Mariah Carey is arguably the most popular and successful pop star of all time.
But for all of the soaring high notes of her life and career, there have been a few sour notes too.
Here's a look into the rise, success, fabulous life, and fantastic flops of Mariah Carey.
Music was a part of Mariah Carey's life from the very beginning.
Born in New York in 1970, Carey's parents named her after "They Call the Wind Maria,"
a show tune and standard from the Western musical, "Paint Your Wagon". Meanwhile, Carey was absent
from school so often, sometimes for pursuing career opportunities, that her schoolmates
nicknamed her "Mirage." Fittingly enough, Carey would later name her company Mirage Entertainment.
But in between being named after a song and starting her singing career,
Carey's childhood was difficult and painful. In a 2020 inter view with Oprah Winfrey,
Carey claimed her older brother, Morgan, was, quote, "extremely violent,"
that she lived in fear of attacks, and that her elder sister, Allison,
was "troubled and traumatized." Carey later wrote in her 2020 memoir, "The Meaning of Mariah Carey",
about a particularly traumatizing event that took place when she was only 12 years old:
"My sister drugged me with Valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine,
inflicted me with third-degree burns, and tried to sell me out to a pimp."
As a manager of musicians, Tommy Mottola helped propel the careers of Hall and Oates,
John Mellencamp, and Carly Simon. By the early 1990s, he'd risen to the position
of head of Sony Music, where he launched the career of talented pop singer Mariah Carey.
In 1993, three years into her blockbuster career, a 23-year-old Carey married Mottola,
then 43. In her memoir, the singer discussed her hesitation and panic over the marriage, writing,
"Many reasonable people have questioned why I married Tommy.
But none of them questioned the decision more than I did."
Carey's reservations grew intense on her wedding day, but she ultimately went through
with the marriage because she, quote, "saw no way out." Her fears were apparently justified,
as Carey wrote that Mottola was so controlling as to be "inescapable,"
denying her access to friends and family. She added:
"I couldn't go out or do anything with anybody. I couldn't move freely in my own house."
At one point, Carey said, she had a go-bag packed in case she ever felt the need,
or had the opportunity, to leave in a hurry.
According to Billboard, Mottola previously called Carey's allegations of abuse "untrue". But the
harrowing marriage, Carey wrote, is what directly led to her affair with baseball star Derek Jeter,
whom she met at a mid-'90s dinner party. The fling didn't last long,
but Carey said that Jeter, quote, "was the catalyst" to leave Mottola.
Anyone who has ever heard Mariah Carey sing knows that she's got tremendous range, able to purr low,
sultry notes all the way up to notes so high that they sound like a whistle or the battle
cry of an angel. The conventional wisdom is that Carey can sing anywhere within five octaves,
one of the largest ranges in music history — and while that's a natural gift,
it's a rare one, and also something she has to carefully maintain.
According to a 2017 interview, Carey explained that she has growths on her
vocal cords called nodules, which, according to Duke Health, are noncancerous calluses or
lumps. They put pressure on the cords which can manifest in a cracking voice,
raspy voice, or, in Carey's case, an abnormally rangy singing ability. She said:
"My cords, I actually have nodules on them, and I have for my whole life.
I've learned to sing around them."
Carey also noted that her voice doctor actually
lectures to other physicians on his famous patient's unique condition.
In order to keep her cords as healthy and as fresh as possible, Carey said she focuses on
"vocal rest" and "sleep" — particularly the second thing. She told Interview magazine:
"I've got to sleep 15 hours to sing the way I want to."
Not only that, but she rests with, quote, "20 humidifiers around the bed,"
as she told V Magazine, which creates a "steam room" effect.
Mariah Carey had a huge year in 1995. Her fifth studio album, "Daydream," was the
fourth-best-selling album of the year, and it generated three No. 1 hits: "Always Be My Baby,"
"One Sweet Day," and "Fantasy" — the latter of which became only the second song in history
to debut at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Another album released in 1995,
perhaps overshadowed by Carey's monster hit: "Someone's Ugly Daughter," by a band called Chick.
A slice of mid-'90s alternative rock in the vein of Alanis Morissette or Courtney Love.
The record was almost entirely forgotten until 2020,
when Carey tweeted an excerpt of her memoir and owned up to being the creative force behind Chick.
She made the secret record, quote, "just for laughs," but added on Twitter:
"It got me through some dark days. [...] It was irreverent, raw, and urgent, and the band got
into it. I actually started to love some of the songs. I would fully commit to my character."
She went on further to explain her approach to the compositions:
"I was playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light
white female singers who were popular at the time. [...] I wanted to break free,
let loose, and express my misery — but I also wanted to laugh."
In July 2001, Mariah Carey did what any major artist of the time promoting
a new single would do — go on MTV's "TRL" and chat with host Carson Daly.
During the surprise appearance, however, Carey provided two minutes of very strange television.
Apparently without Daly's foreknowledge, Carey emerged onto the "TRL" stage pushing
an ice cream cart and clad in a "Loverboy" t-shirt. Bewildering Daly more, Carey said,
quote, "I brought you a present," and handed him the shirt after stripping it off, revealing a
tank top and shorts underneath. Then, she began to breathlessly ramble, starting with this sentiment:
"Every now and then, somebody needs a little therapy."
"Yes, I understand that."
"And today is that moment for me."
According to Billboard, the singer was placed under psychiatric care afterward
after experiencing what her publicist called, quote, "an emotional and physical breakdown"
and "extreme exhaustion." Carey later told People that she'd been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Carey's story evolved over time, however. In 2020, she told "Watch What Happens Live with
Andy Cohen" that the moment, quote, "was a stunt gone awry". She elaborated further:
"I was trying desperately not to allow a huge corporate entity
and someone with an agenda to destroy my career."
Mariah Carey is easily one of the most successful musicians of all time. Her first seven albums all
went multi-platinum — a streak that ended abruptly with her eighth album, "Glitter," a soundtrack to
the movie that marked her first starring role. The 2001 film, an '80s-set melodrama about the
tumultuous rise of a pop superstar, was a disaster. Critics savaged it, awarding it a
whopping 6 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It was nominated for six Razzie Awards, with Carey
named worst actress. It was also a box-office bomb, earning just $5.2 million worldwide.
Carey takes no blame for the failure, claiming at a 2010 press junket:
"I was auditioning for smaller roles and wanting to do more independent things.
But everybody was like, 'No, she's too well known. She's going to take us out of the movie.'"
She also thinks the terrorist attacks of 9/11 had something to do with "Glitter" tanking — the
soundtrack hit stores that day and the movie was released on September 21. She asked rhetorically:
"Could there be a worse day for that movie to come out?"
The singer also believes that her ex-husband,
Sony Music head Tommy Mottola, helped sink "Glitter." As Carey claimed in her memoir:
"Tommy and his cronies went as far as taking promotional items,
like my stand-up advertisements, out of the record stores."
The failure of "Glitter" seriously upended Mariah Carey's career.
The "Glitter" soundtrack was the singer's first album to not be RIAA-certified at
least triple-platinum for sales of three million copies. The album would eventually go platinum,
moving one million units. That's an unqualified success for pretty much anyone who isn't Mariah
Carey — particularly Mariah Carey in 2001, who needed to put up big numbers with "Glitter."
The soundtrack was the first release in a four-album, $80 million deal Carey signed
with Virgin Records earlier in 2001. According to the Los Angeles Times,
it was one of the most lucrative in music history to that point, and Virgin likely thought they'd
get back their investment — and then some — based on Carey's track record of blockbuster sales.
The label decided to cut and run, however. According to The New York Times,
disappointing "Glitter" sales led Virgin to buy out Carey's contract.
She'd already banked $21 million from the company, and the escape clause forced Virgin
to fork over another $28 million. That means Carey made $49 million off of a flop record.
Add that to how Carey has topped the Billboard pop chart 19 times — second only to the Beatles — and
selling 66.5 million albums in the U.S. All of this makes for a very wealthy pop star.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Carey's assets are worth about $320 million.
Eminem and Mariah Carey, one of the most popular rappers and one of the biggest pop stars of all
time, could have been a power couple for the ages ... if only if they both agreed they were actually
ever an item, and if they ever stopped fighting with each other, that is. According to InTouch,
Eminem and Carey connected in 2001 when the latter asked the former to contribute to her album,
"Charmbracelet." Eminem claimed the relationship turned personal for a few months,
while Carey insists they were never more than work friends.
The two would maintain their positions for well over the next decade.
They've even taken their bad feelings into their art. The 2009 video for Carey's slyly titled,
jilted lover song, "Obsessed," opens with the singer rhetorically asking, quote,"Why are you
so obsessed with me?" and features a character who looks and dresses an awful lot like Eminem.
In a guest verse on Fat Joe and Dre's 2019 song, "Lord Above," Eminem raps:
"I know me and Mariah didn't end on a high note / But that other dude's whipped."
He adds that he tried to tell Nick Cannon that the singer was, quote, "a nut job."
April 30th is a day that figures prominently in the life of Mariah Carey. On that date in 2008,
she married actor, musician, and TV host Nick Cannon. Exactly three years later,
Carey gave birth to the couple's children, twins. Of the new babies, the first was a girl,
Monroe, followed soon after by her brother, Moroccan.
Cannon and Carey arrived at the hospital in a rush, not due to deliver that day, with the
singer-songwriter reportedly convinced that the labor pains were just a false alarm. Nevertheless,
she had time enough to prepare for the arrival of her babies, set up some speakers in her Los
Angeles area hospital, and make sure that the perfect song was playing at the moment of birth:
"We Belong Together," her own 2005 No. 1 hit. Cannon told a different story. On "The Gayle
King Show", he said that a live version of Carey's "Fantasy" played during the birth.
Three months after becoming a mother, Carey made an appearance on Home Shopping Network,
where she discussed a biologically questionable pregnancy detail. She said:
"You have to keep them in as long as possible,
because it's a sacrifice you make for them. Literally I was 47 weeks pregnant."
According to Time, the standard human gestation period is 40 weeks.
One could argue that without Mariah Carey there would be no Jennifer Lopez, as both occupy a
similar space in the worlds of music and celebrity — singers with mass, genre-crossing appeal who
also act a little and contend with formidable reputations. While few people could relate to
each other and their unique lives better than Carey and Lopez, they don't appear to be friends.
In the early 2000s, Carey told a German-language news outlet
what she thought of other pop singers. Carey said:
"Beyoncé is fabulous."
However, when asked about Lopez, Carey famously wryly replied with a cold smile:
"I don't know her."
In other words, she claimed to be unfamiliar with the mega-famous
J.Lo. Understandably, that bit of next-level shade became a meme.
Carey's apparent resentment of Lopez is reportedly not without merit. According to gossip columnist
Roger Friedman, Lopez allegedly stole parts of "Lovejoy" and "If We," two Carey songs from the
"Glitter" soundtrack, and incorporated them into two different versions of her hit, "I'm Real."
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text
Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline
at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.