Mariah Carey Biography
With a mother who shared both talent and a love of music, Carey was destined for a life of song having been named after "They Call the Wind Mariah" a melody from a popular Lerner and Loewe musical. From an early age, Carey demonstrated extraordinary musical abilities. She started singing at the tender age of four and her innate talent quickly progressed. While attending middle school, Carey began honing her songwriting skills and upon high school graduation she immediately left for New York City to pursue a lifetime ambition - her dream of a musical career.
From the beginning, Carey's luminous talent quickly distinguished her in New York and her vocals were in demand by a variety of artists. Her major break came while singing backup for Brenda K. Starr, who gave Mariah's demo tape to then Sony Music Entertainment Chief Tommy Mottola. Soon afterwards, Mottola signed Mariah to her first recording contract with Columbia Records.
With a fresh-face and angelic allure Mariah exploded on the scene with a signature style that displayed a vocal intensity that had never been seen before. Released in 1990, Carey's self-titled debut was an immense hit, firmly establishing her as one of the most talented artists in the industry. The album which spawned an extraordinary four #1 singles: "Vision of Love,""Love Takes Time,""Someday," and "I Don't Wanna Cry," led to two Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Vocalist. Carey continued her success with a series of singles from Emotions and MTV Unplugged albums that consistently placed her at the top of the charts.
With the 1993 release of Music Box, which included the chart-topping hit singles "Dreamlover" and "Hero," Carey produced her most commercially successful album to date going an astounding ten-times platinum. Carey soon hit yet another career milestone with the release of her first holiday album Merry Christmas, which contained the instant classic "All I Want for Christmas is You." Over the next two years, Carey continued her relentless chart domination with the album Daydream (1995). Daydream's "Fantasy" single debuted at number one, making Mariah the second artist in history and the first female performer to accomplish that feat. The album's other single, "One Sweet Day" (recorded with Boyz II Men), stayed at the top of the charts for a mind-blowing 16 weeks. Carey followed with the Hip-Hop and R&B infused Butterfly which introduced a new chapter in Mariah's career teaming her with the hottest names in the music business such as Sean Combs and Missy Elliott.
A true testament to her longevity, Carey released #1's, a compilation of her chart-topping hits in 1998. The album also included a new song, "When You Believe" (from the film "The Prince of Egypt"), a duet with Whitney Houston, pairing two of the most successful female recording artists in Pop history.Rainbow, with its chart-topping hit "Heartbreaker," followed in 1999 with startling success.
Always at the top of her game, the ever-thriving Carey sparked the interest of the Universal Music Group's Island Def Jam Records who in May 2002 signed her to an exclusive recording contract. Later that year, Carey made her Island Def Jam debut with the release of the multi-platinum Charmbracelet.
After more than a decade of hits that include the staggering success of 15 #1 singles, Carey will release her most revealing album to date, The Emancipation of Mimi, in April 2005. Entirely written and co-produced by the gifted Carey, her tenth studio album is an intimate portrayal of both the challenges and successes that she experienced during her rise to unparalleled fame. Carey explains the inspiration behind her new album, "With this album, I am embracing my independence and celebrating the person that I have become. Over the years, I have evolved into a better person and an even better artist. For the first time in my life, I am proud and unafraid to be who I really am, and that's what the music of this album and its title reflect. By naming my album The Emancipation of Mimi andreferencing 'Mimi' a nickname only used by those closest to me, I am inviting my fans into my life."
A brilliant artist who has co-written every song on each of her albums since 1990, Mariah Carey has consistently shown her willingness to express herself both as a remarkable vocalist and an acclaimed songwriter. The Emancipation of Mimi offers more than a glimpse into Mariah's world featuring tunes like the heartfelt "Circles" and "Fly Like a Bird," with their positive messages of affirmation and hope. While being honest and vulnerable in expressing her emotions through songs like "I Wish You Knew" and "Joyride," Mariah leaves no doubt that she is a woman who speaks her mind. The infectious, edgy "It's Like That," co-produced by Jermaine Dupri is the album's first hit single and a definitive statement of where Mariah stands at this point in her life, and isher fastestclimbing single in five years.
Mariah and executive producer, Antonio "L.A." Reid (Island Def Jam Music Group Chairman), approached the creation of The Emancipation of Mimi in a very specific way delivering ballads like "We Belong Together" (which pays homage to the Bobby Womack classic "If You Think You're Lonely Now") that her fans have come to expect while evoking a new sound that will surely broaden her appeal and capture an entirely new audience.
The Emancipation of Mimi marks "the return of the voice." As an artist who has paved the way for a host of emerging talent throughout the years, Mariah is set once again to redefine the heights of musical success with her incomparable talent and timeless appeal. With a refined and sophisticated new look indicative of her artistic evolution, she is poised to conquer new territory. Consistently evolving musically, personally, and creatively Mariah will re-assert her claim as the best-selling female performer of all time with The Emancipation of Mimi. As an artist revered worldwide, her boundless talent and success is unmatched across the globe.
On April 30, 2008, Carey married actor/rapper Nick Cannon, at Carey's private estate on Windermere Island in the Bahamas. Confirming rumors of the marriage, Carey stated that she felt the pair were "soulmates".
Carey was recently featured during the seventh season of American Idol.
Her album 'Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel' is out September 18, 2009.
Imperfections are in the eye of the beholder. You can see them as flaws, or as the very qualities that make us human -- and that make us strive to be better people in search of a perfection that we know we can never fully achieve. In the thirteen songs on her spellbinding new album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, Mariah Carey explores those aspects of our shared humanity with a rare depth, honesty and open-heartedness. It's one of the strongest statements in her long, distinguished career.
The subject of Memoirs is love at all its stages in our lives. Experiencing it for the first time. Losing it. Remembering its most painful moments, and also its times of greatest innocence and joy. Yearning for it. Learning from it. Growing as a result of its profound power. Finding it again and being grateful for so great a gift. And, finally, being humbled, filled with wonder and elevated by love's mysterious ways. In that sense and more, Memoirs is a full, immensely satisfying journey.
"Each song is like an intimate conversation or entry in a private diary," Carey says about the album. "A lot of the songs reflect specific, different times in my life. Others were inspired by movies, actual events that happened to me, or the stories of friends who told me about experiences that they've gone through." With just one exception, Carey wrote and produced the entire album in collaboration with The-Dream and Tricky Stewart. The trio clearly shared an inspired sense of what Memoirs should be. Sinuous grooves and instantly memorable melodies flow from track to track, while the wit and intimacy of the lyrics create the feel of one friend talking to another. As well-defined as each song is, Memoirs plays with the beauty and consistency of a classic, start-to-finish album.
"My main goal was to work with people I could collaborate with without it seeming redundant or stale," Carey says. "In my opinion Tricky is one of the most underrated major producers out there right now. I really enjoyed collaborating with him. And I especially liked writing with The-Dream, basically because we both love having fun with lyrics and melodies, and we're also capable of getting more serious on deeper songs. There is a particular sense of freedom I feel when we write together -- even though I make him stay in the studio all night until he is ready to kill me! LOL!"
Memoirs' first single is the hard-hitting "Obsessed," which is accompanied by a video directed by Brett Ratner (the Rush Hour trilogy) in which Carey plays both the glamorous star and her stalker fan. Like the video, the song's lyrics combine devastating putdowns ("Last man on the Earth still couldn't get this") with humor ("See right through you like you're bathin' in Windex"). The no-nonsense "Up Out My Face" captures a similar caustic mood, dismissing a former lover with the send-off, "When I break, I break, boy." "It's a Wrap" delivers a similar message about the end of an affair: "When it's gone, it's gone." "Standing O," with its irresistible chorus, sardonically applauds a faithless ex for his signature achievement: "You played the one that loved you the most." "Betcha Gon' Know" foresees karmic revenge for a wayward lover, but, once again, the clever lyrics ("Oprah Winfrey whole segment for real, for real / 20/20 Barbara Walters for real, for real") encourage a smile amid the pain.
The ballad "H.A.T.E.U.," meanwhile, finds the singer seeing life in the wake of a breakup and longing for the moment when loss and regret transform into a cleansing anger. But the title of the song doesn't necessarily stand for what you think it might. "H.A.T.E.U. is the first song I wrote for the album," Carey says, "and it stands for Having A Typical Emotional Upset."
Always a brilliant technical singer with an extraordinary vocal range, Carey rises to new heights on that track. "I sing a recurring melody in the upper register of my voice; it's not an ad-lib, but an integral part of the song's hook," she says. "That's not something I've done before, and when listening back to it, it reminded me of how Minnie Riperton used her upper register on her hit song 'Lovin' You.' I thought how ironic that her song was called 'Lovin' You' and my song is called, 'H.A.T.E.U.' -- and both use that upper 'whistle register' as a major part of the melody. So it's sort of an homage to Minnie Riperton, a tribute to her since she has been so influential in my singing style."
On a tender note, the wistful "Candy Bling" beautifully evokes the blissful realm of young love ("Anklets, name plates that you gave to me/Sweet tarts, ring pops had that candy bling/And you were my world"), while "Inseparable" aches for a love that went wrong for reasons that seem impossible to comprehend. "More Than Just Friends" floats off into a fantasy of what a casual relationship might become ("Permanently paint me in your picture like Picasso/Love me down till I hit the top of my soprano!"). "Ribbon" and "The Impossible" swoon with happiness and thankfulness over redemptive love that has returned to make life rich again. "You did the impossible," Carey sings. "You rescued my love."
Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel ends with a spectacularly powerful gospel rendition of Foreigner's gorgeous ballad, "I Want to Know What Love Is." Carey's voice soars into the heavens as a soul-stirring choir makes it clear that the search for love is the closest that any human being ever gets to the divine.
Which brings us back to the angel of the album's title. "I had written a song called 'Imperfect,'" Carey says, "but it didn't make it onto the album. The lyrics of that song address the fact that the world puts so much pressure on us -- especially on women -- to be perfect and look a certain way, and that is impossible because nobody is perfect. Only God is perfect. I know I've tried to be a good person, but I am definitely no angel!"
"But after I put this album together and decided to name it Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel," she concludes, "I remembered that the Minnie Riperton album that contained 'Lovin' You' was called Perfect Angel. So I felt in so many ways that it was meant to be."
