Mariah Carey inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame with a diva-worthy speech, 'Let me turn down this lighting because I'm not sure…'

Mariah Carey is perhaps best known for her multi-octave voice, but she’s just as talented at writing the songs as she is performing them.

Throughout her career – which has spanned over three decades – Mariah has written or co-written over 190 songs, including 18 of her 19 number one singles.

Mariah made history when she became the first solo act to have 19 songs top the Billboard Hot 100, second only in total to the Beatles who had 20 songs reach the top spot.

These number ones include iconic hits such as Hero, We Belong Together and All I Want For Christmas is You – although Mariah is being sued for the festive track.

Still, she’s not letting that lawsuit get in the way of her fun as the global superstar was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The Songwriters Hall of Fame is a notoriously difficult honor to claim. The inductees are decided by a relatively small group of songwriting and music-publishing peers and celebrated at an invite-only event.

As well as being an exclusive club, the Hall of Fame has been something of a boys’ club for too long – something Mariah wasn’t afraid to tackle in her speech which was suitably on-brand for the diva.

In her speech, Mariah said, “I read that out of the 439 total inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, only 32 have been women — until this moment. And now I’m gonna be 33. So as my father once told me, ‘Ya did good, kid.’ Thank you so much. I did good!”

It wasn’t the only noteworthy moment from her acceptance speech.

Mariah opened her speech by demanding a change to her lighting.

She walked on to the stage and said, “Well, first of all, thank you so much! Second of all, let me check out this lighting, because I’m not sure … it’s a long story, my lighting guy couldn’t get on the plane.”

Following this hilarious moment, Mariah gave another iconic diva moment.

Fiddling with an oversized pair of sunglasses, she said, “Let me see, do I do this? Do I not?” She then put on the sunglasses to huge cheers from the crowd and responded by saying “It’s a moment, take a picture!”

Despite the comical moments, Mariah also shared how songwriting came to her as a way of dealing with dark moments in her childhood.

“I just want to say, my whole journey… started with poetry, in my childhood. And then — well, actually, I believe melodies came first. And then I started writing these poems, and people were like, ‘This girl has kind of a dark vision of the world at six years old.’”

“And I did, because I came from this incredibly dysfunctional background. And it was this whole thing, music, and walking by myself and coming up with melodies and writing words in a book.”