Mariah Carey

The veteran pop star Mariah Carey distinguishes herself as a hit songwriter as well as a diva with a compelling five-octave range. Her 1990 hit single, "Vision of Love," was the beginning of her rise, which has resulted in more top singles than Elvis Presley.
Ms. Carey is one of three children of Patricia Carey, a vocal coach who used to sing with the New York City Opera. Her mother is Irish-American; her father, Alfred Roy Carey, an engineer, was half Venezuelan and half African-American. He died in 2002. Her parents divorced when she was 3. In 1987, she graduated from Harborfields High School in Huntington, L.I., and quickly moved to New York City to break into the music business.
Although she was exposed to opera while growing up, Ms. Carey said she was never drawn to it, preferring ''freer music.'' Her influences included her mother's Billie Holiday records and her brother and sister's Al Green, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder albums. Above all, she has been drawn to the gospel of Aretha Franklin, the Clark Sisters, the Edwin Hawkins Singers and Shirley Caesar.
Ms. Carey said she had wanted to be a professional singer since she was 4. She began working with musicians when she was 13, and at 16 she started writing songs with Ben Margulies, a young composer who collaborated with her on six of the 11 songs on "Maria Carey" (Columbia, 1990). Her big break came in November 1988 when Brenda K. Starr, a dance-pop vocalist with whom she had worked in clubs, took her to a party to celebrate the inauguration of WTG Records, a CBS-affiliated label run by Jerry Greenberg.
''Brenda walked up to Jerry, introduced me and said, 'This is my friend Mariah, she's 18 and writes her own music,' '' Ms. Carey recalled. ''Tommy Mottola was there, and when Brenda handed my tape to Jerry, Tommy grabbed it away from him. When Brenda told me who he was, I was really nervous. I just said hi and walked away. He went out to his car and put it on and listened to the first two songs and turned around and came back to find me, but I was gone. There was no phone number on the tape. That Monday, he contacted Brenda's manager, and Brenda called me to tell me he had heard it. The next day I went up to CBS with my mom, and we talked he said he wanted to give me a record deal and put me on Columbia.''
Her dream of fame and fortune was pretty ordinary, but her voice wasn't. After Mr. Mottola signed her to Columbia Records, they began dating.



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