Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969 or 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and record producer. Referred to as the "Songbird Supreme" by Guinness World Records, she is noted for her five-octave vocal range, melismatic singing style, and signature use of the whistle register.
She rose to fame in 1990 after signing to Columbia Records and releasing her eponymous debut album, which topped the U.S. Billboard 200 for eleven consecutive weeks. Soon after, Carey became the only artist ever to have their first five singles reach number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, from "Vision of Love" to "Emotions".
Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. At age 14, Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house and, at 15, she signed her first record deal.
Her 2006 eponymous debut album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s in the US. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008.
Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", it became the US' best-selling album of 2009 and was certified diamond in the US. The album won four Grammy Awards, and Swift became the youngest Album of the Year winner.
Read Mariah Carey’s Delightfully Bonkers But Deadly Serious Songwriters Hall of Fame Acceptance Speech
variety.comJem Aswad Senior Music EditorGrammy Awards are one thing, but being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame is another matter — the inductees are decided by a relatively small group of songwriting and music-publishing peers and celebrated at an invite-only event, and it’s a tough crowd.It’s a sadly common assumption that female pop stars don’t write their own songs — even Taylor Swift, one of the greatest and most distinctive songwriters of the past 25 years, is often greeted with skepticism.
So for Mariah Carey — who was mocked in a widely shared meme when she made a statement beginning with the words “As a songwriter” — to be inducted is a big deal.
She was actually announced in 2020, but because of the pandemic, the ceremony was not held until Thursday night. At the ceremony, Carey was introduced at the stroke of midnight by Roots drummer and “Summer of Soul” director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson — an Oscar- and Grammy-winning trained musician and author who knows of what he speaks.
He began by jokingly recalling that when he first had the opportunity to meet her in the 1990s, he was “so intimidated by how she smelled — Smokey Pineapple or whatever she was wearing,” that he ducked out before meeting her.
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