Mariah's Christmas Apple TV+: Mariah Carey on making TV special

“Apart from the ambition, Tommy and I were completely different, and the Black part of myself caused him confusion,” she recalls in The Meaning Of Mariah Carey. “From the moment Tommy signed me, he tried to wash the ‘urban’ (translation: Black) off of me. And it was no different when it came to my music. The songs on my very first demo, which would become my first smash album, were much more soulful, raw, and modern in their original state. Just as he did with my appearance, Tommy smoothed out the songs for Sony, trying to make them more general, more ‘universal,’ more ambiguous. I always felt like he wanted to convert me into what he understood — a ‘mainstream’ (meaning white) artist.”

Back to the music. Fall In Love At Christmas, Mariah tells me, is a “love song, yet a gospel song”, one with the transformational power to “take you to a spiritual place”. The song has an important message, too. “Kirk Franklin, who I adore and admire enormously, says this holiday season, you know, the most important thing is: let’s give love away,” she says softly. Filming the video was a memorable experience, too. “We made it snow and it was magical and everybody was here,” she says in a sing-song voice. “But it was just like ‘wow’, like, we all had this…,” she trails off, placing her hand to her chest once more. “We all had the spirit of Christmas which just like, comes in, it goes out, I hide from it”. Carey puts her hands either side of her face and suddenly launches in her signature vibrato. “I’m like ‘I gotta wait for the real Christmaaaaas!’”