Mariah Carey: The Emancipation¹ of Mimi

Performer and songwriter Mariah Carey secures her place as the No. 1 most successful female artist as We Belong Together becomes her 16th song to top the Billboard Hot 100. This positions Mariah as the only artist in contention to surpass the Beatles (with 20 No.1’s) and Elvis Presley (18 No.1’s) in the modern era.

The best-selling female performer of the 1990s, Carey rose to superstardom on the strength of her stunning five-octave² voice. She earned frequent comparison to rivals Whitney Houston and Celine Dion, but did them both one better by composing all of her own material.

Born in Long Island, NY, on March 27, 1970, Carey moved to New York City at the age of 17 to pursue a music career. Her 1990 eponymous³ debut album launched an unparalleled unbroken string of successes. In fact, Mariah Carey is the only artist to have had a No.1 single for every year of the 1990s. With the exception of Merry Christmas and No.1’s (a collection of her first 13 chart-toppers), Carey had hit No.1 with the debut single from every one of her albums.

However, the 2000s weren’t as kind to Carey. In 2001 she experienced a very public personal and professional meltdown⁴ that included rambling, suicidal messages on her website an appearance on TRL where, clad only in a T-shirt, she handed out Popsicles to the audience and last but not least, the stupendously⁵ awful movie Glitter and its attendant soundtrack. Both the film and the album did poorly critically as well as commercially. In December, 2002, she released her ninth album, Charmbracelet, which had disappointing sales.

Carey’s comeback with The Emancipation of Mimi in 2005 has been billed as “the return of the voice” following her struggle to regain the huge success she enjoyed in the 1990s. With a record 16 No.1 singles -- more than any female artist of the past century -- two Grammy Awards, eight American Music Awards, Billboard magazine’s Artist of the Decade Award, and the World Music Award as World’s Best Selling Female Artist of the Millennium -- Mariah Carey’s ongoing career remains an unparalleled success story in the history of contemporary popular music.