Mariah Carey's 'Controlling' Ex: I Made Her a Star

Controlling? Obsessive? Sure, admits Mariah Carey's ex in his new memoir, but "that was also part of the reason for her success." Music executive Tommy Mottola tells his side of the story in Hitmaker, out Jan. 15, saying he turned Carey from a struggling backup singer into a worldwide star, the New York Post reports. "An unbelievable energy was running though me" when he heard her demo tape, he writes. And the chemistry between them was so great that he ignored his therapist's advice, ditched his wife and two kids, and married Carey in an over-the-top ceremony he calls "a coronation."

Only later did a photo of his teenaged kids crying at the wedding leave him crushed: "They knew in their bones what I simply couldn’t feel," writes the former Sony Music chief. He then pushed Carey hard, not letting her take time off or record more modern styles like hip-hop or R&B. And when she won two Grammys, Mottola thought only about his shrink watching on TV: "I can only now wonder about the expression on my therapist’s face," he writes. "She could no longer call me delusional." When the media outed Mottola as a Glock-carrying thug, Carey left him—and later referred to their union as "a private hell." (More Tommy Mottola stories.)