It’s easy to think of Mariah Carey as simply a pop diva who has been around for a long time, but to do so would be to miss out on an exceptional talent and interesting individual. The achievements she has made in the music industry over the past two decades are unmatched.
On March 27, 1970, Mariah Carey was born in Long Island, New York. Her father, Alfred Roy Carey, was African-American and Venezuelan, and her mother, Patricia Hickey, was Irish American. Her racial background gave Mariah Carey her unique beauty. She began singing at about three years old, right about the time her parents divorced.
By junior high school Mariah was writing her own songs and by senior high she was a demo artist. Her demo work gave her connections in the New York music industry, and at the age of eighteen, Carey met one of Columbia Records executives, Tommy Mottola. He was given Mariah Carey’s demo tape and liked what he heard. Mottola signed Carey to a recording contract.
Her first album, Mariah Carey, hit #1 and produced four #1 singles. That year she won the Grammy for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Carey continued to be one of the most popular recording artists throughout the 1990s. She sold millions of albums and recorded with popular artists like Lionel Richie, Boyz II Men, Carole King, Michael Jackson, and Whitney Houston.
In 1993 Maria Carey married the record executive who discovered her, Tommy Mottola. The two had been involved since she recorded her first album. The match seemed perfect, but in 1996 they separated, and then divorced in 1998. Carey claimed that her husband had been controlling. Shortly after her separation she began dating Derek Jeter, a baseball player with the New York Yankees. By the end of 1998 the couple had split, claiming that media interference made their relationship difficult.
Although romantically the 90s had been a tough decade for Carey, professionally it was about as successful as it gets. She had become the best selling female artist ever and was awarded Billboard’s Artist of the Decade Award. But with the new millennium came an almost immediate downfall for the star. Her first movie endeavor, Glitter in 2001 did horribly at the box office and the album associated with it did poorly too. Claiming to be exhausted and overstressed, she checked herself into a hospital after having an apparent breakdown on MTV’s Total Request Live.
The next few years were professionally difficult for Carey, but she made a strong comeback in 2005 with the album The Emancipation of Mimi, a critical and commercial success. It also gave Carey her seventeenth #1 hit, tying her with Elvis Presley. The only recording artist with more #1 hits is the Beatles.
In the summer of 2006, Mariah Carey embarked on tour to promote her latest album. With her resurgence in popularity, she has been given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007.
In early April 2008 Mariah reach the number one position in the Billboard top 100, putting her ahead of Elvis Presley with her 18 # 1 hits and only slightly behind The Beatles.
