Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969 or 1970) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, actress, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She was signed to Columbia Records in 1988 and rose to fame after releasing her eponymous debut album two years later. Carey is the first artist in history to have their first five singles become consecutive number one songs on the Billboard Hot 100 (from "Vision of Love" to "Emotions"). Renowned for her five-octave vocal range, melismatic singing style, and signature use of the whistle register, Carey is referred to as the "Songbird Supreme" by Guinness World Records.
In 1993, Carey married Sony Music head Tommy Mottola. She achieved worldwide success with follow-up albums Music Box (1993), Merry Christmas (1994), and Daydream (1995). These albums spawned some of Carey's most successful singles, including "Hero", "Without You", "All I Want for Christmas Is You", "Fantasy", "Always Be My Baby", as well as "One Sweet Day", which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for 16 weeks and became Billboard's Song of the Decade (1990s Decade). After separating from Mottola, Carey adopted a new image and incorporated more elements of hip hop into her music with the release of Butterfly (1997) and Rainbow (1999). Billboard named her the country's most successful artist of the 1990s, while the World Music Awards honored her as the world's best-selling music artist of the 1990s, and the best-selling female artist of the millennium.
After eleven consecutive years charting a US number-one single, Carey parted ways with Columbia in 2001 and signed a $80 million recording contract with Virgin Records in April of that year. However, following her highly publicized physical and emotional breakdown, as well as the critical and commercial failure of her film Glitter (2001) and its accompanying soundtrack, her contract was bought out for $28 million by Virgin and she signed with Island Records the following year. After a relatively unsuccessful period, she returned to the top of music charts with The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), the world's second-best-selling album of 2005. Its second single, "We Belong Together", topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks and became Billboard's Song of the Decade. Her performance as a social worker in the 2009 coming-of-age drama film Precious garnered a positive response from critics and won her the Breakthrough Actress Performance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Throughout her career, Carey has sold over 200 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. With a total of 19 songs topping the Billboard Hot 100, Carey holds the record for the most number-one singles by a solo artist, a female songwriter, and a female producer, and she is the only artist to hit number one on the chart in each year of a decade (1990s decade). According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the second-highest-certified female artist in the United States, with 66.5 million certified album units. In 2012, she was ranked second on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Women in Music. In 2019, Billboard named her the all-time top female artist in the United States, based on both album and song chart performances. Aside from her commercial accomplishments, Carey has won five Grammy Awards, nineteen World Music Awards, ten American Music Awards, and fifteen Billboard Music Awards. An inductee of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, she is noted for inspiring other artists in pop and contemporary R&B music.
