A world-famous artist Mariah Carey was born 50 years ago in Huntington, Long Island, Empire State - New York.

She is the youngest child in the family with Irish and Venezuela roots. Unfortunately, her parents decided to divorce when she was just 3 years old. After her parents break up, the girl does not receive enough attention from her father, while her mother worked in several places to support a family with 3 children. Little Mariah spent most of her time at home being alone and this lead to her interest in music. At the age of 3, she started to sing after she repeated the “Rigoletto” opera extract in Italian. Later on Patricia Carey, her mom taught Mariah to sing properly. A future star finished secondary school in Greenline city, New York state. She often missed classes because of work on the demo recording in the local recording studio. That is why her classmates gave her a related nickname - Mirage. Her hard enthusiastic work gave her an opportunity to collaborate with such musicians as Gavin Christopher and Ben Margulies. With the latter, a young lady even wrote and recorded the material for her demo album.

After moving to New York city Mariah worked part-time, aiming to earn only to pay for the rent and end up the courses in a beauty school. As a result, she became a back-vocalist in Brenda K.Starr’s team.

In 1988 during one of the numerous parties, Mariah attended she met Tommy Mottola, who was a head of a recording studio Columbia Records and few days before had received a demo version of Carey’s recording from Brenda K. Starr. Tommy was really impressed by the recording and decided to sign a contract with her. Popular singles “Vision of Love”, “Love Takes Time”, “Someday” and “I Don’t Wanna Cry” from her first studio album were at the top of American charts and made her a star with a world name.

Her next album "Music Box" will bring the singer even more wild success, and will be one of the best in her career. It included such songs as “Without You”, “Anytime You Need a Friend” and “Hero”. An interesting fact is that this album is still the most sold among all of her albums. Singles “Dreamlover” and “Hero” picked the charts for several weeks.

The winter of 1994 was marked by the release of Mariah’s studio album about Christmas - “Merry Christmas”. One year later she announces one more album under the title “Daydream”. It meant some changes in her music works: Mariah started to sound in a different way, more conscious, and tried herself in various music genres, including hip hop. 2 years later the artist was nominated in 6 categories for the Grammy but failed to win.

The next album, called “Butterfly” was met with a lot of positive acclaim from the critics. For the sake of successful recording of the album, she turned for support to the modern hip hop stars Puff Daddy and Missy Elliot. “Butterfly”, despite its high positions in American charts it had a bit less success than her previous works. Another studio work “Rainbow” was also among those, singles from which peaked American charts again.

At the end of the last century, Mariah Carey received a serious award - Artist of the decade” during the Billboard ceremony.

Several months later she has got a special award as a Most selling singer of the millenium by World Music Awards. Mariah decided to leave Columbia Records label because of a conflict of interest. The artist got plenty of collaboration offers from various recording companies but chose Virgin Records label to sign a contract with. As far as the star was working hard during last years, performing on the stage during world tours and recording studio albums she suffered from physical and emotional exhaustion. She often took notes about her state of health and mind on her official website. All this led to a nervous breakdown. She was made to cancel her concerts and appearances. However, Mariah managed to release a “Loverboy” single and the soundtrack “Glitter” from her new album, which unfortunately did not get positive feedback from the critics.

During the next year of work along with Virgin Records, the popularity of Mariah went into decline because of a failure of her debut film and soundtrack to it. One year later their contract was dissolved with a controversy.

The next year Mariah signed a contract with Island Records label. Her 10th studio album “The Emancipation of Mimi” was recorded with the participation of such producers as Kanye West, The Neptunes and Jermaine Dupri. The album, finally, received an award in the nomination Best album in the genre of rhythm and blues and the single “We Belong Together” peaked Hot 100 chart for 14 weeks. In the middle of 2006, the singer started her concert tour “The Adventures of Mimi Tour”, which is considered to be the most successful tour among others.

2007 was marked by Mariah’s appearance on the cover of Playboy journal. The same year album under the title “E=MC²” saw the world and immediately took first place on Billboard 200. In 2008 Mariah Carey appeared on the 6th position in the list of Hot 100 artists of all times. She was also introduced to the hall of fame by the Long Island Music Hall of fame. The 12th album of a star “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel” was released in 2009 and was met positively by the audience and critics.

In 2010 Mariah Carey approved the rumors about her pregnancy and fully devoted herself to her kids. In 2015 Carey signed a new contract with Epic Records label, which is ruled by Sony Music Entertainment company.