Mariah Carey was born March 27, 1970 and is an American R&B and pop singer-songwriter, record producer and occasional actress. Mariah Carey made her debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, and became both the most successful and best-selling artist for that decade, according to Billboard magazine and the World Music Awards.


After marrying Tommy Mottola in 1993, albums such as Music Box (1993) and Daydream (1995) consolidated her position as one of Columbia's most successful acts. Mariah Carey separated from Tommy Mottola in 1997, and in her subsequent albums Mariah Carey attempted to distance herself from the career trajectory that he had plotted for her; her later albums presented a more overtly sexual and hip hop-oriented sound and image. In 2001, issues between Mariah Carey and her label executives led her to part ways with them, and Mariah Carey signed a lucrative deal with Virgin Records shortly after. However, Mariah Carey was dropped the following year after a highly publicised physical breakdown and the notoriously poor reception of Glitter, her film and soundtrack project. After signing to Island Def Jam Records in 2002, Mariah Carey returned to the forefront of popular music in 2005 with the success of her ninth studio album The Emancipation of Mimi.


Since her debut, Mariah Carey has scored seventeen number-one singles on the U.S Billboard charts, the most by a solo female artist. In 2003, Mariah Carey was declared "the most successful" and "number-one selling female artist in the history of recorded music" by the IFPI. Mariah Carey is also well-known for her five-octave vocal range, where the use of the whistle register and melisma are central features of her singing style.

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Mariah Carey was born in Huntington, New York. Mariah Carey 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 (né Núñez), an aeronautical engineer of mixed African American and Hispanic-Venezuelan descent. Mariah Carey was named after the song "They Call the Wind Maria", from the musical Paint Your Wagon. Mariah Carey's older brother Morgan Carey suffered from epilepsy, while her older sister Alison Carey developed a drug addiction and was arrested for prostitution in 2005. As a multiracial family, the Carey household was met with racial slurs, hostility, and sometimes violence, causing the family to move frequently around the New York area. The strain on the family led to the divorce of Mariah Carey's parents when she was three years old. Mariah 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, Mariah Carey turned to music as an outlet. Mariah Carey began singing at the age of four, and first performed in public at the age of six. Mariah Carey began writing songs while in grade school, and her mother and the members of her opera company were impressed with her talents when Mariah Carey hit a cue note that her mother had missed. Mariah Carey attended and graduated from Oldfield Middle School and Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York, although she was frequently absent due to efforts to break into the music business. After moving to New York City and completing five hundred hours of beauty school, Mariah Carey eventually landed a role as a backup singer for Brenda K. Starr.


In 1988, Mariah Carey met Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola at a party, where Starr gave him a demo tape. Tommy Mottola played the tape while leaving the party and was very impressed by what he heard. He returned to the party to find Mariah Carey, but she had already left. Nevertheless, Tommy Mottola tracked her down and signed her to a recording contract. This Cinderella-like story became part of the standard publicity surrounding Mariah Carey's entrance into the industry.