Visions of Success: Mariah Carey's Career

There are some musicians who begin working and take a while to build up a successful catalogue. And then you have some who burst upon the music scene and the rest of us can feel the air sucked out of the room as they stun us all with hit after hit after hit.

That was Mariah Carey in 1990 and 1991. Her first four single releases were No. 1 hits. She’d go on to become one of the biggest names in the entertainment business.

The Making of a Mega-Superstar

Born in 1969 on New York’s Long Island, Mariah Carey excelled in the arts in high school. She occasionally missed classes with a side job as a singer for demo records. She met other musicians and budding record producers and, even as a high schooler, began writing songs and producing music of her own with Ben Margulies.

Upon graduation, she moved to Manhattan, attending beauty school and working two jobs to pay the rent. One of those jobs was as a backup singer for Brenda K. Starr.

In December 1988, Starr invited Carey to a party held by a music executive. Carey took along a demo tape of the music she had made with Margulies. She tried to hand it to the president of Atlantic Records but Tommy Mottola of Columbia Records snatched it away.

Mottola listened to the tape in his car, grew very excited about Carey’s extraordinary vocal range and had his driver take him back to the party. However, a discouraged Carey had already departed.

Mottola had been looking for a vocalist to rival Arista Records’ Whitney Houston. He tracked down Carey and offered her a recording contract. He then hired some of the hottest musicians and producers in the business to expand Carey’s four-song demo tape into a full-fledged album.

The self-titled album would spend 11 consecutive weeks at No. 1 and would eventually sell 15 million copies worldwide. It would pull in five Grammy Awards nominations, winning two.

Three years later, Mottola and Carey would marry.

Mariah Carey's Singles Chart History

Five of Her First Six Single Releases Hit No.1

Vision of Love

The album’s lead single — written by Carey and Margulies — was originally a ’50s sort of shuffle but the song’s producer changed that to a contemporary slow-dance tempo. Vocals from Carey’s demo were used as a second vocal in the last section of the recording. The single took two months to rise to No. 1 but then won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

Love Takes Time

Carey and Margulies wanted to save their song for her second album, but Columbia Records executives loved it so much they “stopped the presses” to go back and include it on her debut album. A few copies got out without this song. The song’s producer, Walter Afanasieff, would work with Carey again on “Hero,” “One Sweet Day” and “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

Someday

“That started out as a bass line, sort of a drum-machine, almost hip-hop type groove,” Margulies said. “Now people call it new jack swing, but that stuff was going on before all these terms came about.” Carey, on the other hand, disliked this album track, saying she felt it was overproduced. She disliked the decision to replace the horns used on her demo version with electric guitars.

I Don’t Wanna Cry

Carey wrote this with Narada Michael Walden, who had worked with Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin. She wanted to co-produce the song herself, but the label wouldn’t allow it. “You gotta remember,” Walden said, “Mariah was 19, 20 years old, making her first album. She really wanted it to be special.” This track was the fourth single from her debut album and her fourth No. 1 single.

Emotions

The fifth single from Carey’s debut album didn’t chart at all, but the first single from her second album was yet another No. 1 hit. It so closely resembled “Best of My Love” by the Emotions that Maurice White sued Carey. Carey wrote the lyrics but the music was by Davis Cole and Robert Clivillés of C+C Music Factory, which had a huge hit in 1991 with “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now).”