Mariah Carey extends Las Vegas residency, teases upcoming album

With a new album on the way, Mariah Carey on Monday announced she is extending her Las Vegas residency, "The Butterfly Returns," for five dates in February.

That show — which commenced at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in July as a follow-up to her 2015-2017 "#1 to Infinity" residency — had six more dates scheduled before the extension, running this coming weekend and Sept. 5, 9 and 10. Carey now adds Feb. 13, 15, 16, 19 and 21, with tickets for the public on sale Friday.  Fans paying $20 for a Honey B. Fly Live Pass membership have presale access Tuesday at 1 p.m. both for the new residency dates and for Carey's annual "All I Want For Christmas Is You" tour, though she currently has shows only from Dec. 1 to 17 in Europe.

"I've been loving it so much," the five-time Grammy Award-winner, 49, told People magazine Monday about her residency. "A lot of the fans who have come out to see it were really happy having a little more diversity,” she said in a possible allusion to her biracial heritage. "I want to make it really impromptu and surprise the people who have come out again and again to see the show."

Carey, who was born in Huntington and raised in Greenlawn, additionally told the magazine, "I've been working on my new album for a while. This is a labor of love and I'm really excited." She added, "This is me at this moment in my life being able to express myself as a writer and a singer. I'm just really in a good place."
She gave no title or details about the album, her first since "Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse" in 2014, but said it will feel "current" while not trailing "anybody else's trends."

"My fans just want to hear me express myself and speak from the heart and sing from the heart," Carey said. "Some of the record is lighthearted and fun, and some [songs] I really went deep in terms of the lyrical content. There's a nice cross-section of things."

On Sunday, she had teased in a Twitter video what many took as a reference to a new album. In a shot of a bedroom with shoes, shoehorns and accessories on a bed, a man's voice off-screen says, "So, we are shooting a secret project, and . . . " Carey, interrupting, comes into frame and warns cheerily, "Can't see the ensemble!" She puts a finger to her mouth in a "shhh" gesture, kisses it and then smiles and playfully taps the screen with her finger.