“There are times when that period still makes me mad,” the Grammy-winning singer admitted, reflecting on her marriage to the former Sony Music Entertainment CEO.

Mariah Carey is getting candid about her first marriage to Tommy Mottola—something she doesn’t do often. The “Emotions” hitmaker, who was married to the music exec from 1993 to 1998 (years after he’d signed her to her first record deal with Columbia Records), shared some rare thoughts on the relationship.

“Sure, there are moments when that time still irritates me, but I think I’ve come to terms with it. Honestly, I’d promised myself I’d stop talking about it,” Carey told Harper’s Bazaar UK in an interview published Monday, July 28.

She went on to explain her creative frustrations during that era: “I was eager to dive deeper into R&B, to make more urban-influenced music, but every time I brought it up, it got shut down. It’s not like I hated the music I was putting out—I just knew there was so much more inside me that I wanted to share.”

But when those tough memories creep in, Carey has a go-to way to handle them. “Laughing it off is my escape, and anyone who knows me gets that. I’ll crack little jokes about what went down because, let’s be real, otherwise I could turn every day into a sad story. It’s a coping thing, but honestly, laughing’s just part of who I am,” she said.

Carey skyrocketed to fame right out of the gate with her 1990 self-titled debut album, after Mottola heard her demo and signed her. Yet she had no clue how big she’d gotten until she headed to Schenectady, New York, to tape a Thanksgiving TV performance. There, security was everywhere to manage the crowds of fans who’d shown up to see her.

“That was a total shock. No one had ever said, ‘Hey, there are people lined up outside the store, and they’re all here to buy your record,’” she remembered to Harper’s.

Since their split, Carey has hinted that Mottola held significant control over her career. In her first memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, she even likened their upstate New York home in Bedford to Sing Sing. Just 10 miles from the notorious maximum-security prison in Ossining, the house made her feel as trapped as an inmate. She also claimed Mottola was jealous of her success.

Carey found love again a decade after her divorce from Mottola, marrying Nick Cannon in 2008. The pair had twins, Moroccan and Monroe, now 14, in 2011. They separated in 2014, with their divorce finalized in 2016.

Mottola, too, moved on. He’s been married to Mexican singer and actress Thalía since 2000.