. “My mom was an opera singer. She actually made her debut at Lincoln Center, so I was always around music since I was little,” she said.
The “Sugar Sweet” musician continued, “And she was also a diva because she was an opera singer, and that’s the definition of the word if you’re gonna look it up. She would say, like, ‘So and so is very much the diva,’ and I had to learn what that meant on my own, but I think I’m probably very much a diva.”
SZA asked Mariah to describe Patricia’s definition of a diva. “A singer, a singing woman that’s, you know — sometimes a difficult woman, sometimes they say that, and I don’t love that because I don’t think that’s the actual definition,” said the Grammy winner. “It’s a woman who sings, typically a soprano.”
In August 2024, Patricia and Mariah’s estranged sister, Alison, died on the same day. “I don’t know how I processed it,” she told Gayle King in a CBS Mornings interview earlier this week.
“I just know that it was extremely difficult for me to navigate and it was tough because I have always had an interesting relationship with my mother,” she said.
