The most well-known songwriters and singers of the twenty-first century are thought to include Mariah Carey. Over the course of a 20-year career, she has made a name for herself as a vocal prodigy who has elevated the music to new heights.
This singer has a five-octave vocal range and the capacity to produce notes that are so high they can even break the glass. For the previous 20 years, artists have been amazed and inspired by her use of melisma and the whistle range. In addition to introducing new sounds with each album, her corpus of work also includes songwriting, singing, and production.
In addition to introducing new sounds with each album, her corpus of work also includes songwriting, singing, and production. She sings in a variety of musical genres, including pop, R&B, hip-hop, and Motown soul, and she can transition with grace from a soulful ballad to a hip-hop tune. Despite having a difficult childhood and experiencing mental breakdowns, this famous person persevered and eventually found success.
One of the most popular music artists of all time, her twelve studio albums have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide. This extraordinarily gifted star’s love of music is so evident in every one of her performances that listeners from all over the world react to her singing with unrestrained joy.
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Who is Mariah Carey?
The Venezuelan aerospace engineer Alfred Roy Carey and the opera singer and voice coach Patricia Carey welcomed Mariah Carey into the world on March 27, 1969, in Huntington, Long Island, New York. A brother named Morgan and a sister named Alison are her two older siblings.
As a little child of three, Carey’s parents separated. From the age of two, she amazed her mother by copying her operatic singing, and from the age of four onward, she had singing lessons. Carey would eventually acquire a five-octave voice.
After completing her high school education at Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York, in 1987, Carey relocated to Manhattan. There, she worked as a waitress and a coat check lady, studied cosmetology, and wrote songs while aggressively pursuing a career in music at night.
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Mariah Carey Career
Carey attended a party organized by CBS Records when she was 18 years old with her friend, singer Brenda K. Starr. Carey was persuaded to bring one of her demo cassettes by Starr. She wanted to present the recording to Jerry Greenberg, the head of Columbia, but Tommy Mottola, the head of Columbia Records (later Sony), intercepted it.
Carey’s debut album was released in 1990 and had four No. 1 singles: “Vision of Love,” “Love Takes Time,” “Some Day,” and “I Don’t Wanna Cry.” After listening to the tape on the way home from the party, Mottola quickly signed Carey and got to work on it. 1992 saw the release of her second album, Emotions, which featured the successes “Can’t Let Go” and “Make it Happen.” The title tune went on to become her sixth No. 1 single.
Carey showed up on MTV’s Unplugged in March 1992. Another No. 1 single (a cover of The Jacksons’ “I’ll Be There”) came from this performance, which was made available as an album and a home movie. With the No. 1 hits “Dreamlover” and “Hero,” her subsequent album, Music Box (1993), scaled back a bit on the ostentatious studio production methods seen in her earlier albums.
Merry Christmas, her November 1994 album, featured both new songs and enduring Christian carols. She released Daydream in 1995, and its lead hit, “Fantasy,” arrived at number one. Collaborations with R&B and hip-hop acts like Wu-Tang Clan and Boyz II Men were also a part of it (“One Sweet Day”).
With 11 of the songs on her 1997 album Butterfly being her own creations, Carey showed her continued interest in hip-hop and R&B. “Honey,” her 12th No. 1 hit, was produced by Sean “Puffy” Combs. Her thirteen prior number-one songs from her 1998 album #1’s were also included, along with the Whitney Houston and Carey duet “The Prince of Egypt (When You Believe),” which was nominated for an Academy Award.
Following what her publicists described as a “physical and emotional collapse,” Carey was checked into a hospital in the New York region in July 2001 and placed under psychiatric observation. Carey had been arranging public engagements to promote her upcoming feature film début, Glitter, and its accompanying soundtrack CD, but she postponed them all. Glitter’s debut was consequently postponed from late August to late September 2001. After two weeks, Carey was discharged from the hospital.
Carey and EMI, the company that owns Virgin Records and with which Carey had reportedly signed a contract worth a whopping $80 million in April 2001, ended their collaboration in January 2002. Carey reportedly received roughly $50 million as part of her severance package from Virgin even though the movie and album for Glitter didn’t achieve the intended box office and sales results. She inked a deal with Island/Def Jam Records, a division of Universal Music Group, in May 2002.
Charmbracelet, Carey’s seventh album, debuted in third place on the charts when it was released in December 2002. Her first tour in more than three years began in June 2003 to promote the album.
The Emancipation of Mimi, her 10th studio album, which she released as a follow-up, became the best-selling album in the United States in 2005. With the release of Touch My Body (from her 11th studio album, E=MC2) in 2008, Mariah Carey surpassed Elvis Presley to tie the Beatles for the second-most No.
1 hit the single in American history. Her other albums are Me (2009), Merry Christmas II You (2010), Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel (2009), and Me. The elusive chanteuse that I am, I Am Mariah (2014).
With the release of Caution, her 15th studio album, in 2018, the singer demonstrated that she was still one of the best artists in the industry. Caution debuted at No. 5 in the U.S. and was mentioned on many “albums of the year” lists.
When Carey’s timeless holiday song, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 2019, it set a new record for longevity on the chart and marked another major milestone for the singer.
More than 200 million records by Carey have been sold globally. The Recording Industry Association of America lists her as the third-best-selling female artist of all time.
Alongside Randy Jackson, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, Carey was appointed as a new judge for season 12 of the well-known FOX television program American Idol in 2012. She made a brief appearance in the Lee Daniels documentary The Butler, about White House butler Eugene Allen, released in 2013, and she also provided the voice of a character on the animated comedy American Dad!
Carey signed a contract in January 2015 to begin residing in Las Vegas in May 2016. She issued a greatest hits album that included her No. 1 songs to coincide with her Caesars Palace concert in Las Vegas, entitled #1 to Infinity. She also co-starred and directed the Hallmark Channel holiday film A Christmas Melody in 2015.
Following her European tour, Carey started The Sweet Sweet Fantasy Tour in 2016 and Mariah’s World, a television documentary series on E! She voiced the mayor in the 2017 animated film The Lego Batman Movie, taking on yet another acting job.
On September 29, 2020, Carey will publish her autobiography, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. She stated, “I want to share the tale of the moments – the ups and downs, the successes and traumas, the debacles and the dreams that helped shape the person I am today. Carey also released the 32-track CD The Rarities on October 2 in conjunction with the memoir.
Bipolar II Disorder
Carey revealed the details of her long-running, covert fight with bipolar II disease in a People cover story from April 2018. The singer claimed that even after being hospitalized for her breakdown, she was first diagnosed in 2001 but hid the condition for several years. She claimed that “Until recently I lived in denial and isolation and in constant fear someone would expose me.” “It was too heavy a burden to carry and I simply couldn’t do that anymore.”
Carey claimed that things began to improve after she finally sought assistance and that she started going to therapy and taking medicine on a regular basis. She told People that she is currently in a very good position where she feels confident talking about her battles with bipolar II disorder. She said “I’m hopeful we can get to a place where the stigma is lifted from people going through anything alone. It can be incredibly isolating. It does not have to define you and I refuse to allow it to define me or control me.”
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Mariah Carey Personal Life
In June 1993, Carey wed Mottola in a lavish ceremony at Manhattan’s St. Thomas Episcopal Church. The couple filed for divorce in 1998. The Latin musician Luis Miguel and Carey reportedly dated for the next three years until calling it quits in the summer of 2001.
Carey began dating actor/rapper Nick Cannon after he appeared in her “Bye Bye” music video. After less than two months of romance, the couple got married on April 30, 2008, in the Bahamas. The twins Moroccan and Monroe were born to Carey and Cannon in 2011.
After six years of marriage, the couple separated in August 2014, and their divorce was finally formalized in 2016. Carey and Australian entrepreneur James Packer got engaged in January 2016 in New York City, however, it was revealed that they had broken up in October of that same year. After her romance with Packer ended, Carey started dating backup dancer Bryan Tanaka, who was also a part of her reality series Mariah’s World.
Carey is involved in raising money for The Fresh Air Fund, a nonprofit that runs Camp Mariah, one of the organization’s programs, which offers underprivileged kids in New York City free summer vacations. This is something she does outside of her music profession.
Why is Mariah Carey sued for $20 Million?
Andy Stone, who co-wrote the country song “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Vince Vance & the Valiants, is suing Mariah Carey for copyright infringement. Stone claims the diva never requested or authorized the use of his title for her enduring mega holiday smash.
In the civil lawsuit, which was filed in the US District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana, Stone is also suing Walter Afanasieff, Carey’s songwriting partner.
Before Carey permanently altered the holiday season in 1994, Stone recorded his twangy version of the song in 1989, which musically and lyrically differs from Carey’s pop interpretation. He argues in the lawsuit that his song, which was published one year before Carey’s, during the 1993 holiday season received a lot of airplay.
The vocalist of “Obsessed” is the target of a $20 million lawsuit from The Scrooge. Plaintiff Stone “personally demanded that Defendants [Carey and Afanasieff] halt and desist from further distribution of Plaintiff’s work,” the lawsuit states. “Despite Plaintiff’s request, Defendants continue to make use of Plaintiff’s work ‘All I Want for Christmas is You,’ benefiting financially and in other ways to Plaintiff’s detriment.”
The records claim that Carey and Afanasieff “knowingly, willingly and purposefully engaged in a campaign to violate [Stone’s] copyright in the work” to their own financial benefit, personal gain, and unjust enrichment as well as the irreparable harm and financial loss of Stone. When reached by The Post, Carey’s agent declined to comment.
Even now, decades later, Carey’s song “All I Want For Christmas Is You” continues to fill her stocking with cash thanks to streams and radio exposure. Streams of the song alone on Spotify have exceeded one billion.
In accordance with the lawsuit, Stone is a self-employed musician who makes a living off of the royalties from performing, selling, and licensing his copyrighted music.
Around the holidays in 2019 and 2020, Carey’s Christmas song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100 chart.
According to Guinness World Records, the song broke the record for the most listened music on Spotify in 24 hours (female) in 2019 before breaking it again in 2020.
In 2020, Carey tweeted, “WOW.” The actual reason I’m sitting here in awe and thankfulness is witnessing the happiness this little song I made causes people. “I know people assume I’m making a “coin”. MANY THANKS & HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
Afanasieff and Carey wrote “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in under fifteen minutes when they came together to develop songs for the album “Merry Christmas” in the summer of 1994.
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Mariah Carey Net Worth
The diva is worth close to $320 million, according to the Celebrity Net Worth portal. The singer receives royalties for her song All I Want for Christmas worth $600k annually, according to the website.
Mariah is one of the top 15 best-selling musicians in music history and has accumulated much of her income in the music business. To date, the artist is said to have sold more than 200 million albums worldwide.
