Mariah Carey(born March 27,1970)is an American singer-songwriter,record producer, and actress.She made her recording debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola,and became the first recording artist to have her first five singles top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.Following her marriage to Mottola in 1993,a series of hit records established her position as Columbia's highest-selling act.According to Billboard magazine,she was the most successful artist of the 1990s in the United States.
Following her separation from Mottola in 1997,Carey introduced elements of hip hop into her album work,to much initial success,but her popularity was in decline when she left Columbia in 2001,and she was dropped by Virgin Records the following year after a highly publicized physical and emotional breakdown,as well as the poor reception given to Glitter,her film and soundtrack project.In 2002,Carey signed with Island Records,and after a relatively unsuccessful period,she returned to pop music in 2005.
Carey was named the best-selling female pop artist of the millennium at the 2000 World Music Awards.She has had the most number-one singles for a solo artist in the United States(eighteen;second artist overall behind The Beatles),where,according to the Recording Industry Association of America,she is the third best-selling female and sixteenth overall recording artist.In addition to her commercial accomplishments,Carey has earned five Grammy Awards,and is well-known for her vocal range,power,melismatic style,and use of the whistle register.
Life and music career
Childhood and youth
Carey was born in Huntington,Long Island, New York.She is the third and youngest child of Patricia(née Hickey),a former opera singer and vocal coach of Irish descent,and Alfred Roy Carey,an aeronautical engineer of Afro-Venezuelan descent. Carey's parents divorced when she was three years old.While living in Huntington, racist neighbors allegedly poisoned the family dog and set fire to her family's car. After her parents' divorce,Carey had little contact with her father,and her mother worked several jobs to support the family.She spent much of her time at home alone, and turned to music to occupy herself.She began singing at around the age of three, when her mother began to teach her after Carey imitated her mother practicing Verdi's opera Rigoletto in Italian.
She graduated from Harborfields High School in Greenlawn,New York.She was frequently absent due to her work as a demo singer for local recording studios;her classmates consequently gave her the nickname "Mirage".Her work in the Long Island music scene gave her opportunities to work with musicians such as Gavin Christopher and Ben Margulies,with whom she co-wrote material for her demo tape.After moving to New York City,Carey worked part-time jobs to pay the rent and completed five hundred hours of beauty school.Eventually,she became a backup singer for Puerto Rican freestyle singer Brenda K. Starr.
In 1988,Carey met Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola at a party,where Starr gave him Carey's demo tape.Mottola played the tape when leaving the party and was impressed.He returned to find Carey,but she had left.Nevertheless,Mottola tracked her down and signed her to a recording contract.This Cinderella-like story became part of the standard publicity surrounding Carey's entrance into the industry.
Worldwide popularity
Carey and Tommy Mottola had become involved romantically during the making of her debut album,and in June 1993,they were married.
Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds consulted on the album Music Box,which was released later that year and became Carey's most successful worldwide.It yielded her first UK Singles Chart number-one,a cover of Badfinger's "Without You",and the U.S. number-ones "Dreamlover" and "Hero".Billboard magazine proclaimed it "heart-piercing easily the most elemental of Carey's releases,her vocal eurythmics in natural sync with the songs",but TIME magazine lamented Carey's attempt at a mellower work,"[Music Box] seems perfunctory and almost passionless.Carey could be a pop-soul great;instead she has once again settled for Salieri-like mediocrity."In response to such comments,Carey said,"As soon as you have a big success,a lot of people don't like that.There's nothing I can do about it.All I can do is make music I believe in."Most critics slighted the opening of her subsequent U.S. Music Box Tour.
In late 1994,after her duet with Luther Vandross on a cover of Lionel Richie and Diana Ross's "Endless Love" became a hit,Carey released the holiday album Merry Christmas.It contained cover material and original compositions such as "All I Want for Christmas Is You",which became Carey's biggest single in Japan,and,in subsequent years,emerged as one of her most perennially popular songs on U.S.radio.Critical reception of Merry Christmas was mixed,with Allmusic calling it an "otherwise vanilla set pretensions to high opera on 'O Holy Night' and a horrid danceclub take on 'Joy to the World'".It became the most successful Christmas album of all time.
In 1995,Columbia released Carey's fifth album, Daydream,which combined the pop sensibilities of Music Box with downbeat R&B and hip hop influences.A remix of "Fantasy",its first single,featured rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard.Carey said that Columbia reacted negatively to her intentions for the album:"Everybody was like 'What,are you crazy?'.They're very nervous about breaking the formula."It became her biggest-selling album in the U.S.,and its singles achieved similar success — "Fantasy" became the second single to debut at number one in the U.S.and topped the Canadian Singles Chart for twelve weeks,"One Sweet Day"(a duet with Boyz II Men) spent a record-holding sixteen weeks at number one in the U.S.,and "Always Be My Baby"(co-produced by Jermaine Dupri) was the most successful on U.S.radio in 1996,according to Billboard magazine.Daydream generated career-best reviews for Carey,and publications such as The New York Times named it one of 1995's best albums;the Times wrote that its "best cuts bring pop candy-making to a new peak of textural refinement.Carey's songwriting has taken a leap forward,becoming more relaxed,sexier and less reliant on thudding clichés".The short but profitable Daydream World Tour augmented sales of the album,which received six Grammy Award nominations.
Artistry
Carey has said that from childhood she was influenced by R&B and soul musicians such as Billie Holiday,Sarah Vaughan,Gladys Knight,Aretha Franklin,Al Green and Stevie Wonder.Her music contains strong influences of gospel music, and her favorite gospel singers include The Clark Sisters,Shirley Caesar and Edwin Hawkins.When Carey incorporated hip hop into her sound,speculation arose that she was making an attempt to take advantage of the genre's popularity,but she told Newsweek,"People just don't understand.I grew up with this music".She has expressed appreciation for rappers such as The Sugarhill Gang,Eric B.& Rakim,the Wu-Tang Clan,The Notorious B.I.G.and Mobb Deep,with whom she collaborated on the single "The Roof (Back in Time)"(1998).
During Carey's career,her vocal and musical style,along with her level of success, has been compared to Whitney Houston and Celine Dion.Carey and her peers,according to Garry Mulholland,are "the princesses of wails virtuoso vocalists who blend chart-oriented pop with mature MOR torch song".In She Bop II:The Definitive History of Women in Rock,Pop and Soul(2002),writer Lucy O'Brien attributed the comeback of Barbra Streisand's "old-fashioned showgirl" to Carey and Dion,and described them and Houston as "groomed,airbrushed and overblown to perfection".Carey's musical transition and use of more revealing clothing during the late 1990s were,in part, initiated to distance herself from this image,and she subsequently said that most of her early work was "schmaltzy MOR".Some have noted that unlike Houston and Dion, Carey co-writes her own songs,and the Guinness Rockopedia(1998) classified her as the "songbird supreme".
Despite the fact that Carey is often credited with co-writing her material,she has also been accused of plagiarism on several occasions. Many of these cases were eventually settled out of court.
Voice
Carey is said to be able to cover all the notes from the alto vocal range leading to those of a coloratura soprano,and her vocal trademark is her ability to sing in the whistle register.She has cited Minnie Riperton as the greatest influence on her singing technique and from a very early age,she attempted to emulate Riperton's high notes,to increasing degrees of success as her vocal range expanded.At one point,The Guinness Book of Records recorded that there was no other singer who could hold a higher note than Carey.In 2003,her voice was ranked first in MTV and Blender magazine's countdown of the 22 Greatest Voices in Music,as voted by fans and readers in an online poll.Carey said of the poll,"What it really means is voice of the MTV generation.Of course,it's an enormous compliment,but I don't feel that way about myself."
Carey's voice has come under considerable scrutiny from critics who believe that she does not communicate the message of her songs effectively.Rolling Stone magazine said in 1992,"Carey has a remarkable vocal gift,but to date,unfortunately,her singing has been far more impressive than expressive at full speed her range is so superhuman that each excessive note erodes the believability of the lyric she is singing."The New York Daily News wrote in 2005 that Carey's singing"is ultimately what does her in.For Carey, vocalizing is all about the performance,not the emotions that inspired it.Does having a great voice automatically make you a great singer? Hardly."Some interpreted Carey's decision to utilize what she described as "breathy" vocals in some of her late 1990s and early 2000s work as a sign that her voice was deteriorating,but she has maintained that it "has been here all along".An article in VIBE magazine indicated that Carey's singing style highlights weaknesses in other aspects of her music,"The impressiveness of her voice as well-as her tendency to oversing-make the blandness of her material all the more flagrant."
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