Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey during a break in shooting of the "I Still Believe" (1999) music video.
Background information
Origin	Huntington, New York, United States
Years active	1990—present

Mariah Carey (born March 27 1970) is an American pop and R&B singer-songwriter, record producer and occasional actress. She made her debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, and became the first recording act to have her first five singles top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. After marrying Mottola in 1993, a series of subsequent hit records consolidated her position as one of Columbia's most successful acts, and she is the best-selling artist of the 1990s in the U.S. according to Billboard magazine.

Carey took full creative control over her image and music following her separation from Mottola in 1996, and introduced elements of hip hop into her material. Her popularity was in decline when she parted ways with Columbia in 2001, and she was dropped by her new label Virgin Records the next year after a highly-publicised physical breakdown and the poor reception of Glitter, her film and soundtrack project. Carey later signed with Island Def Jam Records, and after a period of minimal success she returned to the forefront of popular music in 2005.

The World Music Awards named Carey the best-selling female artist of all time in 2000, and according to Billboard Magazine she is tied with Elvis Presley for the greatest number of U.S. number-one singles by a solo artist. In addition to her commercial accomplishments, she is well-known for her wide vocal range and melismatic singing style. However, her voice and lyrics are the subjects of frequent criticism.

Biography and music career

Early life and discovery

Carey was born in Huntington, New York. She 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 (born Núñez), an aeronautical engineer of Afro-Venezuelan descent. She was named after the song "They Call the Wind Maria", from the musical Paint Your Wagon. Carey's older brother Morgan suffered from cerebral palsy, while her older sister Alison developed a drug addiction and became a prostitute. 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 and Rhode Island areas. The strain on the family led to the divorce of Carey's parents when she was three years old. 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, Carey turned to music as an outlet. She began singing at around the age of three, and first performed in public during elementary school. Her mother and the members of her opera company were impressed with her talents, and by junior high school she was writing her own songs. Carey attended and graduated from Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York, although she was frequently absent due to her popularity as a demo singer for several Long Island recording studios. Carey's moderate renown within the Huntington music scene gave her opportunities to work with musicians such as Gavin Christopher and Ben Margulies, with whom she would co-write material for her demo tape. After moving to New York City, Carey worked numerous part-time jobs to pay the rent and completed five hundred hours of beauty school. Eventually, she successfully auditioned for a role as a backup singer for Brenda K. Starr.

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

1990–1992: Early commercial success

Carey's professional music career began with the release of her eponymous debut album, Mariah Carey, in 1990. Carey co-wrote all of the compositions on the album and would continue to co-write nearly all of her material for the rest of her career, but expressed dissatisfaction with the contributions of producers such as Ric Wake and Rhett Lawrence to the album. It was backed by substantial promotion and ascended to number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart a year after its release, where it remained for eleven weeks. It produced four number-one singles, which made Carey a star in the United States. Outside of North America, however, the album's success was limited. Critics rated Carey's debut highly, and in 1991 she won Grammy Awards for "Best New Artist" and "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance" for her debut single "Vision of Love".

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Carey performing on MTV Unplugged in 1992.

Emotions, Carey's second album, was conceived as a homage to Motown soul music (see Motown Sound) and saw Carey working with Walter Afanasieff and the dance music group C&C Music Factory. It was released soon after her debut album in the fall of 1991, but was neither critically nor commercially as successful; Rolling Stone magazine described Emotions as "more of the same, with less interesting material...pop-psych love songs played with airless, intimidating expertise". Its first single, the title track "Emotions", gave Carey the distinction of being the only recording act in history to have their first five singles reach number-one on the U.S. Hot 100 chart, though the album's follow-up singles failed to maintain this feat. Carey had been lobbying for the ability to produce her own songs, and beginning with Emotions she would co-produce most of her material. "I didn't want [Emotions] to be somebody else's vision of me", she said. "There's more of me on this album". She would also begin writing and producing for other artists, such as Penny Ford and Daryl Hall, within the coming year.

Although she had fulfilled several concert dates to support her debut album, stage fright had prevented Carey from embarking on any major public tours. Her first widely-seen concert appearance was on the television show MTV Unplugged in May 1992, and she said she felt that her performance proved her vocal abilities were not, as some had previously speculated, simulated using studio techniques. In addition to acoustic versions of some of her earlier songs, Carey premiered a cover of The Jackson 5's "I'll Be There" on the special with back-up singer Trey Lorenz. Released as a single, the duet became Carey's sixth number-one hit in the U.S. and led to a record deal for Lorenz, whose debut album Carey produced. Due to strong ratings for the Unplugged television special, the concert's setlist was released on the EP MTV Unplugged, which Entertainment Weekly called "the strongest, most genuinely musical record she has ever made...Did this live performance help her take her first steps toward growing up?".

1993–1996: Worldwide popularity

Carey and Tommy Mottola had become romantically involved during the making of her debut album, and in June 1993 they were married in Manhattan.

Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds consulted on Carey's third studio album, Music Box, which was released later that year and became her most successful album worldwide. It yielded her first UK number-one hit with a cover of Badfinger's "Without You", as well as the U.S. number-one singles "Dreamlover" and "Hero". Billboard magazine proclaimed the album as "heart-piercing...easily the most elemental of Carey's releases, her vocal eurythmics in natural sync with the songs", but Christopher John Farley of Time magazine lamented Carey's attempt at a mellower work: "[Music Box] seems perfunctory and almost passionless...Carey could be a pop-soul great; instead she has once again settled for Salieri-like mediocrity". A subsequent U.S. tour was slated by most critics. Carey said in a Vogue interview: "As soon as you have a big success, a lot of people don't like that. There's nothing I can do about it. All I can do is make music I believe in".

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Carey and Boyz II Men recording "One Sweet Day" (1995), one of Carey's most successful singles.

In late 1994, following a successful duet with Luther Vandross of Lionel Richie and Diana Ross' "Endless Love", Carey released the holiday album Merry Christmas. It contained both cover material and original compositions, one of which was "All I Want for Christmas Is You". The single became Carey's first number-one hit in Japan, and in subsequent years would emerge as her most perennially popular song on U.S. radio. Critical reception of Merry Christmas was mixed, with All Music Guide dismissing it as an "otherwise vanilla set...Pretensions to high opera on 'O Holy Night' and a horrid danceclub take on 'Joy to the World'". The album drew greater approval from the public, becoming the most successful Christmas album of all time.

In 1995 Carey released Daydream, which combined the pop sensibilities of Music Box with downbeat R&B and hip hop influences. Columbia reportedly reacted negatively to Carey's intentions for the album: "Everybody was like 'What, are you crazy?'", she recalled. "They're very nervous about breaking the formula". The album became her largest-selling LP in the U.S., and its singles achieved similar success: "Fantasy" became only the second single to debut at number-one in the U.S. and spent twelve weeks at number one in Canada, "One Sweet Day" (a duet with Boyz II Men) spent a still-record sixteen weeks at number one in the U.S., and "Always Be My Baby" (co-produced by Jermaine Dupri) appeared at number one on the Hot 100's 1996 year-end radio airplay chart. Daydream generated career-best reviews for Carey and was named one of 1995's best albums by publications such as the New York Times, who wrote that its "best cuts bring pop candy-making to a new peak of textural refinement" and noted that Carey's songwriting "has taken a leap forward, becoming more relaxed, sexier and less reliant on thudding cliches". Sales of the album were augmented by a highly profitable world tour, and it received six Grammy nominations.

1997–2000: Independence and new image

Carey and Mottola separated in late 1996. Although she had often projected the image of a happy marriage to the public, she said that in reality she had felt trapped by her relationship with Mottola, whom she often described as controlling. They officially announced their separation in 1997, and their divorce became final the following year. Carey hired a new attorney and manager soon after the separation, as well as an publicist independent of Columbia. She became a major songwriter and producer for other artists during this period, contributing to the debut albums of Allure, 7 Mile and Blaque through her short-lived Crave Records imprint.

The lyrics and music video for "Honey" (1997) presented a more overtly sexual image of Carey than had been previously seen.

Carey's 1997 album Butterfly was preceded by the number-one single "Honey", the lyrics and music video for which presented a more overtly sexual image of her than had been previously seen. Carey stated that Butterfly marked the point that she attained full creative control over her music, which continued to move in an R&B/hip hop direction with material co-written and produced by rappers such as Sean "Puffy" Combs and Missy Elliott. She added: "I don't think it's that much of a departure from what I've done in the past...It's not like I went psycho and thought I was going to be a rapper. Personally, this album is about doing whatever the hell I wanted to do". Reviews were almost uniformly positive: J.R. Reynolds of LAUNCHcast said Butterfly "pushes the envelope", a move that he thought "may prove disconcerting to more conservative fans" but praised as "a welcome change". The Los Angeles Times wrote: "[Butterfly] is easily the most personal, confessional-sounding record she's ever done...Carey-bashing just might become a thing of the past". The album was a commercial success, and "My All" (her thirteenth Hot 100 number-one) gave her the record for the most U.S. number-ones by a female artist. Towards the turn of the millennium Carey began to develop her own film project, All That Glitters, and she also wrote songs for the soundtracks to the films Men in Black (1997) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000).

During the production of Butterfly, Carey became involved with New York Yankees baseball player Derek Jeter, who was also biracial. Their relationship ended in 1998, with both parties citing media interference as the reason for the split. That year saw the release of the album #1's, a collection of her U.S. number-one singles up to that point. Carey recorded new material for the album as a way of rewarding her fans, and it also included "When You Believe", a duet with Whitney Houston from the soundtrack to The Prince of Egypt that won an Academy Award. #1's sold above expectations, but a review of the set in NME magazine labelled Carey "a purveyor of saccharine bilge like 'Hero', whose message seems wholesome enough: that if you vacate your mind of all intelligent thought, flutter your eyelashes and wish hard, sweet babies and honey will follow". Also that year she appeared on the first televised VH1 Divas benefit concert program, though her alleged prima donna behavior had already led many to consider her a diva. By the following year, she had begun a relationship with singer Luis Miguel.

Rainbow, Carey's sixth studio album, was released in 1999. It was again comprised of more R&B/hip hop-oriented songs, many of them co-created by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and featuring numerous guest artists. Both "Heartbreaker" and "Thank God I Found You" (the former featuring Jay-Z, the latter featuring Joe and boyband 98 Degrees) reached number one in the U.S., and the success of the former made Carey the only act to have a number-one single in each year of the 1990s. Reception from the media was generally enthusiastic, the Sunday Herald saying that the album "sees her impressively tottering between soul ballads and collaborations with R&B heavyweights like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Usher...It's a polished collection of pop-soul". Similar sentiments were echoed in Vibe magazine, who wrote "She pulls out all stops...Rainbow will garner even more adoration", but despite this it became Carey's lowest-selling LP up to that point, and there was a recurring criticism that the tracks were too alike. When the double A-side "Crybaby"/"Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)" became her first single release to peak outside of the top twenty, Carey publicly accused Sony of underpromoting it: "the political situation in my professional career is not positive...I'm getting a lot of negative feedback from certain corporate people", she wrote on her official website.

2001–2004: Personal and professional struggles

After receiving Billboard's Artist of the Decade Award (see Billboard Music Awards) and the World Music Award for Best-Selling Female Artist of the Millennium, Carey finally ended her time at Columbia and signed a contract with EMI's Virgin Records worth a reported US$80 million. She often stated that Columbia had regarded her as a commodity, with her separation from Mottola exacerbating her relations with label executives. Just a few months later in July 2001, it was widely reported that Carey had suffered a physical and emotional breakdown. She had left voicemail messages on her website to her fans complaining of being overworked, and her relationship with Luis Miguel was ending. In an interview the following the year, she said "I was with people who didn't really know me, and I had no personal assistant. I'd be doing interviews all day long, getting two hours of sleep a night, if that". Carey made an appearance on MTV's Total Request Live, where she handed out popsicles to the teen-aged audience and began what was later described as a "strip tease". By the month's end she had checked into a psychiatric hospital, and her publicist announced that she would be taking a break from public appearances.

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A scene from Carey's poorly-received star vehicle Glitter (2001).

Her much delayed semi-autobiographical film, titled Glitter, was panned by most critics upon its release and became a box office failure. Its soundtrack album Glitter, which had been inspired by music from the 1980s, generated her worst showing to date on the U.S. charts. Kevin C. Johnson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dismissed it as "an absolute mess that'll go down as an annoying blemish on a career that, while not always critically heralded, was at least nearly consistently successful", while Blender magazine opined "After years of trading her signature flourishes for a radio-ready purr, [Carey]'s left with almost no presence at all". Lead single "Loverboy" reached number two on the Hot 100 thanks to a price cut, but the album's follow-up singles failed to chart.

Shortly after the disastrous release of Glitter, Columbia released a second compilation album, Greatest Hits. In early 2002, Virgin decided to drop Carey from their roster and they bought out her contract for $28 million, giving her another round of bad publicity. Carey said that her time at Virgin had been "a complete and total stress-fest...I made a total snap decision which was based on money, and I never make decisions based on money. I learned a big lesson from that". Later that year, she signed a $20 million contract with Island Records' Def Jam and launched the record label MonarC. To add further to Carey's emotional burdens, her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died that summer.

Following a well-received supporting role in the independent film WiseGirls, Carey released a new album titled Charmbracelet, which she said marked "a new lease on life" for her. Sales of Charmbracelet were lukewarm, and the quality of Carey's vocals came under severe criticism. The Boston Globe declared the album as "the worst of her career, revealing a voice no longer capable of either gravity-defying gymnastics or soft coos", and Barry Walters of Rolling Stone commented: "Carey needs bold songs that help her use the power and range for which she is famous. Charmbracelet is like a stream of watercolors that bleed into a puddle of brown". Singles such as "Through the Rain" failed on the charts and with pop radio, whose playlists had become less open to maturing "diva" stylists such as Carey, Whitney Houston and Celine Dion.

"I Know What You Want", Carey's 2003 duet with rapper Busta Rhymes, fared considerably better and reached the U.S. top five. Columbia later included it on the remix collection The Remixes, which failed to find an audience and became Carey's lowest-selling album. That year, she was awarded the World Music Chopard Diamond Award in honour of selling over 150 million albums worldwide. She was featured on rapper Jadakiss' single "U Make Me Wanna" in 2004, which reached the top ten of Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart.

2005–present: Return to prominence

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According to Billboard magazine, "Don't Forget About Us" (2005) has tied Carey with Elvis Presley for the most U.S. number-one singles by a solo recording artist.

Carey's tenth studio album, The Emancipation of Mimi, was released in 2005 and contained elements of hip hop, R&B, soul and dance music. Carey, who collaborated with producers such as The Neptunes and Kanye West, said it was "very much like a party record...the process of putting on makeup and getting ready to go out...I wanted to make a record that was reflective of that". Mimi became the year's best-selling album in the U.S. and won three Grammy Awards, including Best Contemporary R&B Album. Reviews were some of Carey's most favourable for some time; a critic for The Guardian defined it as "a tough cookie of an album" and "cool, focused and urban...the first Mariah Carey tunes in years I wouldn't have to be paid to listen to again". The single "We Belong Together" occupied the Hot 100's number-one position for fourteen weeks (her longest run at the top as a solo artist) and was the biggest hit of 2005, with heavy radio airplay across the world. "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 (their own statician, however, credits Presley with an eighteenth). By this count Carey is behind only The Beatles, who have twenty number-one singles.

Acting career

Carey participated in theatre workshops as a child, and during sixth grade she played Maria von Trapp in her school's production of The Sound of Music. She began acting lessons in 1997, and within the coming year she was auditioning for film roles. Carey made her film debut as an opera singer and one of the former 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 was lukewarm, with Paul Tatara from CNN derisively referring to her casting as a talentless diva as "letter-perfect".

Carey's first starring role was in Glitter, a 2001 film that she had been developing since 1997. In it she played Billie Frank, a struggling musician in the 1980s who breaks into the music industry after she meets disc jockey Julian Dice (Max Beesley). Reviews were scathing; while Roger Ebert said "[Carey]'s acting ranges from dutiful flirtatiousness to intense sincerity", most other critics panned it: Halliwell's Film Guide called the film a "vapid star vehicle for a pop singer with no visible acting ability", and The Village Voice observed: "when [Carey] tries for an emotion—any emotion—she looks as if she's lost her car keys". Glitter was a box office failure, and Carey earned a Razzie Award for her role. She later said that the film "started out as a concept with substance, but it ended up being geared to 10-year-olds. It lost a lot of grit...I kind of got in over my head".

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Carey, with Melora Walters and Mira Sorvino, in WiseGirls (2002).

Carey, Mira Sorvino and Melora Walters co-starred as waitresses at a restaurant run by mobsters in the independent film WiseGirls, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002. Critics who saw the film lauded Carey for her efforts: 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 Friedman, 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 female boxer who is recruited by a boxing manager. The project never entered production, and WiseGirls went straight-to-cable in the U.S.

Carey was one of several musicians who made cameo appearances in the independently-produced Damon Dash films Death of a Dynasty (2003) and State Property 2 (2005). Her small-screen work has been more limited; she played a legal client of the title character of Ally McBeal in January 2002, and appeared in an episode of the animated children's series The Proud Family in October 2003. Carey joined the cast of the indie film Tennessee in 2006, taking the role of a waitress who travels with her two brothers to find their long lost father.

Style and influence

Carey has said that, from childhood onwards, she was stimulated by soul and R&B musicians such as Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin and Al Green. Her music also contains strong influences of gospel music, and her favourite gospel singers include The Clark Sisters, Shirley Caesar and Edwin Hawkins. As Carey began to imbue her sound with hip hop music, speculation arose that she was making a calculated attempt to reach levels of commercial success that were not previously attainable, but she told Newsweek "People just don't understand. I grew up with this music". She has expressed appreciation for rappers such as The Sugarhill Gang, Eric B. & Rakim, the Wu-Tang Clan, The Notorious B.I.G. and Mobb Deep, with whom she colluded on the song "The Roof (Back in Time)". Carey is also a self-proclaimed fan of jazz music, and in 2002 she said that she may introduce characteristics of jazz into her future work.

Carey's music and record sales have earned her frequent and unfavourable comparisons to singers such as Celine Dion and, in particular, Whitney Houston, whom Carey was lambasted for being too similar to upon her debut. Carey and her peers, according to Garry Mulholland, are "the princesses of wails...virtuoso vocalists who blend chart-oriented pop with mature MOR torch song". In She Bop II: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul (2002), writer Lucy O'Brien attributed the comeback of Barbra Streisand's "old-fashioned showgirl" to Carey and Dion, and described them and Houston as "groomed, airbrushed and overblown to perfection". Carey's musical transition and use of more revealing clothing during the late 1990s were in part initiated to distance herself from this image, and she later acknowledged that most of her early work had been "schmaltzy MOR". Some have noted that unlike Houston and Dion, Carey writes her own songs, and the Guinness Rockopedia (1998) classified her as the "songbird supreme".

Love is the subject of the majority of Carey's lyrics, although she has occasionally written about themes such as racism, death and spirituality. She has said that much of her work is partly autobiographical, but Time magazine wrote: "If only Mariah Carey's music had the drama of her life. Her songs are often sugary and artificial – NutraSweet soul. But her life has passion and conflict".

Carey performing in December 1998.

Carey can cover all the notes from the alto vocal range leading to those of a coloratura soprano, and her vocal trademark is her ability to sing in the whistle register. She has cited Minnie Riperton as the greatest influence on her singing technique, and from a very early age she would often attempt to emulate Riperton's high notes, to increasing degrees of success as her vocal range expanded. Carey hit a G#7 note during a performance of "Emotions" at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, reportedly one of the highest notes produced by a human in the history of recorded music. According to most sources Carey has a five-octave vocal range, though some credit her with as many as eight octaves. In 2003, her voice was voted the greatest in music in MTV and Blender magazine's countdown of the 22 Greatest Voices in Music. Carey said of the poll: "what it really means is voice of the MTV generation. Of course, it's an enormous compliment, but I don't feel that way about myself".

Carey's voice has come under considerable scrutiny from some critics who believe that she does not effectively communicate the message of her songs. A review of the album Emotions in Rolling Stone magazine said "Carey has a remarkable vocal gift, but to date, unfortunately, her singing has been far more impressive than expressive...at full speed her range is so superhuman that each excessive note erodes the believability of the lyric she is singing". The New York Daily News wrote that Carey's singing "is ultimately what does her in. For Carey, vocalizing is all about the performance, not the emotions that inspired it. Singing, to her, represents a physical challenge, not an emotional unburdening...Does having a great voice automatically make you a great singer? Hardly". Some interpreted Carey's decision to utilise what she described as "breathy" vocals in some of her late 1990s and early 2000s work as a sign that her voice had begun to deteriorate, but she has maintained that it "has been here all along". An article in Vibe magazine indicated that Carey's singing style is most successful at unveiling weaknesses in other aspects of her music: "the impressiveness of her voice – as well as her tendency to oversing – make the blandness of her material all the more flagrant".

Carey's output makes great use of electronic instruments such as drum machines, synthesizers and keyboards. Many of her songs contain piano music, and she was given piano lessons when she was six years old. Carey said in a Larry King Live interview that she cannot read sheet music and prefers to collaborate with a pianist when composing her material, but feels that it is easier to experiment with faster and less conventional melodies and chord progressions using this technique. Some of her arrangements have been inspired by the work of musicians such as Stevie Wonder, a soul/R&B pianist whom Carey once referred to as "the genius of the [20th] century". She has voiced the opinion that because she does not play an instrument, she has often found it problematic to receive credit for her work: "It's kind of difficult for people to see me as this diva and then to also realize that I do write my songs and produce the records...particularly (since I am) not sitting behind a piano or a guitar. My voice is my instrument; it always has been". Butterfly Melodies, a tribute album containing piano renditions of some of Carey's songs, was released by Vitamin Records in 2005.

Early in her recording career Carey began commissioning remixes of her material, and during the mid-1990s she helped spearhead the practice of recording entirely new vocals for remixes. Producer and disc jockey David Morales has collaborated with Carey several times, starting with "Dreamlover" (1993), which popularised the the tradition of remixing pop songs into house records and was named one of the greatest dance songs of all time by Slant magazine. From "Fantasy" (1995) onward, she would enlist both hip hop and house producers to re-imagine her album recordings. A Morales-produced remix of "Fantasy" won the National Dance Music Award for Dance Record of the Year in 1996, while a second remix featuring rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard has been credited with initiating the trend of the pop/hip hop collaboration, which has continued into the 2000s through artists such as Beyoncé Knowles and Ashanti. In addition, Entertainment Weekly included both remixes of "Fantasy" on a list of Carey's greatest recordings compiled in 2005. Sean Combs, who produced the hip hop remix, said that Carey "knows the importance of mixes, so you feel like you're with an artist who appreciates your work — an artist who wants to come up with something with you". She continues to consult on remixes by producers such as Morales, Jermaine Dupri, Junior Vasquez and DJ Clue, and guest performers contribute frequently to them. The popularity of some of these remixes, which often sound radically different to their album counterparts, has been known to match or even eclipse the success of the original songs.

Philanthropy and other activities

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Carey with children at the Fresh Air Fund's Camp Mariah.

Carey is a philanthropist who has donated time and money to organizations such as the Fresh Air Fund. She became involved with the Fund in the early nineties, and 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 "for her generous support and dedication to Fresh Air children", and she received a Congressional Horizon Award for her youth-related charity work. She is also well-known nationally for her work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation in granting the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses, and was honoured with the Chris Greicius Award for Celebrity Wish Granter of the Year in 2000. She has volunteered for the New York City Police Athletic League and contributed to the obstetrics department of New York Presbyterian Hospital Cornell Medical Center. A percentage of the sales of her MTV Unplugged EP were donated to various charities.

One of Carey's most high profile benefit concert appearances was on VH1's Divas Live special in 1998, where she performed alongside Celine Dion, Aretha Franklin and other female singers in support of VH1's Save the Music Foundation. The concert was a ratings success, and Carey participated in the 2000 special. She appeared at 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 peacekeeping troops in Kosovo. Carey also hosted the CBS television special At Home for the Holidays with Mariah Carey, which documented real-life stories of adopted children and foster families, and she has worked with the New York City Administration for Children's Services. In 2005, Carey performed for Live 8 at the Live 8 concert in London, and at the Shelter from the Storm telethon following Hurricane Katrina's damage to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Carey has participated in endorsements for Berlitz Language Schools and the Aeon English College in Japan, Nescafé coffee, and Intel Centrino personal computers. In early 2006, she launched a jewellery and accessories line for teenagers, "Glamorized", in U.S. Claire's and Icing stores. She has also expressed a desire to release a perfume.

Discography

Albums

Further information: [[:Mariah Carey albums discography]]

1. Mariah Carey (1990)
2. Emotions (1991)
3. MTV Unplugged (1992)
4. Music Box (1993)
5. Merry Christmas (1994)
6. Daydream (1995)
7. Butterfly (1997)
8. #1's (1998)
9. Rainbow (1999)
10. Glitter (2001)
11. Greatest Hits (2001)
12. Charmbracelet (2002)
13. The Remixes (2003)
14. The Emancipation of Mimi (2005)

Number-one singles

The following singles reached number one in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and/or Japan. For a full singles discography, see Mariah Carey singles discography.

Single	U.S. #1	UK #1	CAN #1	AUS #1	JPN #1
"Vision of Love" (1990)	1st		1st
"Love Takes Time" (1990)	2nd		2nd
"Someday" (1991)	3rd
"I Don't Wanna Cry" (1991)	4th
"Emotions" (1991)	5th
"I'll Be There" (1992) (feat. Trey Lorenz)	6th		3rd
"Dreamlover" (1993)	7th		4th
"Hero" (1993)	8th
"Without You" (1994)		1st
"All I Want for Christmas Is You" (1994)					1st
"Fantasy" (1995)	9th		5th	1st	2nd
"One Sweet Day" (1995) (with Boyz II Men)	10th
"Always Be My Baby" (1996)	11th
"Honey" (1997)	12th				3rd
"My All" (1998)	13th
"When You Believe" (1998) (with Whitney Houston)					4th
"Heartbreaker" (1999) (feat. Jay-Z)	14th		6th		5th
"Thank God I Found You" (2000) (feat. Joe and 98 Degrees)	15th
"Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" (2000) (with Westlife)		2nd
"Loverboy" (2001) (feat. Cameo)					6th
"It's Like That" (2005)					7th
"We Belong Together" (2005)	16th			2nd
"Don't Forget About Us" (2005)	17th				8th

See also

• List of songs by Mariah Carey
• Sales and charts achievements for Mariah Carey
• World sales and certifications for Mariah Carey
• List of Mariah Carey awards
• Category:Mariah Carey DVDs and videos
• List of best-selling music artists
• List of artists who reached number one on the Hot 100 (U.S.)
• List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Dance chart

References

• Shapiro, Marc. Mariah Carey (2001). UK: ECW Press, Canada. ISBN 1550224441.
• Hardy, Phil. The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music: Fully Revised Third Edition (2001). pg. 156–157. UK: Faber and Faber Limited. ISBN 057119608X.
• Mulholland, Garry. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music (2003). pg. 57. UK: Flame Tree Publishing. ISBN 1904041701.
• Guinness Rockopedia (1998). pg. 74. UK: Guinness Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0851120725.
• Larkin, Colin. The Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume II: 3rd Edition (1998). pg. 934. UK: Muze UK Ltd. ISBN 0333741134X.
• O'Brien, Lucy. She Bop II: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul (2002). pg. 29, 476–481. UK: Continuum. ISBN 0826457762 (paperback).
• Mariah Carey – Credits. All Music Guide. Retrieved November 18 2005.
• U.S. charts and sales compiled by Billboard magazine (http://www.billboard.com) and Nielsen SoundScan (http://www.soundscan.com/).
• UK charts compiled by The Official UK Charts Company (http://www.theofficialcharts.com/).
• Canadian charts compiled by Jam Canoe (http://jam.canoe.ca/) and Members.aol.com (http://members.aol.com/SKrebs/chartdata/Canada.htm).
• Australian charts compiled by the Australian Recording Industry Association (http://www.aria.com.au/).
• Japanese charts compiled by Oricon (http://www.oricon.co.jp/) and Members.aol.com (http://www.mariah-charts.com/chartdata/Tokio.htm).
• People in the News. CNN. Airdate: April 30 2005.
• Larry King Live. CNN. Airdate: December 19 2002.
• "Mariah Carey to Receive Congressional Award for Charity Efforts". MTV.com. April 13 1999. Retrieved December 10 2005.
• Duffy, Mike. "Mariah Carey leads heartfelt holiday special to promote adoption". Detroit Free Press. December 21 2001. Retrieved from the Wayback Machine on December 10 2005.
• "The fall and rise of Mariah Carey". BBC.co.uk. February 8 2006. Retrieved March 12 2006.
• "Mariah Carey – Artist Chart History". Billboard. Retrieved March 12 2006.
• Norris, John. "Mariah: Remixes, Reunions and Russia". MTV.com. October 2003. Retrieved March 12 2006.

External links

• Official website
• Mariah Carey at All Music Guide.
• Mariah Carey at Rock on the Net.
• Mariah Carey at IMDb.
• Template:Tvtome person.
• Mariah Carey at YouTube.