Mariah Carey was born on Friday, March 27, 1970. She is a pop music singer, gifted with a voice capable of spanning five octaves. She is the only female artist to have a number1 song on the US charts in every year of the 1990's, the most Hot 100 number1's of any female artist in history, and also lays claim to only the second song in history ("Fantasy") to debut at number1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (the first being Michael Jackson's "You Are Not Alone"). With 61 cumulative weeks at number1, she is also the artist with the second-most weeks spent at number1, besting the Beatles by two weeks and falling only behind Elvis Presley (80 weeks).

Mariah was named after the song "They Call The Wind Mariah" from Paint Your Wagon.

Early Career Success 1990-1999

Her career began in with the release of her debut album in 1990, when she was just twenty years old. She became a commercial success almost overnight, and the album produced four huge number1 hit singles: "Vision Of Love," "Someday," "Love Takes Time," and "I Don't Want To Cry". Carey's second album, Emotions, was released in the fall of 1991 and its first single, the title track, also was an American number1 hit. This song gave Carey the record of being the only musician or band ever to have had their first five singles all hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in America. Emotions had several other top five singles, such as "If It's Over," "Can't Let Go," and "Make It Happen".

In 1992, Carey perfomed all her hits on MTV Unplugged, as well as a new song, a cover of the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There". It, too, rose quickly to the top of America's pop charts.

Carey's next studio album, Music Box, was released in 1993 and spawned the hits "Anytime You Need A Friend," "Never Forget You," and the hugely popular number one songs "Hero" and "Dreamlover". These songs, and Carey's duet with Luther Vandross of Diana Ross' "Endless Love," made Carey one of the most-played musicians on the radio in 1993 and 1994. During the Christmas season of 1994, Carey released the album Merry Christmas, and had a perennial hit with her original holiday song, "All I Want For Christmas Is You".

In 1995, Carey released Daydream. This album and her previous studio album, Music Box, would eventually go on to sell over 20 million copies each worldwide, making them Carey's two most popular albums. Daydream's first single, "Fantasy," was one of her biggest hits ever. It got heavy play on urban radio, thanks to a remix which featured a rhyme by the Wu-Tang Clan's Old Dirty Bastard. This also marked the start of a new trend for Carey's singles. She realized that she had a higher potential at having massive crossover hits if she employed the use of various genre-specific remixes for each single. Daydream's second and third singles, "One Sweet Day," a duet with Boyz II Men, and "Always Be My Baby," respectfully, were arguably even bigger hits than "Fantasy". "Always Be My Baby" received huge airplay from pop, adult contemporary, and adult top 40 radio, and its urban remix which featured rhymes by Da Brat and a more soulful sounding chorus, sung by R&B group Xscape got huge airplay on urban, rap, and R&B radio stations. "Forever," the last single off of the album, did poorly compared to the first three, but was still a top 40 airplay hit in America.

Carey's 1997 album, Butterfly, saw her continuing to move in an R&B/hip hop direction. The first single, "Honey" was a number one hit and featured a remix with rappers Puff Daddy, The Lox, and Mase. Its video, filmed shortly after her divorce from Tommy Mottola, VP of Sony Records, displayed a much more sexual Carey than any previous video. Other singles and videos off the album included "Butterfly;" "The Roof;" "Breakdown," a duet with Bone Thugs-n-Harmony featuring Carey singing in a style similar to the way the Bone Thugs rap; and the number1 hit "My All".

In 1998, Carey released the album Ones, a collection of all her American number one singles up to that point. It also included the new singles "When You Believe," a duet with Whitney Houston which featured in the DreamWorks animated film The Prince of Egypt; "Sweetheart," a hip-hoppy duet with Jermaine Dupri; "I Still Believe," a cover of the 80's song by Brenda K. Starr; and "Whenever You Call," a duet with popular R&B singer Brian McKnight.

During the late summer of 1999, Carey began promoting her upcoming album, Rainbow by releasing a single and video for "Heartbreaker". By this point, Carey had begun to alienate audiences by striving to create songs that tried too hard to appeal to all people. In the case of "Heartbreaker", it received criticism for sounding like her previous singles "Dreamlover" and "Fantasy", and many people viewed the guest rap from Jay-Z as a desperate attempt to get the single airplay on urban radio, since Carey could no longer depend on adult contemporary or even top 40 radio to necessarily play her new singles as they once had. At this point in Carey's career, adult-contemporary fans were feeling betrayed by Carey, while urban fans felt that she was just jumping on the rap bandwagon. With people unsure what to make of her changing sound, style, and image, and several types of radio stations--including adult contemporary, pop, and urban--unsure whether the song fit their format and their audiences, "Hearbreaker" was not the smash that first singles from new Carey albums had always been prior. Nevertheless, it managed to crack the top 20 in overall radio airplay, garnering smaller amounts of airplay from a combination of different formats, and was Carey's fourteenth number1 on the Hot 100, thanks to a commercially available single, which sold over 300,000 copies in its first week alone. The single went on to achieve platinum (1,000,000 copies sold) status and was one of the last singles to do so in America, once the Napster craze took off in 2000 and decimated the American singles industry.

"Heartbreaker" featured a popular music video which got heavy airplay on MTV's TRL. With a cost of over $2.5 million, the video is Carey's most expensive to date and one of the top 10 most expensive music videos in history. A video was also filmed for a remix to "Heartbreaker", which was much more hip-hop oriented than the original, featuring a sample of Snoop Dogg's "Ain't No Fun" and guest raps by Missy Elliott and Da Brat. The remix video, which has cameo appearances by Brat, Elliott, and Snoop, also became popular on TRL. Combined, both versions of "Heartbreaker" spent 65 days on TRL and become Carey's first and only TRL-"retired" video.

Rainbows second single, "Thank God I Found You" became Carey's fifteenth number1 single on the Hot 100. The song was a duet with Joe and featured 98 Degrees singing background vocals on the chorus. Like "Heartbreaker", the song didn't fare as well on the radio as Carey's earlier songs, but solid sales assured that the song became a chart hit. Also like "Heartbreaker", following in the trend that Carey seemed to use at the time for each new single, a video for a remix of "Thank God I Found You"--which contained a sample from Keith Sweat's "Make It Last Forever" and featured Joe and Nas--was released.

The album's next two singles, "Cry Baby" and "Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)", were released almost simultaneously. "Cry Baby", a hip-hop song which featured Snoop Dogg, was promoted to urban and hip-hop radio, while "Mariah's Theme", a ballad in the vein of "Hero", was promoted to top 40 and adult contemporary radio. Neither song really took off with any audience. Even with a commercial single release "Cry Baby" only managed to peak at 26 on the Billboard Hot 100, Carey's lowest peaking single up to that point. This led to widespread speculation that Carey's career was "over" and that she would never have a majorly successful album in America again. To date, Rainbow has sold 3 million copies in America and not much more than 3 million when the rest of the world is considered. Such sales were noted by critics to be a far cry from when Carey's new albums managed sales of over 20 million, just five years earlier.

Breakdown 2000 - 2004

Though her release singles are usually in the pop genre, she has also combined her talents with rap artists such as Lord Tariq, Peter Gunz, and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Most of her recent singles have also been remixed as dance music, where she worked with DJs such as David Morales and Junior Vasquez.

Partly due to the critical and commercial panning of Rainbow and the growing media sentiment that Carey would never manage to have a true success again, Carey suffered an emotional and mental breakdown in 2001. Her acting debut in the film Glitter, panned by many popular movie critics, coupled with her many years of excessively hard work appeared to have taken a toll on her. Her then-current album, Rainbow, was not selling as well as her previous albums, and she complained her new record label wasn't promoting it. So she got an new contract with Virgin, under which her commercially unsuccessful album "Glitter" was released. Finally, Mariah made an appearance on MTV's TRL, where she was scantily clad and acting strangely. After that, she checked into a mental health facility and announced that she was taking a break from performing.

Mariah released a new album, Charmbracelet, to a muted reaction in October 2002. It is perhaps her least commercially successful album to date, and included the singles "Through The Rain", "Boy (I Need You)" featuring rapper Cam'ron, and a cover of Def Leppard's 80's hit "Bringin' On The Heartbreak". Neither of the three singles really took off.

However, Carey's latest single, a duet with Busta Rhymes entitled "I Know What You Want" fared considerably better, having reached the top ten of Billboard's pop singles chart and the top ten in rap radio airplay. It is also featured on the latest release The Remixes, a double CD containing a series of remixes.

She has had 15 number1 Hot 100 singles in the United States: "Vision Of Love", "Love Takes Time", "Someday", "I Don't Want To Cry", "Emotions", "I'll Be There", "Dreamlover", "Hero", "Fantasy", "One Sweet Day", "Always Be My Baby", "Honey", "My All", "Heartbreaker" and "Thank God I Found You". She currently has the record for the most weeks at number1 in the American charts with her single "One Sweet Day", featuring Boyz II Men. It totalled a full 16 weeks at number1 on top the Billboard Hot 100.

An Internet rumor in 2002 claimed that Carey is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records both for the ability to hit the highest note (G7#), and possessing the largest vocal range (A2-G7#). The book contains no such categories. She does, however, have a vocal trademark of singing long phrases in the whistle register, a talent that is extremely rare.

Carey recieved unexpected attention from the experimental rock band Sonic Youth on their 2004 release Sonic Nurse which featured the track "Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream" (Carey's name was replaced with that of the band's bassist Kim Gordon at the last minute for legal reasons) which offered a somewhat sarcastic look at the singer.

2005 - The Return of the Voice

Mariah Carey's ninth studio album, The Emancipation of Mimi, was released in 2005. It was advertised as "The Return of the Voice", though Carey maintained that the voice had always been there. Todd Burns called Mimi "easily the strongest album that she’s made in this millennium", and a critic for The Guardian wrote that it contained "the first Mariah Carey tunes in years I wouldn't have to be paid to listen to again." It became the year's best-selling album (the first by a female solo artist to do so since Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill in 1996), [6] and later received eight Grammy Award nominations. Its second single, "We Belong Together," became the biggest hit of 2005 and Carey's career: it topped the U.S. charts for fourteen weeks, reached number one in several other countries, and was honored as the world's most-played single of the year at the World Music Awards. "Don't Forget About Us" became Carey's seventeenth number-one in the U.S., tying her with Elvis Presley for the most number-ones by a solo artist according to Billboard magazine's revised methodology (however, their own statistician still credits Presley with an eighteenth). By this count, Carey is behind only the Beatles, who had twenty number-one singles during their six-and-a-half-year heyday.

Acting Career

Carey, who had participated in theatre workshops as a child, made her big screen debut as an opera singer and one of the ex-girlfriends of Jimmie (Chris O'Donnell) in The Bachelor (1999), a romantic comedy starring O'Donnell and Renée Zellweger. Critical response to Carey's cameo appearance, which reportedly took over thirty takes to film, was lukewarm: Paul Tatara from CNN derisively said Carey's casting as a talentless diva was "letter-perfect", and Tony Lee simply stated "no, she can't act".

Carey's first starring role was in Glitter, a 2001 film that had been in development as a vehicle for Carey since 1997. In it, she played Billie Frank, a struggling singer and songwriter who breaks into the music industry after she meets DJ Julian Dice (Max Beesley). Reviews were scathing; while Roger Ebert gave mild praise for Carey's performance, saying, "Her acting ranges from dutiful flirtatiousness to intense sincerity", most other critics panned it: Stephanie Zacharek called Carey "numbingly bland" in her role, and Michael Atkinson observed, "when she tries for an emotion—any emotion—she looks as if she's lost her car keys". Glitter was a box office failure, and Carey, who "won" a Worst Actress Razzie Award for her role, has since referred to the film as "a diva moment".

Carey next appeared co-starring with Mira Sorvino and Melora Walters as a tough-talking waitress in the independent film WiseGirls, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002. Critics who saw the film lauded Carey for her efforts: Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter predicted "Those scathing notices for Glitter will be a forgotten memory for the singer once people warm up to Raychel", and Roger Freidman, referring to her as "a Thelma Ritter for the new millennium", said "her line delivery is sharp and she manages to get the right laughs". WiseGirls producer Anthony Esposito cast Carey in another film, The Sweet Science, about an unknown but talented boxer who is recruited by a determined female boxing manager. However, the project later fell into development hell, while WiseGirls was not given a theatrical release and went straight-to-cable in the United States. Subsequent cameo appearances in the Damon Dash films Death of a Dynasty (2003) and State Property 2 (2005) went largely unnoticed by the ticket-buying public.

Mariah the Philanthropist

Carey is a philanthropist who has donated both time and millions of dollars to organizations such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the National Adoption Center, VH1's Save the Music Foundation, and the Fresh Air Fund among many others. Carey is well-known nationally for her work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation in granting the wishes of the terminally ill Caleb Boulter, who called her "a very real person who overflows with compassion and love for others". As part of her involvement with the Fresh Air Fund, she is the co-founder of a camp located in Fishkill, New York that enables inner-city youth to embrace the arts, be introduced to career opportunities, and build self-esteem. The camp was named Camp Mariah in honour of Carey's work with the Fresh Air Fund, and she received a Congressional Award titled the Horizon Award for her charity work on behalf of children.

Carey performed as part of the America: A Tribute to Heroes nationally televised fundraiser in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and in December 2001 she performed before U.S. peacekeeping troops in Kosovo. She hosted the CBS television special At Home for the Holidays with Mariah Carey, which documented real-life stories of adopted children and foster families. In July 2005, Carey performed for Live 8 at the Live 8 concert, London with the African Children's Choir. She was also a participant in relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina's damage to the U.S. Gulf Coast later that year, performing on the Shelter from the Storm telethon and collaborating with Michael Jackson and other artists on an upcoming hurricane-relief single titled "From the Bottom of My Heart".

Carey, who considered writing her autobiography with David Ritz, has instead chosen to fictionalize her life story and adapt it into a series of illustrated children's books titled Automatic Princess, about an orphaned young girl who is biracial. Also forthcoming is a clothing and accessories line known as Automatic Princess, as well as a lingerie line, Kiss Kiss, which will be available for women in all sizes. Carey's fashion sense has itself often been criticized for exposing too much of her, or just being poorly put together