📍Huntington, Long Island, NY 11743, USA
1970 – 1987“Mariah Carey was born in Huntington, on the North Shore of Long Island, New York, in March 1969, the youngest of three children. Her mother, Patricia, an Irish-American former opera singer and vocal coach, and her father, Alfred, an aeronautical engineer of Afro-Venezuelan and African American descent, faced hostility as an interracial couple; neighbours poisoned their dog and set fire to their car. Her parents divorced when she was three, and she stayed with her mother, who worked several jobs to support them. Money was always tight, and by her own count they moved thirteen times during her childhood, mostly around the Huntington area, from an apartment above a deli in Northport to a beach cottage she called The Shack. She often felt like an outsider, unsure where she belonged. But music was constant: at three she began imitating her mother practising Verdi's Rigoletto, and Patricia began teaching her to sing. She loved gospel and R&B singers like Aretha Franklin and Minnie Riperton, and she began writing poems and songs as a child. At Harborfields High School in Greenlawn she was so often absent, working as a demo singer in local studios, that friends nicknamed her Mirage. After graduating in 1987 she moved to Manhattan, working as a waitress and backing singer. In 1988 a demo tape reached the music executive Tommy Mottola, and her debut album, released in 1990, made her a star. She wrote about her Long Island childhood in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey.”
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