Speaking at Sunday’s 2026 Grammy Awards, singer-songwriter/actress/multihyphenate Rita Wilson was understandably excited to discuss her new single “Sound of a Woman,” the title track from her forthcoming sixth studio album. But our red-carpet conversation also turned to the surprising sound of another iconic woman.
Two days earlier, Wilson had had the honor and delight of introducing the Foo Fighters and Taylor Momsen’s buzzy appearance at Mariah Carey’s MusiCares Person of the Year gala, where the Foos and the Pretty Reckless frontwoman performed, for the first time publicly ever by anyone, two tracks from Carey’s lost ‘90s grunge album.
“First of all, it must be so secret, because I tried to find it on the internet and I could not find it!” Wilson laughed, referring to the mythical Hole/Sleater-Kinney/Garbage-inspired LP that Carey secretly recorded in 1995. “It’s Mariah Carey’s grunge album that she did with her band Chick, called Someone’s Ugly Daughter. And the Foo Fighters, if you don’t know this, are amazing Mariah Carey fans — huge fans. And so, I think it was their idea to tribute Mariah in this way. And if you noticed at MusiCares, she was singing along to every word, stood up. It was fantastic!”
Carey co-produced Someone’s Ugly Daughter with her friend Clarissa Dane, who was credited as Chick’s lead vocalist after Carey’s record label, concerned that the project would ruin the pop star’s glossy image, intervened. (Sony forced Carey’s original vocals to be stripped, and Carey was demoted to backup-singer status.) The long-out-of-print Chick record has sold for as much as $800 on resale sites like eBay, although Wilson was thrilled to learn that it has since resurfaced on YouTube.
“I think that the Foo Fighters and Mariah should redo the album and put it out,” Wilson proposed. “I actually think that was Dave Grohl’s idea when we were backstage. It was like, ‘I think we should do it,’ and I’m like, ‘Yes, 100 percent! Exactly!’” When it’s suggested that Wilson should also join the new Chick lineup, she brightened and quipped, “Oh, I’ll join Chick, absolutely! I’ll just play tambo. I’ll do it!”
In the meantime, Wilson is focused on readying her own deeply personal album, Sound of a Woman, out May 1. The titular single was co-written by Wilson and Amy Wadge (Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud,” Kacey Musgraves, Alicia Keys, Kylie Minogue, James Blunt, John Legend, P!nk, Mika, Noah Cyrus).
“It was partly inspired by this quote that I read that was on my bulletin board by Michelangelo, the famous Italian sculptor. And the quote was this,” Wilson explained, as the veteran actress prepared to break out her best Florentine Renaissance accent for dramatic effect. “People asked him, ‘How do you carve these incredible statues out of these huge chunks of marble?’ And he said, ‘I see the angel in the marble, and I carve until I set him free.’ And I thought to myself, ‘That is the perfect metaphor for what it’s like to be in this world.’ You’re born, you come into this world, you evolve your entire life, and you chip away and carve away the things that don’t really work, that aren’t really you, so that you can arrive at who you are. And that’s what the album’s about.”
The Instagram interview video above is courtesy of the Recording Academy.
