Mariah Carey

American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress, a superstar at the turn of the century. Her single, "Loverboy," released in mid-July 2001, the first cut off the Glitter soundtrack, has remained at No.2 on Billboards Hot 100 Singles chart behind Destinys Childs "Bootylicious." The Glitter album is due out on 28 August and the film of the same name, distributed by 20th Century Fox, hits theatres Labour Day weekend. Carey has tallied more than $140 million in record sales worldwide and signed a multi-album, multimillion-dollar deal with Virgin Records in April 2001 that was valued between $17 million and $20 million, one of the most lucrative in music history. The daughter of a Venezuelan aeronautical engineer and mom Patricia Carey, a voice coach and opera singer, Mariah has two older siblings: a brother, Morgan, and a sister, Alison. Mariahs parents divorced when she was three. She stunned her mother by imitating her operatic singing as early as age two, and was given singing lessons from age four. After graduating in 1987 from Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York, she moved to Manhattan where she worked as a waitress, coat check girl, and studied cosmetology while writing songs and actively pursuing a music career at night. At 18, Mariah and her friend, singer Brenda K. Starr, went to a party hosted by CBS Records. She took along a demo tape that Tommy Mottola, the president of Columbia Records (later Sony) listened to on his way home. He signed her immediately and put out her first album, "Mariah Carey," 1990. Her second LP "Emotions" was released in 1992; the title track became her fifth No. 1 single, and included hits "Can’t Let Go" and "Make it Happen." Careys career soared. With a voice that spans more than five octaves and writing most of her own music, she became one of the top "pop divas" of the 90s, selling more than eighty million albums worldwide. In June 1993, Carey married Mottola in a spectacular ceremony at Manhattan’s St. Thomas Episcopal Church, a marriage that ended in divorce five years later. She had a three-year relationship with Latin singer Luis Miguel, 31, that completed in April 2001. Carey is active in fundraising for The Fresh Air Fund, an independent non-profit agency that has provided free summer vacations to more than 1.6 million disadvantaged New York City children since 1877. On the heels of a whirlwind schedule, Carey began to show signs of stress and exhaustion that expressed in irrational behaviour. On 25 July 2001 at 10:19 PM her mother dialled 911 for medical help. Reports of a suicide attempt was denied, saying that she broke glasses and dishes out of frustration. She checked herself into a London hospital late night in August 2001 after leaving two strange messages on her official website. The first reads, according to transcripts published by Fox News, "So basically, all I really wanna say is I dont know whats going on with life, and I hope all the fans are good, and I just want you to know that Im trying to understand things in life right now, and so I really dont feel that I should be doing music right now." In the second message, Carey is quoted as saying, "Hey, everybody, its Mariah. Im just trying to let you know that Im leaving this message because everythings okay. And what were gonna do is Im gonna take, like, a minute off...Right now I need a break, so I will, as a human being, take that break." On the recovery track, in January 2002 the pop diva pocketed $28 mil Read less