Profile
Famous as :
Pop singer, actressBirth Name :
Mariah Angela CareyBirth Date :
March 27, 1970Birth Place :
Huntington, New York, USAClaim to fame :
Album "Mariah Carey" (1990)
Mariah Carey was born Mariah Angela Carey in Huntington, New York, on March 27, 1970, to an Irish-American mother Patricia Hickey and an African American/Venezuelan father Alfred Roy Carey. Her mother was a mezzo-soprano New York City opera singer and a freelance vocal coach; whereas, her father was an aeronautical engineer. Carey, third and youngest, has siblings Alison and Morgan, who were significantly older by ten years.
Predestined to be a multiracial family, the Carey menage were faced with racial insult, hostility and even violence, with crosses being burnt on their lawn, their dogs poisoned, their car blown up, and a shot fired through the kitchen window during mealtime. In addition, Carey's mother Patricia also faced many racism in the early 1960s, during which she was disowned by her family when she married Alfred Roy Carey.
The bad experiences had caused the whole family to move often around New York area to find more friendly neighborhoods. Also, those incidents caused Carey great distress and created tension within the family itself, which then led Alfred and Patricia to get divorced in 1972 when Carey was still three. After her parents' divorce, Carey and Morgan stayed with their mother while Alison stayed with ...
Predestined to be a multiracial family, the Carey menage were faced with racial insult, hostility and even violence, with crosses being burnt on their lawn, their dogs poisoned, their car blown up, and a shot fired through the kitchen window during mealtime. In addition, Carey's mother Patricia also faced many racism in the early 1960s, during which she was disowned by her family when she married Alfred Roy Carey.
The bad experiences had caused the whole family to move often around New York area to find more friendly neighborhoods. Also, those incidents caused Carey great distress and created tension within the family itself, which then led Alfred and Patricia to get divorced in 1972 when Carey was still three. After her parents' divorce, Carey and Morgan stayed with their mother while Alison stayed with ...
their father. Living away from her father and having little contact with him were too much for such a little girl like Carey but life had to go on somehow. As a single mother, Patricia had to struggle with two or three jobs and continued moving among different towns on Long Island. Though so, she managed to provide a spirited, loving household for her children.
Having a good vocal quality, Carey began singing when she was three and it happened by accident that her mother realized early on her tremendous potential. One day when her mother was rehearsing her role of Maddalena in Verdi's "Opera Rigolettos", she heard Carey imitating her singing perfectly. Since then, her mother began teaching her how to develop her vocal skills, despite the fact that she was only three years old. So, during the year of 1974, Patricia nurtured her daughter's talent by coaching her at home without trying to force the issue too much. In fact, the intense vocal lessons pushed Carey to make her public singing debut. She first performed in public when she was six, singing for friends and performing in talent shows and folk-music festivals.
At the age of 16 years old, Carey entered Oldfield Middle School and started to find a new interest which was not far from singing, writing her own songs. Having strong passion in crafting songs, Carey frequently skipped classes and poured her spirit in penning songs and dreaming about becoming a famous singer. When she enrolled at the Harborfield High School, she started traveling back and forth to Manhattan in order to study music with professionals. That's the one and only reason why she rarely showed up for class, because of which she was jokingly named "Mirage" by her high school friends. Wishing to break into the music business, Carey took part-time job after school, singing on demo tapes at Long Island studios.
Having a good vocal quality, Carey began singing when she was three and it happened by accident that her mother realized early on her tremendous potential. One day when her mother was rehearsing her role of Maddalena in Verdi's "Opera Rigolettos", she heard Carey imitating her singing perfectly. Since then, her mother began teaching her how to develop her vocal skills, despite the fact that she was only three years old. So, during the year of 1974, Patricia nurtured her daughter's talent by coaching her at home without trying to force the issue too much. In fact, the intense vocal lessons pushed Carey to make her public singing debut. She first performed in public when she was six, singing for friends and performing in talent shows and folk-music festivals.
At the age of 16 years old, Carey entered Oldfield Middle School and started to find a new interest which was not far from singing, writing her own songs. Having strong passion in crafting songs, Carey frequently skipped classes and poured her spirit in penning songs and dreaming about becoming a famous singer. When she enrolled at the Harborfield High School, she started traveling back and forth to Manhattan in order to study music with professionals. That's the one and only reason why she rarely showed up for class, because of which she was jokingly named "Mirage" by her high school friends. Wishing to break into the music business, Carey took part-time job after school, singing on demo tapes at Long Island studios.
Before she got her big break, Carey already completed 500 hours of beauty school, worked as a hair sweeper in a salon, and also worked as a waitress and as a coat check girl. On her sixteenth birthday, her brother Morgan paid the cost of her first professional recording session in Manhattan, and there she met keyboard player and songwriter Ben Margulies who later on became her songwriting partner and close friend. In 1987, Carey graduated from Harborfields High School on Long Island. Subsequently, her mother remarried and she moved to Manhattan, recording and offering her demo tape to record companies. One year later, all of her hard work came to fruition. She got into an audition and landed a job as singing backup for Brenda K. Starr.
In November that year Brenda dragged her to a party, where Carey by chance met Columbia head Tommy Mottola, to whom she passed her tape. On his way home, Mottola listened to it in his limousine. As soon as catching her charming voice, he turned around to the party and searched for her at the bash, but she had left. The next day, Mottola approached and signed her a record deal with CBS Columbia. Then, she started recording her debut album with producers Narada Michael Walden, Ric Wake, and Rhett Lawrence, using many of the materials she and Ben Margulies had written over the last three years.
Her collaboration with those people was just the very beginning of her success, which was marked with the release of her self-titled debut album "Mariah Carey" in 1990 when she was just twenty years old. The eponymous album was a huge success, spawning four No. 1 hit singles titled "Vision of Love", "Someday", "Love Takes Time" and "I Don't Want to Cry". Moreover, the record stayed on top of the US album charts for 22 weeks, a massive success that handed Carey two Grammys for the category of Best Female Vocalist and Best New Artist at the 33rd Annual Grammy Awards held on February 20, 1991. On March 7 the same year, Carey was also named Best New Female Singer by Rolling Stone.
A second album titled "Emotions" was released in the fall of 1991 and its first single, which was the title track, was a huge success, securing the top spot on Hot 100. Moreover, this album had two other Top Five singles; "Can't Let Go" and "Make It Happen". Without waiting any longer, Carey hit studio the next year with the help from Trey Lorenz in the production and songwriting desk. Her tight recording schedule made her meet Mottola more than often and she started dating him. She finally walked down the aisle with the producer on June 5, 1993, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, New York that soon was followed by a reception held at the Metropolitan Club. Their VIP guests at the wedding bash ...
included Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro and Ozzy Osbourne.
Carey released her next studio album "Music Box" in 1993. In an effort to promote the set, she embarked on her first U.S. tour, beginning from November 25, 1993 to December 10 in the same year. Like its predecessor, the album was also a mega hit, ruling several albums chart around the globe and certified with diamond for selling more than 7 million copies. Carey's first Christmas record was outed in 1994 titled "Merry Christmas". She then followed it up with another album "Daydream". One of Carey's most successful singles in the album was "One Sweet Day" which featured Boyz II Men. The track spent a 16 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100.
Carey released her next studio album "Music Box" in 1993. In an effort to promote the set, she embarked on her first U.S. tour, beginning from November 25, 1993 to December 10 in the same year. Like its predecessor, the album was also a mega hit, ruling several albums chart around the globe and certified with diamond for selling more than 7 million copies. Carey's first Christmas record was outed in 1994 titled "Merry Christmas". She then followed it up with another album "Daydream". One of Carey's most successful singles in the album was "One Sweet Day" which featured Boyz II Men. The track spent a 16 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100.
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