Actors - Mariah Carey

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	Actors - Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey (born March 27 1970) is an American pop and R&B singer-songwriter, record producer and occasional actress. She made her debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola whom she later married, and became the first recording act to have her first five singles top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. A series of subsequent hit records consolidated her position as Columbia records' most successful artist and the best-selling artist of the 1990s in the U.S. according to Billboard magazine.

Following her separation from Mottola in 1996, Carey took full creative control over her image and music, and further infused elements of hip hop into her material. Her popularity was already on the 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, along with the poor reception of Glitter
, her film and soundtrack project. Carey signed with Island Def Jam Records in 2002, and after a period of only minimal success, she returned to the forefront of popular music in 2005.

The World Music Awards named Carey the best-selling female artist of all time in 2000, and she has the most U.S. number-one singles by a female artist. She has also won five Grammy Awards. In addition to her commercial accomplishments, she is well-known for her five-octave vocal range and heavy use melisma singing style, and is widely considered to be one of the most talented singers in popular music, despite criticisms of her voice and lyrics.

Biography and music career

Early life and discovery

Carey was born in Huntington, New York. She is the third and youngest child of Patricia Hickey, a former opera singer and voice coach of Irish American Roman Catholic extraction, and Alfred Roy Carey, an aeronautical engineer of Afro-Venezuelan descent. She was named after a song from the musical Paint Your Wagon
. As a multiracial family, the Careys endured racial slurs, hostility, and sometimes violence, causing the family to frequently relocate in the New York and Rhode Island areas. The strain on the family led to the divorce of Carey's parents when she was three years old. Carey had little contact with her father, and her mother worked several jobs to support the family.

Spending much of her time at home alone, Carey turned to music as an outlet. She began singing around the age of three and her first public performance was during elementary school. By junior high school, she was writing her own songs. Carey graduated from Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York, although she was frequently absent due to her popularity as a demo singer for local recording studios. Her moderate renown within the Huntington music scene gave her opportunities to work with musicians such as Gavin Christopher and Ben Margulies, with whom she would co-write material for her demo tape. After moving to New York City, Carey worked numerous part-time jobs to pay the rent and completed five hundred hours of beauty school. Eventually, she became a backup singer for 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 while leaving the party and was very impressed with what he heard. He returned to the party 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.

1990–92: Early commercial success

Carey's professional music career began with the release of her debut album, Mariah Carey, in 1990. Carey co-wrote all of the compositions on the album and would continue to co-write nearly all of her material for the rest of her career, but expressed dissatisfaction with the contributions of producers such as Ric Wake and Rhett Lawrence. With substantial promotion the album ascended to number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart a year after its release, where it remained for several weeks. The album produced four number-one singles and made Carey a star in the United States, but its success outside of North America was limited. Critics rated Carey's debut highly, and she won Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for her debut single "Vision of Love".

Emotions, Carey's second album, was conceived as an homage to Motown soul music (see Motown Sound) and saw Carey working with Walter Afanasieff and the dance group C&C Music Factory. It was released soon after her debut album in the fall of 1991, but was neither critically nor commercially as successful; Rolling Stone magazine described it as "more of the same, with less interesting material ... pop-psych love songs played with airless, intimidating expertise". The title track "Emotions" gave Carey the distinction of being the only recording act in history to have their first five singles reach number-one on the U.S. Hot 100 chart, though the album's follow-up singles failed to match this feat. Carey had been lobbying to produce her own songs, and beginning with Emotions, she would co-produce most of her material. "I didn't want to be somebody else's vision of me", she said. "There's more of me on this album." She would also begin writing and producing for other artists, such as Penny Ford and Daryl Hall, within the coming year.

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Actors - Mariah Carey

Biography and music career

Early life and discovery

1990–92: Early commercial success

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