Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey Version of Cinderella

In the surface, the discovery and rise to fame of Mariah Carey has all the plot elements of a showbiz fairy tale: a young and ambitious girl moves to the big city determined to make her mark. She slaves away at meaningless jobs to get by, singing whenever and wherever she can. One fateful evening, she attends a soiree, at which she passes her demo tape into the hands of a dark, handsome man, and then disappears into the night. The dark prince in this particular tale, Sony Music Entertainment President Tommy Mottola, plays the tape and has an epiphany: he can make this mystery songstress into a star. He seeks her out, and, overwhelmed by the extraordinarily Cinderella-like vibe of it all, they fall in love. . . . At any rate, that's how Mariah Carey and Tommy Mottola choose to recount their personal and professional courtship to the press. In a darker version of the story, some music-industry observers suggest that Carey is more like Rapunzel than Cinderella--sequestered in their gaudily enormous Hudson River Valley mansion and creatively stifled by Mottola's Svengali-like domination, the diva is compelled to spin sugary ballads into gold.

Biography of Mariah Carey

Carey was born to a half-Venezuelan, half-black father and an Irish mother. As you might imagine, the family faced a fair amount of prejudice due to its mixed heritage. Mother Patricia, an opera singer and vocal coach, was disowned by her family when she married Alfred Roy Carey, an aeronautical engineer. Over the years, the couple had various atrocities waged against them by bigots, including having their cars blown up and their dogs poisoned. The marriage crumbled under the strain of such malicious events, and the couple divorced when Mariah was three years old. Mariah's older sister moved in with their father, and her older brother was soon off to college, leaving just Mariah at home with a mother who struggled to make ends meet. Patricia Carey's vocation qualified her to truly "discover" her daughter's talent. "From the time Mariah was a tiny girl," she recalled, "she sang on true pitch. She was able to hear a sound and duplicate it exactly." The proud mother nurtured her daughter's talent by coaching her at home, all the while trying not to force the issue too much. Mariah sang for friends, and performed in talent shows and at folk-music festivals; by the time she entered junior high, she had begun to write her own songs. In high school, she started commuting to Manhattan in order to study music with professionals, and upon her graduation, in 1987, she moved to the city. She paid the rent on her barren apartment by working as a waitress (she claims to have been fired from twenty restaurants because of her "attitude"), coat checker, beauty salon janitor, and part-time backup singer. It was this last gig, backing rhythm-and-blues singer Brenda K. Starr, that brought Carey close enough to Mottola to slip him her tape. After only ten months of slumming in the big city, Mariah Carey was about to become a star. Carey's 1990 eponymous debut album created quite a stir, largely because of the incredible virtuosity of her voice, which many say is rivaled only by that of Whitney Houston. Critics babbled on and on about her remarkable octave-dancing (Carey has a vocal range of between five and seven octaves, based on varying reports), but generally agreed that there wasn't much substance to what she was saying. These days, Carey co-writes most of her songs, but her debut album was penned by professional hit-makers and it dripped with a cloying sweetness. However, nothing the critics said mattered much after the album sold over six million copies and made Mariah Carey an overnight sensation: two singles from the album shot to No. 1, and the music community awarded the newcomer with a gaggle of Grammys for her impressive debut. Meanwhile, back at the studio, love had blossomed between Carey and Mottola. Home-wrecking advanced apace of recording, as Carey sent a boyfriend packing and Mottola did the same with his wife. Carey's Emotions album (1991) and her MTV Unplugged EP (1992) racked up sales in the millions, but her most impressive production was her marriage to Mottola. Inspired by videotapes of Charles and Diana at their royal wedding, Carey and Mottola--a kind of self-styled music royalty themselves--put a half a million dollars into their June 1993 nuptials. Fifty flower girls, an eight-piece orchestra, and a boys' choir convened with three-hundred VIPs (including Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro, and Ozzy Osbourne) to heap their blessings on the marriage. Carey remembers: "When I look back and think about it, it's so unbelievable! I mean, it really is like Cinderella." Carey's post-marriage albums (1993's Music Box, 1994's Merry Christmas, and 1995's Daydream) offered more chart-dominating, syrupy pop. The generally well-regarded Daydream earned her six Grammy nominations and helped push her career sales to the eighty-million mark. Her status as the biggest-selling female recording artist of the nineties makes you wonder what heights she would be capable of scaling if her talent weren't consistently shoe-horned by producers into predictable, harmless harmony. But if she has thus far been prevented from using her music to tap into and communicate the considerable angst of her childhood, the pop princess has acknowledged it in other ways--in 1995, Carey donated $1 million to a New York camp that provides summer vacations for disadvantaged inner-city kids. The camp was subsequently renamed Camp Mariah.

VH1's BIOGRAPHY OF MARIAH

More juicy information :) There is no reason to expect that Mariah Carey would inevitably have become a musical star of her current proportions. The streets of Los Angeles and New York are filled with men and women with talent, looks, and a briefcase full of songs, none of them recorded, let alone at number one. Mariah's career emerged from her determination (her absolute unwillingness to admit any other possibility), her voice, and a series of circumstances that made the most of those two features.
Born in New York in 1970, Mariah always "knew" that, without a doubt, she would be a singing star. When asked by her teachers to do her homework, she'd reply that it was unnecessary- she'd never need to go to college for her career as a superstar. Her mother's request to clean her room was answered similarly: when Mariah was a superstar, she'd have a maid. Mariah, you see, might be the last person in the world to admit that her stardom was not inevitable.
Mariah's father was black and Venezuelan. Her mother, the daughter of Irish immigrants, was an opera singer. Mariah took after her mother in the pursuit of developing her vocal talents. Her seven-octave range is certainly, at moments, reminiscent of any number of divas. But her vocal styles are drawn from gospel and rhythm & blues.
In fact, upon the release of her first couple of albums, Mariah faced charges that she was just 'another white girl' capitalizing on black music. She immediately confronted the issue in Ebony, telling them that her father was black. In addition, American music styles are themselves so much derived from black music that it might be hard "not" to record an album drawing upon those influences. Mariah says of herself, "My mother is Irish, my father is black and Venezuelan, and me - I'm tan, I guess."
As a teenager, she was already devoting an inordinate amount of time to singing- so much so that her nickname in high school was "Mirage." But she met up withat her nickname in high school was "Mirage." But she met up with song writing partners, and found places to rehearse, and by the time she graduated high s
She became, like almost every aspiring singer, actor, or musician, a waitress. An astonishingly bad one, to hear her tell of it. She went through any number of waitressing jobs during those years, getting fired from a number of them- many times for her 'attitude,' possible meaning her attitude that waiting tables was not as important as recording music. Perhaps she was right.
During this time, she also met Ben Margulies, with whom she wrote many of her early songs. He had a place to rehearse, and they spent an endless amount of time together writing and performing. Eventually she had a demo tape. But nowhere to go with it.
One friend was the drummer for a singer named Brenda K. Starr, who had just lost a back-up singer in her band. Mariah began to sing with her, and the two became close. Brenda K Starr was supportive of Mariah from the first, and Carey still has nothing but good to say of her. It was through Starr that the 18-year-old Mariah got her big break.
Starr convinced Mariah to come with her to a record-industry party. Mariah brought one of her tapes along. Near the end of the party, Mariah tried to give her tape to Jerry Greenberg, from Columbia Records. Another executive, by the name of Tommy Mottola, who happened to be the president of the label, intercepted the tape. He put it in his cassette player on the way home, and decided to sign her.
Once he found her (she had neglected to put her name on the tape), he signed her to Columbia (now Sony), and set her to work on her first album. She was not yet nineteen.
The next few years were a rush of cross-continental album production. Her first album, Mariah Carey, was produced by Narada Michael Walden, whose work with Whitney Houston and George Michael was some of their most popular work. One track was also produced by Walter Afanasieff, then fairly unknown, but later to become quite important to Mariah.
The album produced four number one singles in a row. This is interesting not only because it's fairly unique, but because Sony has always made a big deal about Mariah's 'number one's,' even to the point of seeming disappointed about one single only hitting #2. The four singles, "Vision of Love," "Love Takes Time," "Some Day," and "I Don't Wanna Cry," all reflect Mariah's lyrical base in romance. It's by far the most popular subject for Mariah's songs. She says that she thinks "that everyone can pretty much relate to songs about love... Love is something that everyone has experienced."
She released her second album, Emotions , the following year. She had her fifth consecutive number one single. Emotions was partially produced by Walter Afanasieff and partially by the team of Clivilles and Cole (the C&C behind the Music Factory). The album included a number of dance numbers that pushed her ability to emote, rather than her ability to hit the 'high stuff.' And she began to test the waters on touring.
Mariah has always had a different relationship to touring than most artists. She has performed what might be called boutique concerts- avoiding the grueling schedules and long periods away from home that the music business demands of many artists. So her concert tours are always very short, very well rehearsed and to the point, and always sold out.
Her most spectacular and successful live performance was not a huge stage show, but an intimate audience show. MTV Unplugged provided Mariah with the opportunity to perform live the way she wanted to. And with the success of the show, the video, the album, and especially her version of the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There," Mariah's career was confirmed.
Her next move was purely personal. She got married. In June of 1993, to Tommy Mottola, the man who discovered her, provided her with an atmosphere in which she could perform and record, and who had made sure her albums received the full amount of attention that they were due. And the man who, now, cooked for her, cared for her, and married her. In a wedding that Mariah patterned after the one of Prince Charles and Lady Diana a decade before, the two were married in a Manhattan church in front of Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, and Robert DeNiro.
Her next album, Music Box, was different from the earlier Emotions, in her decreasing reliance on studio production, and a move to a more spare sound. You wouldn't go so far as to say the album had a raw, live sound. But with the number of producers and writers who worked on the album (including Afanasieff, Babyface, and Clivilles and Cole), the fact that it hangs together as a whole says that no single influence pushed her too far.
But the album didn't please critics. Where they had loved the Unplugged album, they found this one 'passionless,' or 'limp.' It didn't stop the album from being a success, nor from it meaning a great deal to people.
As a Long Island girl, she was profoundly affected by the LIRR shootings that year, and dedicated "Hero," the second single, to the victims. As she says of "Hero," "One person could say 'Hero' is a schmaltzy piece of garbage, but another person can write me a letter and say, 'I've considered committing suicide every day of my life for ten years until I heard that song and I realized after all I can be my own hero.' ...it meant something to someone."
Merry Christmas, her November 1994 release, balanced old Christian hymns and new songs: it was, in fact, two original songs which were the singles from the album. "Miss You Most At Christmastime" and "All I Want For Christmas Is You."
And in 1995, she released Daydream- a break with past albums. For one thing, it contained a number of collaborations that weren't simply song "writing" efforts. Her duet with Wu-Tang rapper Old Dirty Bastard, "Fantasy" hit number one (she directed the video for that one herself), and the Boyz II Men collaboration "One Sweet Day" soon followed.

Mariah's latest release, Butterfly, features 11 new tracks written by Carey and a host of music's most illustrious collaborators including Sean "Puffy" Combs, David Morales; guest musicians Mase & The Lox and Krayzie Bone and Wish Bone from Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony and covers The Artist's "The Beautiful Ones." "Honey," the first single from Butterfly, debuted on "Billboard's" Hot 100 at No. 1 giving Carey the most chart toppers of any solo female artist in the rock era. According to "Billboard's" Hot 100, only six singles have debuted at No. 1 and Mariah Carey owns half of them.

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