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BIOGRAPHY
by LC (MSL)
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THE
BEGINNING Born in March 27th. – 1970, Mariah Carey was raced in Long Island,
NY. Her father Alfred Roy Carey, an
aeronautical engineer and her mother Patricia Vian, a former opera singer and
voice coach split up when she was only 3 years old, with her mother getting
the custody of her and of her big brother Morgan; his older sister Allison
had to go between the two families.
From a very early age, Mariah started to show a big interest in music
and following her mother’s tutorial advices, she quickly developed a great
mature voice which surprised everybody around her. Just after she graduated from Harborfields High school, she
“took her tapes, a few notebooks, some clothes, some money her mom gave her
and just went out to Manhattan” to pursue a singing career. Previously, her brother aided teenaged
Mariah to meet a few people involved in the music business and she recorded a
demo tape with the help of keyboardist/producer Ben Margullies, with whom she
began arranging the songs she had already written during early years. After thirteen difficult months in
Manhattan, working as a waitress, “a very bad waitress”, she finally was
given a shot as a live performance back-up singer for soul artist Brenda K
Starr. The two immediately became
good friends and it gave Mariah the opportunity to start her career. Some time after that, Brenda invited
Mariah to a music industry party, where big executives were expected and some
chances might be waiting for her. Right at the party, Starr suggested handing
Mariah’s demo tape to the recently promoted Sony Music Entertainment
president Tommy Mottola and she did just that. Accordingly, after Mottola left the party he put the record in
his limo, listened to the first three songs and was so amazed by Mariah’s
voice and soulful interpretations that he went back to the party to talk to
her but she had already left. Only a
few days after that Cinderella story, Patricia Carey was signing seventeen
year old Mariah’s contract with Columbia Records and that’s how everything
started. With help of Don Ienner,
famous composer/producer Narada Michael Walden, Rick Wake, Rhett Lawrence and
the man who later became her long time songwriting partner Walter Afanasieff,
Mariah Carey started with the right foot in music and her debut album
was a huge sensation as it was heavily promoted by Columbia and CBS Records
worldwide. Her first single “Vision
Of Love” was propelled to the top spot of the Billboard charts and so were
her subsequent singles “Love Takes Time”, “Someday” and “I Don’t Wanna
Cry”. WHEN
DREAMS CAME TRUE
It was an
absolutely glorious beginning, her album was selling like crazy as it located
itself at the top of the Billboard 200 for about 12 weeks and got to sell
nearly 6 million copies that year.
However, Mariah was still very young and pretty shy, reason why she
immediately rejected Sony’s suggestion to start a World Tour, so merely 9
months after her first album, she went back to the studio to record her next
production originally titled “The Wind”, name which came from one of the
tracks destined for it. On 1991, her
second album “Emotions” was out in stores and counted with an homonymous first
single conquering the charts also at the top spot, at this point Mariah
already had broken a record for being the first female artist to have her
first five consecutive singles as chart toppers. “Emotions”
sold four million copies and featured top-five singles “Can’t Let Go” and
“Make It happen”. It appeared that Mariah
wanted to concentrate on making blockbuster albums because she inmediately
recorded her MTV Unplugged album, which produced a #1 hit; a cover of the
Jackson Five’s “I’ll Be There”, and at the same time was writing material for
her third studio production. It
seemed that by those days, Mariah had established a relationship with
Mottola, which ended up in a spectacular fairy tale wedding in New York and
in the mean time she was getting more and more into her music, suggesting
that she wanted to add some urban/R&B atmosphere to her songs, but her
boss, and now husband was absolutely negative to that possibility. Apparently, she was always making
suggestions and expressing thoughts towards her music that weren’t exactly
listened by Mottola, situation that eventually caused friction between the
two. On 1993 shortly after the
wedding, she released the single “Dreamlover”, which immediately became a #1
hit and kept that status for eight weeks, positioning as Mariah’s seventh #1
song. But “Dreamlover” was somehow
only the beginning as it anticipated the arrival of her third blockbuster hit
album “Music Box”
which also dominated the charts and produced her eighth and most famous #1
hit “Hero”. Everybody was a witness
of Mariah’s chain of successes and so were music critics who harshly panned
her first World Tour for “Music Box”, yet the album has sold 26 million
copies around the world and gave Mariah the chance to also be crowned in UK
charts as her cover of the song “Without You” was a #1 hit in England and
catapulted her to world fame. So, two
#1 albums, six hit singles, happily married and enjoying the luxury of being
considered a major superstar, Mariah was realizing her childhood dreams. WHEN THE
SKY WAS CONQUERED
By 1995, she was ready to strike back and the release of her album “Daydream”
was anticipated by her super hit single “Fantasy”, which debuted #1 in the
charts with just a week of radio promotion and sold 2 million copies only in
America. So “Daydream” was set to be
a fantastic seller, that was sure, yet everyone ignored what was to come as
her mega-hit collaboration with band Boyz II Men “One Sweet Day” also debuted
#1 and stayed there for sixteen weeks in a row, which gave Mariah the record
of having a single in the top of the charts for that long. Nobody has broken that record yet. “Always Be My Baby”, another “Daydream”
single, also became a #1 hit, dethroned Celine Dion’s academy award winning
song “Because You Loved Me” and by that point became Mariah’s eleventh #1
production, which put her right next to Whitney Houston and Madonna in the
list of best selling female artists of all time. BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE TO FLY
But if her professional
life was at the top, her personal life was not going that well as she
announced her separation from Tommy Mottola in 1996 under apparent amicable
terms; she stated “We’ll always be a part of eachother’s families, we’re not
gonna be enemies”. Right after that
sad event, she began having problems with her label/record company Sony
because she was decided to change her image, her music style, her way of
living life, she defeated everybody around her, fired her long time manager
and Mottola’s business partner Randy Hoffman and moved to Manhattan, leaving
her gigantic mansion in Bedford, NY.
There was a lot of tension, Columbia was not doing well and Mariah was
determined to be independent and self-reliant in everything related to her
life. Suddenly, to Tommy’s amazement
and everybody’s shocked face, she released “Honey”, the super collaboration
with Sean “Puffy” Combs that became an absolute triumph for her, and which
video showed Mariah as a sexy woman in Puerto Rico and counted with rap
touches by Mase and The Lox. “Honey”
was the first single from the “Butterfly”
album, Mariah’s favorite record to date and a production filled with personal
introspective lyrics craving independence and freedom as its homonymous song:
“Spread your wings and prepare to fly/for you have become a butterfly/…if you
should return to me/we truly were meant to be.” “Butterfly” was certified 4xplatinum in America and at last
reflected Mariah’s musical tendencies closely and songs like “Breakdown” or
“Babydoll” confirm that fact. “Honey”
was Mariah’s 12th #1 song and “My All”, also from “Butterfly” was
her 13th; a huge summer radio sensation in 1998. In that same year, she compiled her 13
super hits in her release “#1’s”
which also included four new recordings: “Sweetheart”, a collaboration with
her friend/co-producer Jermaine Dupri, “When You Believe”, a duet with her
supposed arch-rival Whitney Houston, “I Still Believe”, a tribute to Brenda
K. Starr, who originally made it a hit in the 80’s, and a new version of the
song “Whenever You Call”, this time with Brian McKnight. The album was very successful and still
holds the record for being the best-sold album for a foreign artist in
Australia and Japan. TIMES GOES BY A year after the success of #1’s, it was officially revealed that
Mariah was dating Mexican heartthrob singer Luis Miguel with whom she was
traveling around the world. At the
same time, she was working on her next album release in Capri, Italy. Then in August 16 – 1999, she came with
“Heartbreaker”, an 80’s-flavored dance-R&B hit which gave her another
success in America and Europe.
Originally, the track was supposed to be part of one of her future
acting projects; by 1999 she had already shot “The Bachelor” with Chris
O’Donnell and Renée Zellwegger and another low profile comedy titled
“Double-00-Soul”. The success of
“Heartbreaker” preceded “Rainbow”,
Mariah’s new hip-hop flavored album with collaborations that included Jay-Z,
Usher, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot, DaBrat, R&B singer Joe and pop band 98
Degrees. In spite of the success
“Rainbow” showed, Mariah said she was not fully satisfied with Columbia’s
promotion duties as she manifested she was having troubles with the company
because they no longer considered her a priority, in fact her fans had to
send a petition to Columbia Records in favor of releasing Mariah’s Theme
“Can’t Take That Away” which said: “They do try, hard to make me feel that I
don’t matter at all” in one of its verses.
It figured why Columbia didn’t want to release the single in the first
place. Rainbow was definitely a hit,
it sold about 8-9 million copies worldwide and produced two #1 singles; the
Jay-Z enhanced “Heartbreaker” and the collaboration with Joe and 98 Degrees
“Thank God I Found You”, but anyhow Mariah was eager to fly free from
Sony. After so many rumors and press
statements, Mariah left Columbia Records, her company since 1990 and made
history by signing a super contract with EMI Music Group’s subsidiary label
Virgin Records who would be in charge of promoting her up-coming soundtrack
and four more studio albums. When the new
millennium arrived, Mariah was more that determined to launch her acting
career, she had already accepted starring on the Twentieth Century
Fox/Columbia Pictures flick “All That Glitters” alongside Max Bessley,
Valerie Pettiford and rap artist DaBrat.
She participated in the production of the soundtrack too, also titled Glitter,
which included twelve new recordings from the movie with multiple
collaborations featuring stars like Ja Rule, Busta Rhymes, Eric Benet and
funk band Cameo. “Loverboy”, the lead
single was released and became her sixth. “Number One single of the year” for
2001. Her film “Glitter” was out to
theaters around Sept – 2001. The fact
is that “Glitter” was not a sensation, neither the album nor the film and it
caused a sudden termination of the contract she had signed with EMI/Virgin by
the beginning of this year. However
it motivated Mariah to move on and start a brand new phase in her life as she
participated in high profile events like the Super Bowl Opening where she
performed the United States National Anthem, and Fox popular TV series Ally
McBeal, where she both acted and sang a song. 2002 has been relaxing for her, she’s recently signed a
contract with Universal Music Group which accordingly would be a big new
start and the opportunity to leave her legacy to all of her fans and to
music. Her new album is expected to
be out later this year. Mariah Carey is
considered the most successful recording artist in history, an excellent
vocalist, a talented songwriter, an awesome producer, video director and now,
a progressing actress. Besides that,
she’s committed to her community and supports several charities, in which we
can find Fresh Air Fund’s “Camp Mariah” for inner city kids, among others. ©2002 MSL |
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