Carey, Mariah Biography

Biography of Carey, Mariah. Detailed Carey, Mariah profile and review.

Mariah Carey is a popular actress, music singer, songwriter, record producer, and music video director. Carey's music has been influenced by rock and roll, hip hop, gospel, pop, and rhythm and blues. She is credited as having a five-octave vocal range, possibly the greatest range of any popular singer. She uses melisma, and her vocal trills are easily recognized. Mariah's style influenced a generation of singers who came after her, including other melisma singers such as Beyonce Knowles and Christina Aguilera as well as American Idol competitors. Mariah Carey may be the best-selling female recording artist ever worldwide. She was also the top-selling recording artist of the 1990s, and her singles have spent more time at #1 than any other living artist in the Billboard charts' history. Mariah Carey is most famous for her multi-octave voice. Although some claim that her singing range is no more than 5 octaves, others believe that it may be as high as 7 octaves. Mariah was number one at MTV's "22 Greatest Voices in Music" countdown, beating out Whitney Houston and Celine Dion.

Mariah Carey is the youngest child of Patricia Hickey, an opera singer, and Alfred Roy Carey, an aeronautical engineer. She was named after the song And They Call the Wind Mariah, from Paint Your Wagon. Carey has a sister Alison and a brother Morgan, both of whom are about ten years older than she is. As a mixed-race family, the Carey household knew hostility and violence. Mariah has claimed in the early days that their dogs were poisoned, and that crosses were burned on their lawn. Also, a shot was fired through the kitchen window and their car was blown up. The family moved around New York to find more friendly neighborhoods. The strain on the family led to the divorce of Alfred and Patricia when Mariah was three years old. Mariah and Morgan stayed with their mother while Alison stayed with their father. Mariah had little contact with her father, except for visits on weekends. Patricia raised Mariah, often struggling with two or three jobs and continuing to move among different towns on Long Island, but succeeded in providing a loving household.

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Carey also began singing when she was three. Patricia realized early on that she had a very large potential. Carey first performed in public when she was six years old and began writing songs when she was in grade school. Mariah attended and graduated from Greenlawn's Harborfields High School but was often absent due to her involvment in the music business. She got a role as a backup singer for Brenda K. Starr. Carey met Tommy Mottola while at a party and gave him a demo tape. He played the tape and was very impressed by what he heard, but Mariah had already left. Nevertheless Mottola found her and signed her to a contract. Mariah Carey's career began with the release of her debut album when she was just twenty years old. She became a success, and the album produced four #1 hit singles: Vision of Love, Love Takes Time, Someday, and I Don't Wanna Cry. Mariah has been involved in the writing of almost every song she has sung, working with Walter Afanasieff and Ben Margulies. Vision of Love was the model for her most successful songs: a taste of swing, melody and arrangement designed for her voice, and lyrics organized around struggle and dreams.

The first single from Mariah Carey's second album, Emotions, was also a #1 hit. Emotions made Carey the only musician to have had their first five singles hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts in the US. Emotions had two other Top #5 singles, Can't Let Go, and Make It Happen. In 1992, Mariah gave her first performance on MTV Unplugged. On "Emotions" she showed that her vocal abilities were not just for the studio. She sung a cover of the Jackson 5's I'll Be There with Trey Lorenz. I'll Be There became a #1 hit. The program was so popular that it was compiled onto the album MTV Unplugged. Carey's next album, Music Box, was mostly ballads. The first single, Dreamlover, became her seventh #1 hit and become her first single to go platinum. The ballad Hero was another #1 hit. Varey performed Hero at the televised America: A Tribute to Heroes benefit after the September 2001 terrorist attacks. The next single, Without You, was Carey's most successful song outside the United States. Without You reached #1 in many countries, but only made #3 in the US. The final single released from the album was Anytime You Need A Friend. Carey's Music Box album and her duet with Luther Vandross of Diana Ross' Endless Love, made her extremly popular in the early 1990's. During the Christmas 1994 Carey released Merry Christmas. In addition to the usual classics, it contained an original song, All I Want For Christmas Is You.

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In 1995, Carey released Daydream. This album and Music Box would eventually become Carey's two best-selling albums. Daydream's lead single, Fantasy, was played very often on the radio, thanks to a remix that featured Wu-Tang Clan's Ol' Dirty Bastard. Carey realized that she had crossover hits if she used genre-specific remixes for each single. Fantasy also became the second single in American chart history to debut at #1 on the Hot 100, after Michael Jackson's You Are Not Alone. One Sweet Day, a duet with Boyz II Men, spent 16 weeks at #1 in the United States, beating the original record of 14 held by Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You and Boyz II Men's I'll Make Love to You. Always Be My Baby also became a #1 hit, and received widespread airplay on pop stations, while its remix featuring Da Brat and Xscape got heavy airplay on RandB and rap stations. Forever, Underneath The Stars and Open Arms did not make the #1 spot but were hits nonetheless. Between October 1995 and October 1996 Mariah Carey had songs at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for 26 weeks, with Fantasy, One Sweet Day, and Always Be My Baby. Daydream also gave her the biggest sales week ever of her career, with 750,000 copies sold in one week in December of 1995. Some thought that Carey's music was too commercial. Others felt that her lyrics were too full of repetitive and simplistic imagery, and others thought her voice was beginning to let go.

Mariah Carey's Butterfly was her second consecutive album to debut at #1. Butterfly saw her continuing to move toward hip-hop and RandB. Its butterfly motif related to Carey's feelings about leaving the cocoon-like environment of her marriage. The single Honey became her third #1 debut in the United States and featured a remix with rappers Puff Daddy, The Lox and Mase. Its video displayed a much sexier Carey than any of her previous videos. Other singles and videos off the album included Butterfly, The Roof (Mobb Deep), Breakdown (Bone Thugs-N-Harmony) and My All, which would become her 13th #1 single, which no other female signer had done before. Diana Ross and The Supremes had a record of twelve #1 singles. In 1998, Carey released #1s, a collection of all her American #1 singles. It also included the songs When You Believe, a duet with Whitney Houston that was featured in the DreamWorks film The Prince of Egypt, a duet with Jermaine Dupri called Sweetheart, I Still Believe, a cover of the song by Brenda K. Starr, and Whenever You Call, a duet of Butterfly with Brian McKnight. Also in that year, Mariah appeared on the VH1 Divas program, a joint benefit concert appearance with Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan and Shania Twain.

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In summer 1999, Mariah Carey began promoting her upcoming album, Rainbow, by releasing Heartbreaker. It made the top 20 in radio airplay, and was Carey's fourteenth #1 on the Hot 100. The single went on to sell over a million copies, and was one of the last singles to do so in America, before Napster. Heartbreaker was helped by a video that got heavy airplay on TRL. At over $2.5 million, the video was one of the most expensive music videos in history, mixing an animated version of the video with a live-action video featuring Jerry O'Connell. A video was also filmed for a DJ Clue remix to Heartbreaker, which was much more hip hop-oriented than the original, featuring a sample of Snoop Dogg's Ain't No Fun and voices of Missy Elliott and Da Brat. Thank God I Found You, a duet with Joe and featured 98 Degrees, became Carey's fifteenth #1 single on the Hot 100. The video was for a remix that contained a sample from Keith Sweat's Make It Last Forever and featured Joe and Nas. After having 26 consecutive songs in the Top 20 since her debut album, Carey released the singles Crybaby and Can't Take That Away Mariah's Theme. Crybaby, which featured Snoop Dogg, was promoted to hip-hop radio and Mariah's Theme was promoted to Top 40 radio. Even with a single release, Crybaby only managed to make #28. She blamed this on the fact that Sony did not allow other singles on the album to be released, such as her duet with Usher, How Much.

Though Carey's singles are pop music, she has also worked with rappers Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Lord Tariq, and Peter Gunz. Many of the latest singles were also remixed as dance, where she worked with DJ's such as Junior Vasquez and David Morales. Carey received many awards for her career, including Artist of the Decade and the World Music Award for the Best-Selling Female Artist of the Millennium. Carey finally ended her contract with Sony after which she signed with EMI's Virgin Records. In August 2001 it was reported that Mariah Carey had suffered physical and mental exhaustion. She had left messages to her fans complaining of being overworked. Her many years of concurrent singing and writing seemed to have finally affected her. Carey made a notorious appearance on TRL, where she was not exactly dressed properly and she acted funny. She checked into a mental health facility and announced that she was taking a break. Her acting debut in Glitter was a box office failure. When Virgin Records released Glitter, Carey was unable to do much promotion. The album was released on September 11, 2001. The lead single Loverboy reached #2 on the Hot 100 thanks to Virgin's massive campaign to sell the single for 99 cents. Sony released an authorized second compilation album, Greatest Hits. Although the album initially failed, it would eventually become Carey's singles collection. In January 2002, EMI dropped Carey and bought out her contract. Despite this, there were several record companies vying for her, and she eventually signed with Island Records' Def Jam.

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Mariah Carey's relationship with Luis Miguel was ending. Before that, she had dated baseball star Derek Jeter. Carey's drug addict sister, Alison, had been diagnosed with HIV. Alison threatened to write a book about how she supported Mariah as a prostitute. Mariah Carey's family denied this, and Mariah took care of Alison's children when Alison lost custody of them. To further add to Mariah's troubles, in 2002 her father Alfred Roy Carey died of cancer.

Carey had an impprtant role in Wisegirls. Mariah then released a new album and her first concept album, Charmbracelet, in December 2002 as part of a new deal with Island Records. She expressed an interest in writing music that has more meaning to herself and to her fans. The album included the singles Through the Rain, Boy I Need You, featuring Cam'ron, and a cover of Def Leppard's Bringin' On The Heartbreak. Carey's "lambs" continued to buy her singles, but none of the singles were popular on the radio. After a decade of one Carey hit after another, many felt that she had lost her radio magic. Mariah Carey's duet with Busta Rhymes, I Know What You Want, reached #3. I Know What You Want is also featured on the album The Remixes. In honor of over 150 million album sales worldwide, Carey was awarded "Diamond Award" by the World Music Awards show. During 2003, Carey did the Charmbracelet World Tour. Carey spent most of the next year making her second concept album, The Emancipation of Mimi. She was featured on Jadakiss's hit single U Make Me Wanna, which managed to hit the Top 10 on Billboard's RandB chart. To the Floor Tonight, featuring Nelly, and Say Something, which featured Snoop Dogg and Pharrell, was traded on the Internet over Napster. On New Year's Eve, Carey premiered a Jermaine Dupri production at the opening of the Pure Club. The song It's Like That was well received, and the song was hailed as a return for Carey.

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The Emancipation of Mimi was heralded as The Return of the Voice. It was released to positive reviews, with some calling it Carey's best album in years. Mimi debuted at #1, with 403,775 copies sold in its first week. All in all, it sold over two million copies, and spent eight weeks in the Top 5. We Belong Together, was more hip hop.


Mariah Carey has sold 62 million albums in the United States and 200 million albums worldwide. She also sold 20 million singles in US and 47 million singles worldwide. This makes her one of the biggest-selling female artists of all time. Mariah Carey is the third album biggest-selling female artist in the United States, behind Barbra Streisand and Madonna. Mariah won "Artist of the Decade", "Legend World Music Award", and "Female Artist of the Millennium". Carey is the woman with the most "World Music Awards", and she is the only artist to have a single reach #1 for every year of the 1990s. One Sweet Day is the longest running consecutive #1 single in history, beating Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You. Mariah is second only to Elvis Presley in the most cumulative weeks having a No. 1 single in history. When Fantasy, One Sweet Day and Honey debuted at #1 on the singles chart, Mariah became the artist with the most singles to debut at Number 1 in chart history. She had 5 consecutive #1 Singles Fantasy, One Sweet Day, Always Be My Baby, Honey, and My All. With Fantasy and One Sweet Day selling each goind double platinum, Mariah is the only artist to have 2 consecutive singles sell over 2 million in the US. Mariah is the only female artist to have 9 consecutive albums RIAA- certified for at least 3 million copies sold. In the US, Mariah Carey, Madonna, Britney Spears, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Shania Twain, and the Dixie Chicks are the only female artists with more than one Diamond album. Mariah is philanthropist who has donated millions of dollars to organizations such as The Make-A-Wish Foundation, the National Adoption Center, and the Fresh Air Fund. She founded Camp Mariah in Fishkill, New York for under-privlegded youth to learn about arts, career opportunities, and self-esteem. Mariah said that she doesn't like I Don't Wanna Cry. She feels that the song does not have anything to say. She was named one of People Magazine's 25 Most Intriguing People of 2001.

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