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Trivia
Birth name: Mariah Angela Carey
Date of birth: 27 March 1970
Place of birth: Huntington, New York, USA
Nickname: Songbird, MC, Mirage, Mimi
Height: 5' 9" (1.75 m)
Spouse: Tommy Mottola (5 June 1993 - 5 March 1998) (divorced)
Bought Marilyn Monroe's white lacquered baby
grand piano at auction in October, 1999 for $600,000 plus commission.
Her highest octave is two octaves higher
than normal soprano.
Got her name from the song "They Call
The Wind Maria". The popular Lerner & Loewe musical Paint Your
Wagon (1969), starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, which was enjoying
a great deal of success after its release in 1969, and the song
containing Mariah's name, although spelt without the 'H', was apparently
a favourite of mother Patricia.
Worked a variety of odd jobs to support
herself, including hat/coat-checker, hostess, hair sweeper in hair
salons, and waitress. She stated that she got fired from all her jobs
because of her attitude and was concentrating of becoming a backing
singer and mixing demos.
Dated Latin singer Luis Miguel.
Attended Oldfield Middle School and
Harborfield High School.
Father is half Venezuelan and half
African-American, mother is Irish-American.
In 1999 Mariah won the Horizon Award at the
Congressional Foundation Awards for her work with and for children.
The only female artist to have 16 #1 songs
in the US Hot 100 chart.
Made her singing debut, age 20. [1990]
Had the nickname "Mirage" in high
school, because she never showed up for class.
According to her spokesperson, Mariah
suffered a physical and emotional breakdown, and spent the next couple
weeks recovering in a Connecticut mental hospital. [25 July 2001]
Appeared on the benefit concert "A
Tribute To Heroes" and sang the song "Hero" in dedication
to the families, friends, victims, and heroes of the World Trade Center
tragedy. [September 2001]
Signed a $100,000,000 million deal with
Virgin Records for her next four albums. [2001]
Mariah Carey's songs have spent more weeks
at Number 1 in the Billboard charts than any other artist in history.
Sixty-one weeks total, the previous record was fifty-nine weeks held by
the Beatles. [2001]
Founder of Camp Mariah, a serene escape
located in Fishkill, New York for inner-city youth to embrace the arts,
introduce career opportunities, and build self-esteem.
Named one of People Magazine's '25 Most
Intriguing People of 2001'.
Virgin records buys out her $100 million
contract for $28 million. The primary reason being the failure of her
Glitter (2001) album and film. [26 January 2002]
Single 'One Sweet Day' holds the record for
the single staying most weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (a record
16 weeks)
She is in third place among all artists with
the most No. 1s in music history, moving closer to Elvis Presley's
second-place total of 18 #1 hits, with The Beatles remaining in first
place with 20.
Owns a three floor apartment in New York
City
Signed a three-album deal with Island/Def
Jam records for a reported $21-24 million. She had already started work
on a new album, which had no release date at that point. Meanwhile,
WiseGirls (2002), her movie with Mira Sorvino, premiered on HBO in the
fall of 2002. [May 2002]
Voted in at #36 in FHM's Sexiest Girls of
2002 poll, American edition.
Her seventh studio album, titled 'Charmbracelet',
will be released on December 3, 2002, a week earlier than originally
planned.
Is the most successful female
singer-songwriter of all time, with 16 #1 hits and more than 150 million
records sold worldwide.
Measurements: 34B/C-22-35. (Source:
Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
Her paternal Venezuelan grandfather's name
was Francisco Nuñez. He changed his last name Nuñez to Carey after
moving to New York City; he hoped an American name would help him make a
good life in the US. He took the name Carey from his biological father.
Francisco's mother Margarita Nuñez was with a man named Carey, but they
were not married.
Used to be a backup singer for Brenda K.
Starr (Brenda Starr).
The first single from the Glitter (2001)
soundtrack, "Loverboy," was the #1 best selling single for a
movie soundtrack in the year 2001.
Has worked with an extensive amount of
musicians, including: Brian McKnight, Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men,
Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, 'Cam-ron' , Carole King, Céline Dion, Michael
Jackson, 98 Degrees, Joe, Da Brat, Missy 'Misdemeanor' Elliott, Aretha
Franklin, Shania Twain and many, many more.
She has twice recorded Phil Collins' song
"Against All Odds", initially on her album "Rainbow"
and then a collaboration with Westlife hit number one in the UK in 2000.
Her mother Patricia Hickey is a former
mezzo-soprano New York City opera singer and a freelance vocal coach.
Patricia was also Mariah's vocal coach. Her father Alfred Roy Carey was
an aeronautical engineer.
The Guinness Book of World Records awarded
her the record for highest note hit by a human in their March 2003
edition for hitting the G7# note during a live performance of "The
Star-Spangled Banner". This note was previously considered beyond
human range. Incidentally, she also holds the record for largest vocal
range; she can hit a note as low as A2.
Her siblings are Alison and Morgan, and are
significantly older by ten years.
Mariah writes and co-writes as well as
produces and co-produces her own songs, including all of her number one
hits (with the exception of her cover of "I'll Be There").
Her wedding to Tommy Mottola was modeled
after the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Her excuse
for using the royal wedding as basis for her own was that she never
really had much interest in weddings as a girl, and she wanted to know
what such a gala affair should be like. Even the tiara she wore, a
family heirloom, was redesigned to look like Princess Diana's. Her
wedding dress was an ivory-silk duchess satin gown designed by Vera
Wang, with a 8.25 m (27') train and matching satin pumps. The whole
affair cost almost $US0.5M, not including the 1893 sixpence Mariah put
in one of her shoes for luck.
Her godmother is R&B/Soul diva Patti
LaBelle.
With "Heartbreaker," the first
single from her 1999 album Rainbow, she became the first artist to top
the charts in each year of the 1990s.
"We Belong Together" from her 2005
album The Emancipation of Mimi became her 16th #1 single, is also Hot
100's Greatest Airplay Gainer, and moved to #1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop
Songs chart to become her ninth #1 chart topper there. It is also her
first #1 without any guest artists since her song "My All"
captured the top spot in May 1998.
Some of her prestigious awards include 2
Grammies, many American Music Awards, Billboard's "Artist of the
Decade" Award and the World Music Award for "World's Best
Selling Female Artist of the Millennium" to name a few.
Her mother Patricia discovered Mariah's
talent in 1972 while rehearsing at home for her New York City Opera
debut as Maddalena in Verdi's Rigoletto. Patricia said, "From the
time Mariah was a tiny girl. she sang on true pitch; she was able to
hear sound and duplicate it exactly. I missed my cue, but Mariah didn't.
She sang it - in Italian - at exactly the right point. She wasn't even
yet 3." From then on, Patricia began coaching Mariah.
Some of her albums feature the serif
typeface friz quadrata.
Ranked #47 in Askmen's "Most Desirable
Woman" (2001)
Ranked #99 in FHM's "100 Sexiest
Women" (2001)
Ranked #17 in FHM's "100 Sexiest
Women" (2000)
Some of her musical influences include
Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Gladys Knight, Minnie
Riperton and Stevie Wonder.
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