When not onstage during her fast-approaching Adventures of Mimi: The Voice, the Hits, the Tour, Mariah Carey says she’ll be laying down the groundwork for her next album. “I’m doing something I’ve never done before,” the singer tells Billboard. “I’m doing the tour bus this time around. There will be much time for writing songs.”
Carey says she’s looking forward to the cross-country drive. “It’s an experience I’ve never had,” she says. “It will reconnect me, in a deeper way, to what’s going on in the world — to what people are doing and thinking.”
The artist says she is looking to the road trip for lyrical and creative inspiration. “I fall back in love with the recording process and the studio when I’ve been away from it,” she offers.
As previously reported, Carey’s outing begins Aug. 5 in Miami. Three U.S. shows on the itinerary were pulled and substituted with dates in Canada, a move attributed by tour promoter Live Nation more to heat north of the border than softness in the United States.
“She sold out Toronto, she sold out Vancouver, she did over 10,000 tickets in Montreal, and she did well in Edmonton,” Live Nation VP Brad Wavra says. “Why not gog into Winnipeg and Calgary and add another show in Toronto? The Canadian market is very hot now, and the exchange rate makes it very affordable to go up there and not feel like we’re playing for short money.”
