Mariah Carey

BORN: 27/04/1970 BIRTH PLACE: Long Island, New York Mariah Carey moved to New York City when she was 17 to fulfil her ambition of becoming a huge star. Having secured work as a session singer for Brenda K. Starr, her luck came good when Starr gave Mariah’s demo tape to the head of Columbia Records, Tommy Mottola. Mottola was quick to sign the young singer, and within a couple of years she was showcasing her five-octave voice to become the best-selling female performer of the 1990s. Her self-titled debut album in 1990 included four number one hit singles and led to Mariah picking up a Grammy award for Best New Artist and Best Female Vocalist. Keen to capitalise on this success, a second album, ‘Emotions’ came along quickly in 1991. The album topped the charts and an MTV Unplugged EP that included a cover of the Jackson 5's ‘I'll Be There’ clocked up yet more sales. Carey married Mottola, some twenty years her senior, in 1993. Not letting her marriage slow down her career, her next album ‘Music Box’ included two more hits singles, ‘Dreamlover’ and ‘Hero’. A Christmas album and 1995’s ‘Daydream’ both did well in the charts and, following her divorce from Mottola, Mariah returned with ‘Butterfly’ in 1997. Heavily influenced by hip-hop, the album also saw a change of image that saw the young singer shed her clothes. Following the first single from her 1999 album, ‘Rainbow’, Carey became the first artist to top the charts in each year of the 1990s. However, by the turn of the millennium things were starting to go wrong in the Carey camp. Her record breaking $80 million deal with Virgin was cut short after a number of career lows. Her movie ‘Glitter’ and accompanying soundtrack were critical disasters which led her new record company paying her $28 million dollars just to drop her. The stresses of work led to a personal breakdown and in 2001 Mariah sought professional help after posting suicidal messages on her website. However, proving that you can’t keep a good songbird down, Mariah took an extended break and in 2005 her album ‘The Emancipation of Mimi’ shot to the top of the charts.