Mariah Carey

Carey rose to fame in 1990 with her eponymous debut album and became the only artist to have their first five singles reach number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, from "Vision of Love" to "Emotions". She achieved international success with the best-selling albums Music Box (1993) and Daydream (1995), before adopting a new image with hip hop-inflected sounds, following a remix to "Fantasy" with Ol' Dirty Bastard, and more extensively on Butterfly (1997). With eleven consecutive years of US number-one singles, Carey was named by Billboard as the Artist of the Decade. Following the failure of her film Glitter (2001) and a relative career decline, she made a comeback with The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century. She has released six more albums to critical success.

Carey's life and career have received widespread media coverage. She has been dubbed the "Queen of Christmas" due to the enduring popularity of her holiday music, particularly Merry Christmas (1994), one of the best-selling holiday albums. Its lead single, "All I Want for Christmas Is You", is the longest-running number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100 and the best selling holiday single by a woman. Outside of music, she co-founded Camp Mariah with the Fresh Air Fund in 1994; starred in films such as Precious (2009), The Butler (2013), and The Lego Batman Movie (2017); and served as a judge on American Idol (2013). Her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Carey is one of the best-selling music artists, with over 220 million records sold worldwide. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Her accolades include 5 Grammy Awards, a Grammy Global Impact Award, 10 American Music Awards, 19 World Music Awards, 14 Billboard Music Awards, and MTV's Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008. She holds the record for the most Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles by a solo artist (19), a female songwriter (18), and a female producer (15), spending a record 100 weeks atop the chart. "One Sweet Day" and "We Belong Together" were ranked by Billboard as the most successful songs of the 1990s and 2000s, respectively. Carey is one of the highest-certified artists in the US, with four Diamond certifications.