Mariah Carey
Pop | 2008The best-selling female performer of the 1990s, Mariah Carey, born in Huntington, has sold more than 80 million albums worldwide. Carey, whose voice spans more than five octaves, graduated from Greenlawn’s Harborfields High School (where she was frequently absent because of her popularity as a demo singer for local recording studios, and her classmates gave her the nickname “Mirage”). She moved to Manhattan to pursue a music career, writing songs while she worked as a waitress and a coat-check girl and studied cosmetology. She rose to superstardom on the strength of her stunning five-octave voice. Her debut album Mariah Carey (1990) produced four songs that went to number one, including “Vision of Love” and “Love Takes Time.” Her second album Emotions also produced a number one hit with its title track, making Carey the first person in the music business to have their first five singles hit number one. Music Box (1993) also produced three number one hits, including “Hero,” a song dedicated to the victims of the Long Island Railroad shootings. She has five Grammy Awards under her belt and was named the best-selling female pop artist of the millennium at the 2000 World Music Awards and has recorded the most number-one singles (17) for a female solo artist in the United States, where she is the third best-selling female recording artist of all-time, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.