Mariah Carey

Mariah smiling (newspaper.li))

I choose Mariah Carey as my hero because she has been through many challenges and disappointments and is still is able to live her dream and that takes a lot of courage and to have the ability to take risks in life to get to where you want to be. Mariah Carey was born on March 27, 1970 in Huntington, New York. Mariah's father Alfred Roy is an African American and Venezuelan descent, while her mother Patricia is an Irish American. After Patricia's family found out that she had married a man of color, they disowned which led to Mariah feeling neglected. While growing up Mariah and her family had struggles in their community because of there ethnicity. After a while Mariah's parents marriage failed and were divorced, at the time of Mariah's age, which was three. As the years passed so did Mariah's relationship with her dad and will later stop talking to him. While Mariah was in elementary school she did well in subjects that she liked such as literature, art and music others not so much. Mariah quoted that she would sneak the radio under her covers at night, and just sing from her heart, and try and find peace within the music. While attending Harbor-fields High School in Green lawn, New York she began writing poems and adding melodies to them and began mastering and controlling her voice through the training and help of her mother. while in high school Mariah meet Gavin Christopher which she shared her dreams with. Soon enough Mariah and Gavin started writing songs and composing in his fathers stores basement during her senior year. After the graduation, Mariah ended up moving out of her moms house due to her mom getting married again. She began living in a one bedroom studio in Manhattan, which she shared with four other girls. Mariah's mind still remained with her music while working several jobs as a waitress for restaurants, even though she got fired after two weeks of work. She continued working late nights in hopes of finishing a demo tape to pass to a music label and after a finishing a demo tape, she considered on passing it to a music label but was met with failure each time.

Google (991.com)

After a while Mariah meet a pop singer named Brenda Starr, as there friendship grew so did the interest in helping Mariah with her music. while Mariah was with her friend Starr, she ended up handing her demo to the head of Columbia Records, Tommy Mottola. After only listening to the first two songs, he immediately signed her to his label and started putting her out into the mainstream music. After finishing her first album Mariah Carey. It started of with week sales but made its way to the top of the Billboard 200 and at the 33rd annual Grammy Awards which was Mariah's first exposure, she was able to stay on top of charts for eleven continuing weeks. She won Best New Artist and Best Female Pop vocal Performance for her single "vision of love," the album ended up adding three number ones on the Billboards hot 100 which followed the number one run "Vision of love." Mariah became the first artist to have four singles be number one other than the Jackson 5 and finished best-selling album and also sold over 15 million copies in the united states. After finishing her second album Emotions Mariah's and Margulies relationship as work wise failed and agreed to split. Emotions had failed commercially and the critics questioned "whether Carey would embark on a world tour in promotion for her material even though Carey explained it was do to her stage fright and the general strenuous nature of her songs." Sony decided to release an EP which is an album but was selling for a lower price because of the shorter length even though the EP was given a" triple Platinum certification by the(RIAA) which is Recording Industry Association of America, received gold and platinum certification in several European markets."

Even though the album Emotion didn't succeed as her first album, Mariah and Columbia decided to go more pop to reach wider audience.After releasing Music Box, Mariah received mixed reviews. While many liked the album, critics said that she didn't use much of the voice that she is known for. The second album singles like Hero, Without You and endless love helped Music Box spend periods of time at the number one chart of several countries and also became the best selling album of all time with 32 million copies and world wide sales. Soon enough Mariah agreed to a short state side concerts titled the Music Box, it was short but was successful. later that year Mariah would release a holiday album called Merry Christmas and will eventually became the best-selling Christmas album of all time reaching over 15 million sales world wide and also selling singles over 2.1 million units in both ringtones and digital downloads. Her third album Daydream became her best-selling album in the united states and also became her second album to be Diamond certified and was the bestseller by a non-Asian artist in Japan. Reached 2.2 million copies and became 25 million units, also ended up having a world tour. She won two awards at the American Music Awards. As for her love life Mariah and Tommy Mottola became involved with each other and would end up getting married on June 5,1993 but shortly was divorced in '97 because of their creative differences in her album as well as his wanting to be in control of her. After their divorce Mariah felt "it was a way of her achieving freedom and new lease on life"

Mariah and Nick with kids (People.com))

After her marriage was over Mariah made an album called Butterfly, which was about her failed marriage to Tommy Mottola. The album was a commercial success even though it wasn't the same as her other three albums. After begin asked to record a song called "When you Believe" for the soundtrack of the film called The Prince of Egypt with Whitney Houston, became another hit selling over one million copies in the opening and the album sold over 3.25 million copies in japan after only the first three months and still holds the record as the best-selling album by an international artist. As amassing global sales of over 17 million copies. She received the billboard's Artist of the Decade Award and also the worlds Music Award for best-selling Female Artist of the millennium. Mariah and Sony parted and Mariah was signed to Virgin records, giving her full control over her project and soon left virgin records to go to Island records. After leaving the United States and going to Capri, Italy for five month," in which she began writing material for her new album, stemming from all the personal experiences she had endured throughout the past year." To relaunch herself, Mariah announced a world tour which lasted over eight month "The Charmbracelet world tour: An intimate evening with Mariah Carey" which became one of her most extensive tour to date with 69 shows around the world. In 2004 and 5 Mariah worked on her tenth album The Emancipation of Mimi which topped the charts in several countries. Her second single "We belong together" broke records in the United States and became her sixteenth chart topper on the Billboard Hot 100. The album earned ten Grammy Award nominations in 2006-07. "2006 for the original release (the most received by Carey in a single year),[152] and two in 2007 for the Ultra Platinum Edition." won Best contemporary R&B Album. The album has sold over 12 million copies worldwide and a world tour. Her sequel album E=MC2 debuted number one on the Billboard 200 with 463,000 copies sold, the biggest opening sales of her career. "Mariah her 79th week atop the Hot 100, tying her with Presley as the artist with the most weeks at number one in the Billboard chart history. Mariah Carey is the second most successful female artist in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. While making the video for her single "Bye Bye", Mariah meet Nick Cannon and was soon married to him on her private estate on Winder-mere Island in the Bahamas on April 30, 2008. After her marriage to Nick Cannon, Mariah had planned on a tour with the support of her album E=MC2 but was suddenly canceled. Due to her sudden cancel of her tour report had it that Mariah was pregnant even though she didn't admit to the reports, until two years later explaining that she was pregnant prior to that time but had lost the child only two months after her pregnancy. In 2009, Mariah appeared on a movie called Precious as a social worker. The film gained positive critics for her role and won the Breakthrough Actress Performance Award. After making the film, Mariah released her twelfth album Memoirs of An Imperfect Angle. Her single Obsessed became" her 40th entry on the Billboard hot 100 and her highest debut on the chart since "My All." Though the album came number three on the Billboard200, which is her lowest selling album. Later in the year of 2010, Mariah announced that she was making another album, a holiday album which is a follow up to her first holiday album Merry Christmas. The album was titled Merry Christmas II you, which was released on November 2, 2010. The album went number four on the Billboard200, sold 56,000 copies, number one on the R&B/Hip-Hop album and became her 16th top ten album in the United States. Though her first pregnancy was a disappointment, Mariah announced that her and Nick Cannon were expecting twins. On April 30, 2011 Mariah gave birth to fraternal twins named Monroe and Moroccan Scott. While pregnant, she had been working on a her fourteenth studio album which is set to be released in March 2013. It is also official now that Mariah is one of the American Idol judges for season twelve and will also be starting in an upcoming movie called "The Butler" by Lee Daniels.

(sienetta.deviantart.com)

Through much success and disappointments, Mariah has stayed true to herself and her music and i think that, that is a true artist because a lot of artists change to fit in and do things that's not them and end up being one hit wonders. With every album she has made, she has had hit after hit and that's really hard to do for many artist's. Though the media and her labels gave her a hard time because she wouldn't do things they wanted her to do and because they had a vision of what they wanted Mariah to be, which was not hers. After having the courage to leave labels and risking everything when she changed her way of music, she still stayed on top and now she is one of the best female artist of all times. Her music is timeless even though she does collaborations with hip-hop artists and Rap artist. She had risked it all and found it all, she had went through pretty hard time as a kid and as an adult. She had a hard childhood because of her nationality and hard adult life because of her first marriage in which he was control eve, lost her sister to AIDS, her father to cancer and also a miscarriage. She is my hero because she has gone through many difficult times and has been able to come back even better than before and that's a strong person because most artists fail to have a come backs like Mariah did. Like she said "This is for all of you out there tonight, reaching for a dream - don't ever give up! Never ever listen to anyone, when they try to discourage you, because they do that, believe me!." If you have a dream that you want really bad then go after it because she is the living proff of what can happen if you don't give up on yourself and your dreams. She is an inspiration to me and some day i plan on being like her.