Mariah Carey Opens Up Only Winning 5 Grammys: ‘They Scammed Me’

Mariah Carey released her first album in 1990, and despite having more songs reach No. 1 than any solo artist in history, she only only taken home a total of five Grammy Award wins.

Carey, 55, talked about her snubs in the Wednesday, October 16 episode of the “Las Culturistas” podcast with Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers.

“You don’t have enough of those, by the way” Rogers said, breaking down her career Grammy wins, which come with 34 total nominations.

“They scammed me,” Carey said. “They toy with me.”

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Carey won her first two Grammys in 1991, where she was nominated for five awards. That year, she took home the titles of Best New Artist and Best Pop Female Vocal Performance for Vision Of Love.

Her next Grammy win, however, would not come for another 16 years in 2006, going 0-for-17 in the years in between. Even her 1997 album, Butterfly, which she told Yang and Rogers was “probably my best album,” went with “zero accolades.”

Carey’s fifth studio album, Daydream, featured two of her biggest hits, “Always Be My Baby” and “Fantasy.” Both singles received Grammy nominations, but both fell short. That same year, Daydream also lost in the Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album categories to Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill and Annie Lennox’s “No More I Love You’s,” respectively.

She finally broke through again in 2006, winning two awards for “We Belong Together” and the Best Contemporary R&B Album nod for The Emancipation of Mimi.

She has since received five more nominations, but none since 2009. Earlier this year, Carey was honored with the Recording Academy’s Global Impact Award at the 2024 Black Music Collective event. When she took the stage, she couldn’t help but throw a jab at the Academy.

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“Is this a real Grammy? I haven’t seen one in soooooo long,” she quipped. “It’s weird. I don’t know. We’ll figure out what this is later.”

The conversation on “Las Culturistas” went beyond her Grammy snubs Carey also touched on the unreleased grunge album she recorded in 1995 while she was working on Daydream.

Despite the recording coinciding with the 1990s grunge rock boom, record executives urged her to keep the album under wraps, not wanting her name tied to the project.

Rogers asked if she ever planned to share the album with the world.

“I know, right? I’m so mad that I haven’t done that yet, but who do I drop it with?” Carey responded, before adding, “It’s a good album.”