Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey
Carey at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival
Background information
Ọjọ́ìbí	27 Oṣù Kẹta 1969 (1969-03-27) Huntington, New York, United States
Irú orin	R&B, pop, hip hop, soul, dance
Occupation(s)	Singer, songwriter, record producer, actress, model, philanthropist
Instruments	Vocals, piano
Years active	1988–present
Labels	Columbia, Virgin, Island
Website	mariahcarey.com Mariah Carey's autograph

Mariah Carey (ojoibiborn March 27, 1969) je akorin, olukowe-orin, atokun awo-orin ati osere ara Amerika. O bere koko gbe awo-orin jade ni 1990 labe itona oga ile-ise Columbia Records Tommy Mottola, o si gbe àwo-orin inu studio akoko pelu oruko re jade, Mariah Carey. Awo-orin na di oniplatinum pupo o si gbe orin singles nomba kinni merin jade, ni ori tsart Amerika Billboard Hot 100. Following her marriage to Mottola in 1993, a series of hit records, including Emotions (1991), Music Box (1993) and Merry Christmas (1994), established her position as Columbia's highest-selling act. Daydream (1995), made music history when the second single, "One Sweet Day" a duet with Boyz II Men, spent a record sixteen weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100, and remains the longest-running number-one song in US chart history. During the recording of the album, Carey began to deviate from her R&B and pop beginnings, and slowly traversed into hip hop. After her separation from Mottola, this musical change was evident with the release of Butterfly (1997).

Carey left Columbia in 2000, and signed a record-breaking $100 million recording contract with Virgin Records. Carey ventured into film with Glitter (2001). Before the film's release she suffered a physical and emotional breakdown and was hospitalized for severe exhaustion. Following the film's poor reception, she was bought out of her recording contract for $50 million, which led to a decline in her career. She signed a multi-million dollar contract deal with Island Records in 2002, and after an unsuccessful period, returned to the top of music charts with The Emancipation of Mimi (2005). Its second single "We Belong Together" became her most successful single of the 2000s, and was later named "Song of the Decade" by Billboard. Carey once again ventured into film, and starred in Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire (2009). Her role in the film was well-received, and she was awarded the "Breakthrough Performance Award" at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and Black Reel and NAACP Image Award nominations.

In a career spanning over two decades, Carey has sold more than 200 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. In 1998, she was honored as the world's best-selling recording artist of the 1990s at the World Music Awards. Carey was also named the best-selling female artist of the millennium in 2000. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, she is the third best-selling female artist in the United States, with 63.5 million certified albums. With the release of "Touch My Body" (2008), Carey gained her eighteenth number one single in the United States, more than any other solo artist. In 2012, Carey was ranked second on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Women in Music". Aside from her commercial accomplishments, Carey has won five Grammy Awards, 17 World Music Awards, 11 American Music Awards, and 31 Billboard Music Awards. Referred to as the "songbird supreme" by the Guinness World Records, she is famed for her five-octave vocal range, power, melismatic style and signature use of the whistle register.

Biography

1969–87: Early life and struggles

Mariah Carey was born in Huntington, New York, on March 27, 1969. Her father, Alfred Roy, was of African American and Venezuelan (including Afro-Venezuelan) descent, while her mother, Patricia (née Hickey), is of Irish descent. Patricia's father had died while she was young; however, she inherited his passion for music. She developed a career as an occasional opera singer and vocal coach, and met Alfred in 1960. As he began earning a living as an aeronautical engineer, the couple wed later that year, and moved into a small suburb in New York. After the pair's elopement, Patricia's family disowned her, due to marrying a man of color. Carey later explained that growing up, she felt a notion of neglect from her maternal family, a mark that affected her greatly: "So later I was like, 'Well, where does this leave me? Am I a bad person?' You know. It's still not that common to be a multi-racial person, but I'm happy with the combination of things that I am." During the interval of years in between Carey's older sister Allison and the singer's birth, the Carey family experienced personal struggles within the community due to their ethnicity. Carey's name was derived from the song "They Call the Wind Mariah", originally from the 1951 Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon. When Carey was three years old, her parents divorced due to the increasingly strenuous nature of their marriage.

"It's been difficult for me, moving around so much, having to grow up by myself... my parents divorced. And I always felt kind of different from everybody else in my neighborhoods. I was a different person ethnically. And sometimes, that can be a problem. If you look a certain way, everybody goes 'White girl', and I'd go, 'No, that's not what I am'."

—Carey, on the difficulty of her childhood

After their separation, Allison moved in with her father, while the other two children remained with their mother. As the years passed, Carey would grow apart from her father, and would later stop seeing him altogether. By the age of four, Carey recalled that she had begun to sneak the radio under her covers at night, and just sing from her heart, and try and find peace within the music. During elementary school, she would excel in subjects that she enjoyed, such as literature, art and music, while not finding interest in other subjects. After several years of financial struggling, Patricia earned enough money to move her family into a stable and more affluent sector in New York. Carey had begun writing poems and adding melodies to them, thus starting as a singer-songwriter while attending Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York. Even from a young age, Carey excelled in her music, and demonstrated usage of the whistle register, though only beginning to master and control it through her training with her mother. Though opening her daughter to the world of classical opera, Patricia never pressured Carey to pursue a career in that type of genre, as she never seemed interested in that world of music. Carey recalled that she kept her singer-songwriter works a secret and noted that Patricia had "never been a pushy mom. She never said, 'Give it more of an operatic feel'. I respect opera like crazy, but it didn't influence me."

While a high school student, Carey developed a relationship with Gavin Christopher, with whom she shared musical aspirations. The song-writing duo needed an assistant who could play the keyboard: "We called someone and he couldn't come, so by accident we stumbled upon Ben [Margulies]. Ben came to the studio, and he really couldn't play the keyboards very well - he was really more of a drummer - but after that day, we kept in touch, and we sort of clicked as writers." Carey and Christopher began writing and composing songs in his father's store basement during Carey's senior year. After composing their first song together, "Here We Go Round Again", which Carey described as having a Motown-vibe, they continued writing material for a full length demo. Following her graduation from high school, Carey's mother remarried, which ultimately prompted her to move out from their apartment. She began living in a one bedroom studio in Manhattan, which she shared with four other female students. During this time, Carey worked as a waitress for various restaurants, usually getting fired after two week intervals. While requiring work to pay for her rent, Carey's mind and effort still remained with her musical ambitions, as she continued working late into the night with Margulies, in hopes of completing a demo take that could be passed on to record executives. After completing her four song demo tape, Carey attempted to pass it to music labels, but was met with failure each time. Shortly thereafter, she was introduced to rising pop singer Brenda K. Starr.

Àyàwò àwo-orin

• Mariah Carey (1990)
• Emotions (1991)
• Music Box (1993)
• Merry Christmas (1994)
• Daydream (1995)
• Butterfly (1997)
• Rainbow (1999)
• Glitter (2001)
• Charmbracelet (2002)
• The Emancipation of Mimi (2005)
• E=MC² (2008)
• Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel (2009)
• Merry Christmas II You (2010)