Mariah Carey – The Facts

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Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1970) is an American pop and R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. Carey made her debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola and became the first recording act to have her first five singles top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Following her marriage to Mottola in 1993, a series of subsequent successful records consolidated 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.

Carey took full creative control over her image and music following her separation from Mottola in 1997 and introduced elements of hip hop into her album material. 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 and the poor reception of Glitter, her film and soundtrack project. Carey later signed with Island/Def Jam and after an unsuccessful period, she returned to the forefront of popular music in 2005.

In 2000 the World Music Awards named Carey the best-selling female artist of all time, and she has recorded the most U.S. number-one singles for a female artist. In addition to her commercial accomplishments, she is well-known for her melismatic singing voice, which has been noted for its range, power and technical ability. However, some critics have said that Carey’s efforts to showcase her vocal talents have been at the expense of communicating true emotion through song.

Carey was born in Huntington, Long Island, New York. She is the third and youngest child of Patricia Hickey, a former opera singer and voice coach of Irish American extraction, and Alfred Roy Carey, an aeronautical engineer of African-American and Venezuelan descent. As a multiethnic family, the Careys endured racial slurs, hostility, and sometimes violence, causing the family to frequently relocate throughout 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, she turned to music as an outlet. She began singing at around the age of three, performing for the first time in public during elementary school, and was writing her own songs by junior high. 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 renown within 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 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 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.

1990–1992: Early Commercial Success

Carey co-wrote all of the original compositions on her 1990 debut album Mariah Carey and continued to co-write nearly all of her material for the rest of her career. She expressed dissatisfaction with the contributions of producers such as Ric Wake and Rhett Lawrence, whom executives at Columbia had enlisted to help make the album commercially viable. With substantial promotion it ascended to number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, where it remained for several weeks. It produced four number-one singles and made Carey a star in the United States, but its success elsewhere was limited. Critics rated the album highly, and Carey 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 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 described it as “more of the same, with less interesting material … pop-psych love songs played with airless, intimidating expertise.” The title track “Emotions” made Carey the only recording act 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 [Emotions] to be somebody else’s vision of me,” she said. “There’s more of me on this album.” She began writing and producing for other artists, such as Penny Ford and Daryl Hall, within the coming year.

Although she had occasionally performed live, stage fright had prevented Carey from embarking on any major tours. Her first widely-seen concert appearance was on the television show MTV Unplugged in 1992, and she said she felt that her performance proved her vocal abilities were not, as some had previously speculated, simulated using studio techniques. In addition to acoustic versions of some of her earlier songs, Carey premiered a cover of The Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” with back-up singer Trey Lorenz. Released as a single, the duet reached number one in the U.S. and led to a record deal for Lorenz, whose debut album Carey produced. Because of strong ratings for the Unplugged television special, the concert’s set list was released on the EP MTV Unplugged, which Entertainment Weekly called “the strongest, most genuinely musical record she has ever made … Did this live performance help her take her first steps toward growing up?”

1993–1996: Worldwide Popularity

Carey and Tommy Mottola had become romantically involved 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 number-one, a cover of Badfinger’s “Without You”, as well as the U.S. number-ones “Dreamlover” and “Hero.” Billboard magazine proclaimed it as “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.” Carey’s reply was, “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.”

Following a successful duet with Luther Vandross on a cover of Lionel Richie and Diana Ross’ “Endless Love” in late 1994, Carey released the holiday album Merry Christmas. It contained both cover material and original compositions such as “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which became Carey’s biggest hit 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 All Music Guide dismissing it as an “otherwise vanilla set… pretensions to high opera on ‘O Holy Night’ and a horrid dance club take on ‘Joy to the World’”. The album drew greater approval from the public, and it became the most successful Christmas album of all time.

In 1995 Carey released Daydream, which combined the pop sensibilities of Music Box with downbeat R&B and hip hop influences. 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 LP 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 chart for twelve weeks, “One Sweet Day” (with Boyz II Men) spent a still-record sixteen weeks at number one in the U.S., and “Always Be My Baby” (co-produced by Jermaine Dupri) led the Hot 100’s 1996 year-end radio airplay chart. 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.” Sales of the album were augmented by a short but profitable world tour, and it received six Grammy Award nominations.

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1997–2000: Independence and New Image

Carey and Mottola separated in 1996. Although the public image of the marriage was a happy one, she said that in reality she had felt trapped by her relationship with Mottola, whom she often described as controlling. They officially announced their separation in 1997, and their divorce became final the following year. Carey hired a new attorney and manager soon after the separation, as well as an independent publicist. She became a major songwriter and producer for other artists during this period, contributing to the debut albums of Allure, 7 Mile and Blaque through her short-lived Crave Records imprint.

Carey’s next album Butterfly (1997) yielded the number-one single “Honey,” the lyrics and music video for which presented a more overtly sexual image of her than had been previously seen. She stated that Butterfly marked the point that she attained full creative control over her music, which continued to move in an R&B/hip hop direction with material co-written and co-produced by rappers such as Sean “Puffy” Combs and Missy Elliott, but added: “I don’t think it’s that much of a departure from what I’ve done in the past … It’s not like I went psycho and thought I was going to be a rapper. Personally, this album is about doing whatever the hell I wanted to do.” Reviews were almost uniformly positive: LAUNCHcast said Butterfly “pushes the envelope,” a move its critic thought “may prove disconcerting to more conservative fans” but praised as “a welcome change.” The Los Angeles Times wrote: “[Butterfly] is easily the most personal, confessional-sounding record she’s ever done … Carey-bashing just might become a thing of the past.” The album was a commercial success, and “My All” (her thirteenth Hot 100 number-one) gave her the record for the most U.S. number-ones by a female artist. Towards the turn of the millennium, Carey developed the film project All That Glitters, and she also wrote songs for the films Men in Black (1997) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000).

During the production of Butterfly, Carey became involved with New York Yankees baseball player Derek Jeter. Their relationship ended in 1998, with both parties citing media interference as the main reason for the split. That year saw the release of the album #1’s, a collection of her U.S. number-one singles up to that point. Carey said she recorded new material for the album as a way of rewarding her fans, and it also included “When You Believe,” an Academy Award-winning duet with Whitney Houston from the soundtrack to The Prince of Egypt. #1’s sold above expectations, but a review in NME labeled Carey “a purveyor of saccharine bilge like ‘Hero,’ whose message seems wholesome enough: that if you vacate your mind of all intelligent thought, flutter your eyelashes and wish hard, sweet babies and honey will follow”. Also that year she appeared on the first televised VH1 Divas benefit concert program, though her alleged prima donna behavior had already led many to consider her a diva. By the following year, she had entered a relationship with singer Luis Miguel.

Rainbow, Carey’s sixth studio album, was released in 1999. It was again comprised of more R&B/hip hop-oriented songs, many of them co-created with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Both “Heartbreaker” and “Thank God I Found You” (the former featuring Jay-Z, the latter featuring Joe and boyband 98 Degrees) reached number one in the U.S., and the success of the former made Carey the only act to have a number-one single in each year of the 1990s. Media reception was generally enthusiastic, with the Sunday Herald saying the album “sees her impressively tottering between soul ballads and collaborations with R&B heavyweights like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Usher … It’s a polished collection of pop-soul.” Similar sentiments were expressed in VIBE magazine, which wrote, “She pulls out all stops…Rainbow will garner even more adoration”, but despite this it became Carey’s lowest-selling LP up to that point, and there was a recurring criticism that the tracks were too alike. When the double A-side “Crybaby”/”Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme)” became her first single to peak outside of the top twenty, Carey accused Sony of under promoting it: “The political situation in my professional career is not positive … I’m getting a lot of negative feedback from certain corporate people,” she wrote on her official website.

2001–2004: Personal and Professional Struggles

After receiving Billboard’s “Artist of the Decade” Award and the World Music Award for “Best-Selling Female Artist of the Millennium,” Carey parted from Columbia and signed a contract with EMI’s Virgin Records worth a reported US$80 million. She often stated that Columbia had regarded her as a commodity, with her separation from Mottola exacerbating her relations with label executives.

Just a few months later in July 2001, it was widely reported that Carey had suffered a physical and emotional breakdown. She had left messages on her website complaining of being overworked, and her relationship with Luis Miguel was ending. In an interview the following year, she said, “I was with people who didn’t really know me, and I had no personal assistant. I’d be doing interviews all day long, getting two hours of sleep a night, if that.” During an appearance on MTV’s Total Request Live, Carey handed out popsicles to the audience and began what was later described as a “strip tease.” By the month’s end, she had checked into hospital, and her publicist announced that she would be taking a break from public appearances.

Critics panned Glitter, Carey’s much delayed semi-autobiographical film, and it was a box office failure. The album Glitter, inspired by the music of the 1980s and released on September 11, 2001, generated her worst showing on the U.S. charts. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch dismissed it as “an absolute mess that’ll go down as an annoying blemish on a career that, while not always critically heralded, was at least nearly consistently successful,” while Blender magazine opined, “After years of trading her signature flourishes for a radio-ready purr, [Carey's] left with almost no presence at all.” “Loverboy” reached number two on the Hot 100 thanks to a price cut, but the album’s follow-up singles failed to chart.

Columbia released the low-charting album Greatest Hits shortly after the failure of Glitter, and in early 2002 Virgin bought out Carey’s contract for $28 million, which created further negative publicity. Carey said her time at Virgin had been “a complete and total stress-fest … I made a total snap decision which was based on money, and I never make decisions based on money. I learned a big lesson from that.” Later that year, she signed a $20 million contract with Island Records’ Def Jam and launched the record label MonarC. To add further to Carey’s emotional burdens, her father died of cancer that summer.

Following a well-received supporting role in the film WiseGirls, Carey released the album Charmbracelet, which she said marked “a new lease on life” for her. Sales of Charmbracelet were moderate, and the quality of Carey’s vocals came under severe criticism. The Boston Globe declared the album as “the worst of her career, revealing a voice no longer capable of either gravity-defying gymnastics or soft coos,” and Rolling Stone commented: “Carey needs bold songs that help her use the power and range for which she is famous. Charmbracelet is like a stream of watercolors that bleed into a puddle of brown.” Singles such as “Through the Rain” failed on the charts and with pop radio, whose playlists had become less open to maturing “diva” stylists such as Carey, Whitney Houston and Celine Dion.

“I Know What You Want,” a 2003 Busta Rhymes single on which Carey guest-starred, fared considerably better and reached the U.S. top five. Columbia later included it on the remix collection The Remixes, Carey’s lowest-selling album. That year, she embarked on the Charmbracelet World Tour and was awarded the World Music Chopard Diamond Award for selling over 100 million albums worldwide. In 2004 she was featured on rapper Jadakiss’ single “U Make Me Wanna,” which reached the top ten on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart.

2005–Present: Return to Prominence

Carey’s ninth studio album The Emancipation of Mimi was released in 2005 and contained contributions from producers such as The Neptunes, Kanye West and Carey’s longtime collaborator Jermaine Dupri. Carey said it was “very much like a party record … the process of putting on makeup and getting ready to go out … I wanted to make a record that was reflective of that.” Mimi became the year’s best-selling album in the U.S., won three Grammy Awards (including “Best Contemporary R&B Album”) and received some of Carey’s most favorable reviews in some time; The Guardian defined it as “cool, focused and urban … [some of] the first Mariah Carey tunes in years I wouldn’t have to be paid to listen to again.” The second single “We Belong Together” held the Hot 100’s number-one position for fourteen weeks (her longest run at the top as a solo artist) and was the biggest hit of 2005 in the U.S., while “Shake It Off” made Carey the only female artist to occupy the top two positions on the Hot 100 simultaneously. “Don’t Forget about Us” became her seventeenth number-one in the U.S., which tied her with Elvis Presley for the most number-ones by a solo act according to Billboard magazine’s revised methodology (their statistician Joel Whitburn still credits Presley with an eighteenth). By this count Carey is behind only The Beatles, who have twenty number-ones.

She is scheduled to begin a concert tour, The Adventures of Mimi, in summer 2006, and will receive a “recording” star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007.

Source: Wikipedia
Mariah Carey Tour Dates:

8/5: Miami, American Airlines Arena
8/7: Tampa, Florida, St. Pete’s Times Forum
8/9: Atlanta, Phillips Arena
8/11: Philadelphia, Wachovia Center
8/13: Toronto, Air Canada Centre
8/15: Montreal, Bell Centre
8/17: Atlantic City, New Jersey, Trump Taj Mahal
8/21: Boston, T.D. Waterhouse Centre
8/23: New York, Madison Square Garden
8/25: Uncasville, Connecticut, Mohegan Sun
8/27: East Rutherford, New Jersey, Continental Airlines Arena
9/1: Albany, New York, Pepsi Arena
9/3: Hershey, Pennsylvania, Giant Center
9/5: Verona, New York, Turning Stone Casino
9/7: Washington, D.C., Verizon Center
9/9: Detroit, Palace
9/11: Chicago, United Center
9/14: Houston, Toyota Center
9/16: Dallas, American Airlines Arena
9/18: Denver, Pepsi Center
9/21: Edmonton, Alberta, Rexall Place
9/23: Vancouver, General Motors Place
9/25: Seattle, Key Arena
9/27: Sacramento, California, Arco Arena
9/30: Las Vegas, MGM Grand
10/2: Oakland, California, Oakland Arena
10/8: San Diego, Ipayone Center
10/10: Phoenix, US Airways Arena

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