Mariah Carey's two weekends in Vegas look back on an incredible career
Over the past two decades, there are few singers who have been as ubiquitous as Mariah Carey. She was there in the playlists of every high-school dance, on-stage at every awards show, scattered across the pages of every tabloid and on the mind of every Christina Aguilera and Beyonce Knowles who dared leap from one octave to the next.
And if you thought her star might be fading by the time 2009 came around, we have news for you: That's just a sweet, sweet fantasy, baby. Although MTV hardly plays music videos anymore and radio continues to fawn over newer, younger, flashier facsimiles, there's always a "Vision of Love" or "Always Be My Baby" or "Heartbreaker" or "We Belong Together" somewhere nipping at your heels, bringing her music and the woman behind it back into focus.
Born in Hungtington, N.Y., in 1970, Carey moved to New York City after high school to pursue a career in music. She landed a few gigs singing background vocals, including a fortune-making date with Brenda K. Starr, a pop singer whose hit "I Still Believe" she would later cover; Starr passed her demo along to Tommy Mottola, then head of Columbia Records, who signed her to the label and became her first husband three years later.
What happened next was simply unprecented. Carey's first five singles hit the top of the charts, and awards, including Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 1991 Grammys, came by the truckload. She was now among the top female musical artists in the world, on par with Whitney Houston or Janet Jackson, with a range that only Houston and, later, Celine Dion, could touch.
Through the rest of the decade, Carey could do no wrong. She popularized the "whistle octave" on "Emotions," redefined the pop ballad with "Hero" and became one of the first pop singers to share billing with a hip-hop artist when Ol' Dirty Bastard guest starred on a remix of her ninth No. 1 hit, "Fantasy." (She even penned a holiday standard, "All I Want For Christmas Is You," one of the few songs to score perennial airplay alongside Rudolph and Frosty.)
Most singers would kill for the kind of sales Carey had during the so-called "slump" that followed, when her box-office foray
Glitter and accomplanying soundtrack tanked and her follow-up
Charmbracelet under-performed. Even with less-than-stellar numbers, both albums hit the top 10 and sold more than 7 million copies combined.
When she returned with
The Emancipation of Mimi in 2005, the world greeted with a new-look Carey, a sexier, more R&B-flavored version of the pop diva they had come to know and love. Any question as to how she might be accepted was squashed when the album went platinum six times and sent two songs to the top of the charts.
On Sept. 29, Carey releases her 12th studio album,
Memoirs of An Imperfect Angel. While it's unlikely that, in this era of iTunes and slumping CD sales, she will place five No. 1s on the charts or sell 25 million copies worldwide, Carey is one of the few artists working today who can stake claim to such feats. No doubt her latest release will put the Fergies, Kelly Clarksons and Lady Gagas of the world on notice. She won't let them stay on top for long.
