Billboard:After launching her new fragrance, "M," Mariah Carey is putting most of her focus on her new album, due out early next year via Island Def Jam. The as-yet-untitled album is the follow-up to her multiplatinum comeback disc, "The Emancipation of Mimi," which earned her three Grammys.

"It's hard for me to sit here and talk about it without sounding like I'm bragging if I'm in love with it, but I'm in love with this album," she says. "I think that having the success with the last record allowed me to have more freedom ... and just make records that I like. It's kind of a really fun record."

And even though Carey has a new fragrance, she never was the type to spray on a scent before she left the house. In fact, Carey says she never really wore perfumes until she fell in love with "M."

"This is the first fragrance that I wear," she says. "I'm not really a perfume person at all ... Things that are too strong and overwhelming, that's what I was always not a fan of."

But when Elizabeth Arden approached the superstar to create her own perfume, it piqued her interest -- mainly because the cosmetics company didn't want to use just her name, but wanted her input in the creation of the scent, which she describes as light, sensual and memorable.

"They were welcoming in my involvement just in every detail, and that was what was the most exciting thing to me," said Carey.

Carey says the fragrance, which comes in a purple bottle with her signature butterfly icon on top, was based on some of her favorite things. One is a Moroccan incense; another is a flower called the Living Tahitian Tiare. But another scent mixed into the fragrance is unexpected: toasted marshmallows.

That aroma was added because it evoked happy memories of her childhood around the campfire. But she adds: "It's blended in there -- it's not like you're gonna walk around smelling like marshmallows."