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Featured Celebrity: Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1970 in Huntington, New York) is an American popular music singer, songwriter, record producer, music video director, and actress, who rose to prominence in the 1990s. Carey's music has been influenced by rhythm and blues, pop, gospel, hip hop, and rock and roll. She is credited as having a five-octave vocal range, possibly the greatest range of any popular singer. She makes lavish use of melisma; her vocal swoops and trills are an easily recognized feature of her sound.

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Surveys have placed Carey as one of the best-selling female recording artists ever worldwide. She was also the top-selling recording artist of any kind during the 1990s. Her singles have spent more weeks at No. 1 than any other living artist in Billboard history. Carey's vocal style influenced a generation of singers who came after her, including Christina Aguilera and Beyoncé Knowles as well as many American Idol competitors.

Early life and family, 1970–1990

Carey is the third and youngest child of Patricia Hickey, an opera singer and voice coach of Irish-American ethnicity, and Alfred Roy Carey, an aeronautical engineer of Venezuelan-African descent. She was named after the song "(And They Call the Wind) Mariah", from the musical Paint Your Wagon. She has no middle name. Carey has a sister named Alison and a brother named Morgan, both of whom are about ten years older than she.

As a multiracial family, the Carey household was met with racial slurs, hostility and even violence (She claimed in the early days, crosses were burned on their lawn, their dogs were poisoned, their car was blown up, and a shot was fired through the kitchen window during mealtime). Thus, the family moved often around the New York area to find more friendly neighborhoods. The strain on the family led to the divorce of Alfred and Patricia when Mariah was three; Mariah and Morgan stayed with their mother while Alison stayed with their father. Mariah had little contact with her father, except for sporadic visits on weekends but even those dwindled as the years went by; Patricia raised Mariah, often struggling with two or three jobs and continuing to move among different towns on Long Island, but tried to provide a spirited, loving household.

Carey began singing when she was three; her mother realized early on that she had tremendous potential. Carey first performed in public when she was six and first began writing songs when she was in grade school. She attended and graduated from Harborfields High School in Greenlawn but was frequently absent due to efforts to break into the music business. She eventually landed a role as a backup singer for Brenda K. Starr. Then in 1988, Carey met Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola while at a party and gave him a demo tape. He played the tape while leaving the party and was very impressed by what he heard, but she had already left. Nevertheless he tracked her down and signed her to a recording contract. This Cinderella-like story became part of the standard publicity surrounding Carey's entrance into the industry.

Voice

Mariah Carey is known for her amazing, multi-octave voice. She has a very powerful control of her whistle register and it is this rare talent that has enabled her vocal range to double that of the average singer. There has been some debate as to what is her exact singing range; while some claim it is no more than 5, others sources indicate that it lies between 5 and 7 octaves. It was rumored that she was included in the Guinness book of World records for having hit the highest note in music history. However, no such category exists in the Record books. Carey's dramatic coloratura soprano is rated as one of the greatest among pop singers [4] (http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_vocalists-fe-pop.html). In 2003 she placed at No. 1 on MTV's "22 Greatest Voices in Music" countdown, ahead of such rivals as Whitney Houston and Céline Dion.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia Article: Mariah Carey