Mariah Carey Biography

In fact, race was to play a major part in her early years - Carey's parents divorced when she was just three, their marriage no doubt pushed beyond breaking point not only by the threats from others, but from family pressures - Patricia had been raised in a convent in white middle-class Illinois, and was subsequently disowned by her family when she married a man 'of colour' . Carey's memories of those times are still vivid, and having been subjected to burning crosses on their lawn, and their family dogs poisoned, she then had to endure her own family rejecting them: 'The fact that my mother's family disowned me made me feel like, what does this make me? If this is so bad that my mother got disowned? It was weird and hard. My brother was getting beat up every day and kids were calling my sister a nigger'. Carey's racial background was the cause of much debate in her future career, with differing camps taking against her because she was either 'too black' or 'too white'. Pretty moronic, when you think about it, but then this is the States, where the pigeon-hole is king.

Mariah spent a significant amount of time training to be a beautician, as well as waitressing work, but her main passion was of course music - she had started singing at a young age, listening to and copying her mother's operatic practising at home. Coupled with her burning ambition to succeed (no doubt partly attributable to the tough circumstances of her early years), she was genetically blessed with her mother's singing ability, and from her early teens Carey was writing and singing - she was a studio session singer from the tender age of 13, in fact. Her brother Morgan, now a physical trainer to the stars, initially helped Mariah get a start by lending her the $5000 she needed to record a demo tape.

Carey eventually bagged herself a job as a backing singer for Brenda K Starr, thanks to being 'one of those girls who hang out with Lenny Kravitz' (make of that cryptic statement what you will - I reckon I know what 'hang out' means), and at an industry party in November 1988, Starr pressed Mariah's demo into the hands of Tommy Mottola, who had recently been made the head of CBS records. Having left the party, and then listened to the tape in his limo, Mottola was impressed enough to get his driver to trun the car around, return to the party to try and find Mariah, but she had left by that point. (Telling the story later, Carey painted a distinctly un-fairytale picture of events - she recalls that she was an 18 year-old in a short skirt and a high-school sports jacket, being ogled by Mottola, 20 years her senior, and she conceded that 'It was probably pretty, like, Lolita-ish').

Whatever his motivations, Mottola tracked down the pop starlet in waiting, and signed her to an eight-record deal - and thus began her journey from session singer into, eventually, the biggest selling female performer of the decade, outstripping even the queen of profit-oriented pop, Madonna. Debut single 'Vision of Love' was an enormous deal, reaching number 9 in the UK, but more significantly being the first of her many US number ones. As well as having co-written and performed a decent single, Carey was also benefiting from the full weight of the label's publicity support - which could, possibly, maybe be linked to the fact that during the recording of her debut album, 'Mariah Carey' (1990) she and Mottola had become an item.

Fiercely protective of his partner, Mottola also kept her image tightly controlled, knowing full well what could play (and sell) equally as big in the bible belt as in the metropolitan centres - his strategy of wholesomeness seemed to be the winning formula, and 'Mariah Carey' was flying off the shelves (going on to sell in excess of five million copies). The Grammy award winning success of her debut was followed with more commercial success with 'Emotions' (1991), her second album. More of an homage to classic Motown sounds, it contained plenty more hit singles, such that Carey became the first artist to have their first five single releases reach the number one spot of the US Hot 100 chart.

Mottola and Carey were married in 1993, and as one might have expected from the showbiz couple of the moment, the ceremony was suitably lavish - and reportedly her 27-foot long train had been partially inspired by the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, videos of which Carey had watched. Sadly though, the parallels with that fated couple didn't end at the altar. Their relationship was not to last, and although she was living in palatial splendour, with more clothes, shoes and closets than she knew what to do with, the control over her exerted by Tommy, as well as the unhappiness she felt in their marriage, eventually became too much to bear.

The marriage just stuttered past its second anniversary, but the couple divorced in 1995, putting an end to a hugely paradoxical period of Carey's life. She had stellar, global fame, wealth beyond measure, and yet a sense of detachment from the direction her own career was taking. In many ways Carey's relationship with her husband had been that of a prodigious daughter and controlling, restrictive father, who forbade her from wearing bikinis in her videos, and yet who was obsessed with her success, and knew full well what would maximise her commercial potential. Carey found some space in her heart for a little forgiveness for the strictness she had endured from Mottola in a recent interview: 'I have to forgive him for being so restrictive. I understand him not wanting me to go out and hang out all night, but going to a spa with friends every now and then, or doing things on my own would have made a world of difference. And I'd probably still be with him if I had. Maybe it's for my own good that I wasn't "allowed" to do those things, but that's not how it felt'.

Seizing control of the reins, Carey was going to do it her way from now on. She entered what she now refers to as her 'butterfly phase', and released the album 'Butterfly' in 1998. An album she has dubbed her 'emancipation proclamation', and one that was far less MOR than her earlier work, it also provided the number one single 'Honey' - and the switch to a much more overtly sexual and edgy approach had clearly not alienated all of her fans. If Mariah was seeking a way to announce to the world that she was out from under Mottola (as it were), and had shuffled off the yoke of her controlled 'wholesome' image, then writhing around in a bikini in the video to accompany 'Honey' probably did the trick. Furthermore, she added in a little production work on the album from Missy Elliot and P Diddy and, although hardly a move to hardcore hiphop, 'Butterfly' was a distinct change of gear.

However, after the turn of the millennium, Carey suffered what can only be described as a breakdown. After the highs of having being named 'Artist of the Decade' by the American Billboard charts, and being the highest selling female artist of the millennium, Carey was just knackered from the exertions of the preceding months and years. In 2001 she was repeatedly in the news after a series of bizarre public outbursts, capped with her performance of a strange strip-tease live on MTV's 'TRL' show. Although the singer considers, with the benefit of hindsight, that this episode was a breakthrough rather than a breakdown, her career remained becalmed for several years - a particular lowlight being the commercial and critical flop of 'Glitter', her first movie project and accompanying soundtrack. Tempting though it was to blame the failure of the album on its release date (September 11th, 2001, with the film coming out just days afterward), perhaps it also just wasn't that good.

In sales terms, the real breakthrough seemed to come with 'The Emancipation of Mimi' in 2005 - as well as winning her a Grammy, it featured another selection of star collaborations, reinvigorating her street cred no end and getting her talked about once more in positive terms. The trick seemed to have been to sign up to Universal, whose CEO Doug Morris had been canny enough to snap up Mariah after she had been bought out of her previous contract with Virgin for tens of millions of dollars - Morris told the singer that he viewed her recent troubles as a mere blip, and encouraged her to get on with it.

Into late 2007, Carey was hard at work preparing a new album (slated for release in 2008), and launching a perfume, 'M' - a project she viewed as 'a cool idea', and the top note of the fragrance ('burnt marshmallows') supposedly reminds her of being a kid. (Whatever, Mariah). It's fair to say that the press still isn't all positive - as well as the endless stream of diva-demand stories (such as Carey paying an assistant for the sole task of holding a water bottle to her mouth), in June 2007 Carey was named 'The Worst Singer of All Time' by entertainment magazine 'The Word', describing Carey thus: 'Clearly the worst thing to happen to popular music since Jonathan King. All technique, gallons of sugary gloop and not an atom of soul anywhere.'

Carey doesn't exactly go out of her way to endear herself to people, pronouncing in interviews that she requires a minimum of fifteen hours sleep a day to sing the way she does (seriously?), and furthermore that she has had a bed installed in her steam room at home, as it helps not only her skin but also her voice (an idea she got from Luther Vandross). Oh well - with the kind of success she's had, and the thick skin she must have developed in her childhood, any criticism coming her way must be like water off a duck's back.

• Mariah Carey Discography