Mariah Carey Biography

Mariah Carey is credited with being the first recording artist ever, to have five singles peaked at the top of the U.S. BillBoard chart. Mariah Carey was the most successful artist of the 1990s in all of the US and went on to experiment with the trend of hip hop music and rule the music scene since. The artist suffered a physical and emotional set back following her separation from husband Mottola, in 1997. This largely affected her popularity and the reception to her celluloid experiment ‘Glitter’. However, the resilient super star bounced right back into action in 2005.

Mariah Carey has been awarded the ‘best-selling female pop artist of the millennium – 2000’, ‘third best-selling female recording artist’, ‘best vocal range artist’ and ‘best power and melismatic artist’. Mariah Carey has a number of commercial accomplishments under her belt and is an accomplished winner of five Grammy Awards! Mariah Carey hails from Mew York and is the third child of an opera singer and an Irish vocal coach and an aeronautical engineer. Little Mariah was never in contact with her father, after the couple divorced when she was just three. She began singing and training under her mother’s expert supervision from the age of three.

Mariah often missed class at Harborfields High School, New York, on account of her stint as ‘demo’ singer with a number of local recording studios. This gave her the opportunity to work with artists like Ben Margulies and Gavin Christopher. ‘Mirage’, as her classmates nicknamed her, also worked part-time. Her break within the music industry came as a backup singer for Brenda Starr. The 1988 meeting with Tommy Mottola of Columbia Records, who she later married, added a fairy tale twist, taking this girl-next-door persona to giddy heights of stardom. The kind of publicity surrounding Mariah Carey's entry into the music industry is like none other.

Mariah Carey co-wrote the 1990 album ‘Mariah Carey’ that went on to become the Numero Uno on the BillBoard charts, for several weeks. The album gave the music industry four number-one singles, and Carey - a star overnight! Her song ‘Vision of Love’ was appreciated by fans and critcs alike. Her second album ‘Emotions’, was released in late 1991, but was brushed aside as ‘more of the same, with less interesting material’. ‘Emotions’, Carey strongly felt was ‘her vision of herself’. Within no time at all, she began writing and producing for Penny Ford and Daryl Hall. Believe it or not, this diva suffered from stage fright, initially!

Her version of The Jackson 5’s ‘I’ll Be There’ proved her vocal abilities and reached number one in the U.S. Carey’s songs like ‘Without You’, ‘Dream Lover’, Hero’ and ‘One Sweet Day’ became successful worldwide. Her vocal abilities in natural sync with the rhythmic experiments have made Mariah Carey a pop-soul great. ‘Merry Christmas’ cover material and original compositions made Mariah Carey very popular on the U.S. radio. She has performed with hip hop influences like Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Boyz II Men. Her album ‘Day Dream’, was named one of 1995's best albums and witnessed Carey's songwriting experiments becoming sexier and with lesser clichés than before. The album bagged Mariah six Grammy Award nominations.

Carey confessed that her marriage felt like a trap and Mottola was very ‘controlling’ in the relationship. Her album ‘Butterfly’ and especially her number-one single, Honey, gave Carey fans a sexual and hard-to-resist Mariah, proving that she had attained full creative control over her music and her life. The album is considered the most personal and confessional music experiment ever, by the U.S. number-one female artist. Mariah Carey also wrote songs for ‘Men In Black’ and ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’. In 1998, Columbia gave the world Carey extravaganza in the form of a collection of Carey's U.S. number-one singles and fresh additions.