Mariah Carey Wrote Her ‘Realest, Boldest, Most Passionate Love Song’ About Her Steamy Secret Getaway With Derek Jeter

After meeting Derek Jeter at a dinner party, Mariah Carey did all she could to be alone with him. At the time, she was in a controlling relationship with Tommy Mottola, and Jeter made her feel that escape was possible. After the couple had a secret first date on Jeter’s rooftop, Carey traveled in order to see him. She wrote a song about the night they shared together in Puerto Rico.

Mariah Carey had a secret trip with Derek Jeter

Carey and Jeter kissed for the first time on the rooftop of his building. It made her feel as though the whole world had opened up to her.

“I was still absorbed in the memory of the roof and wasn’t willing to fall back into the mud of despair,” she wrote in her book The Meaning of Mariah Carey. “A new part of me was alive, and I was intent on feeding it. I heard from one of the Armani people that Derek was going to be in Puerto Rico. At our next therapy session, I announced to Tommy that I needed to go on a trip.”

Carey did not reach out to Jeter beforehand, but she had a sense that he would be at a popular club in Old San Juan. She was so certain that she had her assistant book another hotel room closer to the club. It paid off, as Jeter was there, and they were able to sneak off together.

“I threw caution to the Caribbean breeze and surrendered into his arms and the moment,” she wrote. “We lay for the long night in one embrace, engaging in one, single, long kiss. It was the sexiest moment — without sex.”

Mariah Carey wrote ‘My All’ about her time in Puerto Rico with Derek Jeter

Carey knew she was taking a risk, but it felt worth it. 

“Now that I had it, I couldn’t imagine life without this feeling,” she wrote. “Desire became my reason for living, my all. Sleep didn’t come on the plane ride back to New York, but a song did. I started writing.”

The song she began writing was “My All.” She worried Mottola would lash out at her for it, but she had to get it out.

“I put everything I was feeling at that time into a song,” she wrote. “It was a gigantic risk, because I knew Tommy assumed I was having a sexual affair (even though, technically, I wasn’t yet). It was also a revelation. There was an excitement and purpose awake in me that fueled me to a new level in my creativity. I was hearing different melodies, and I had new, real experiences to draw from.”

Carey said she was very proud of the result.

“‘My All’ was the realest, boldest, most passionate love song I’d ever written. I brought to it the Spanish undertones, the warm breeze, the ecstasy of desire, and the agony of separation that I remembered so clearly.”

She wrote another song about the baseball player

After their first date, Carey was filled with similar inspiration. She wrote “The Roof,” which detailed their night together. 

“‘The Roof,’ as a song and a video, painted a deeply passionate and very accurate picture of my experiences,” she wrote. “It was major for me, not for any salacious reason but because any intimacy with another human being was not something I had experienced before, ever.”

When Carey and Mottola separated, she began dating Jeter.