Mariah Carey’s mother Patricia and sister Alison died on the same day over the weekend, the US singer has said in a statement.
“My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend,” Carey said on Monday. “Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day.”
The Grammy-winning singer said she felt blessed to have spent time with her mother in the week before her death and asked for privacy.
No further details were released about the causes of death.
Patricia, 87, was a former opera singer and vocal coach of Irish-American descent.
In Carey’s 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the five-time Grammy Award-winning singer detailed her complicated relationship with her mother, saying it had caused her “so much pain and confusion”.
Carey, 55, said competition had come between them. Professional jealousy “comes with the territory of success, but when the person is your mother and the jealousy is revealed at such a tender age, it’s particularly painful”, she added.
But she also spoke of the deep love she had had for her mother, writing in the dedication: “To Pat, my mother, who, through it all, I do believe actually did the best she could. I will love you the best I can, always.”
In an interview with Gayle King in 2022, the singer said she had “definitely” been affected by criticism from her mother when she was growing up.
She added that she had always credited her mother with exposing her to music.
Carey’s relationship with her older sister Alison, 63, was also complex.
In her memoir, she wrote of being estranged from her and her brother Morgan, saying that it was “emotionally and physically safer for me to not have any contact”.
Alison sued Carey for $1.2m (Ksh 154.9M) following the release of the memoir for “immense emotional distress”, calling it “vindictive”.
The singer’s father, Alfred, died in 2002 of cancer at the age of 72.
Carey is regarded as one of the most successful singers globally.
Her holiday single All I Want For Christmas Is You is the best-selling Christmas song by a female artist of all time.
She holds the record for the most Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles by a solo artist at 19 songs, has sold over 220 million records worldwide, and served as a judge on the competition show American Idol.
