Nine albums, 14 No. 1 singles (the most ever after Elvis Presley and the Beatles); obsessed since childhood with the word “Guam.”
She can belt, she can croon, she can sob, and she can hit helium highs unheard in pop since the heyday of Minnie Riperton — sometimes all in the space of one astonishing melisma.
Pipes: she's got 'em. And unlike some of her fellow “divas,” Carey tends to use hers for good instead of evil, relishing rap and R&B, investing even the rotest of ballads with hints of actual personality. But whose? Is she the savvy, driven woman who has taken control of life and career after the bust-up of her marriage to Tommy Mottola, her former mentor at Columbia Records? Or the lolly-licking Varga Girl she portrays to such pointed effect on album covers and in videos?
Maybe it's just plain Mariah: the hardest-working homegirl in show business. We'll get her version when All That Glitters, a film that she's producing and in which she stars as a young singer on the upswing, is released next year.
