From her earliest days of domestic turmoil to her recent emotional collapse, songbird Mariah Carey has leaned on her mother for support.
Mariah’s mother, Patricia Carey, got Mariah to take singing lessons when she was 4 years old. By then her parents were divorced, and she was feeling the stress of having parents from different races.
Mariah was the youngest child of a white, Irish aspiring opera singer and a black, Venezuelan aeronautical engineer. The breakup left Patricia and her children struggling, bouncing around from place to place on Long Island and in New York City, sometimes staying with friends.
The experience, Mariah would later say, left her insecure and unsettled.
She moved to Manhattan and, after 10 months of waiting tables, writing songs and singing backup, Mariah got her big break.
Record-company executive Tommy Mottola heard her demo tape, and her subsequent self-titled debut album shot to the top of the R&B, pop and adult-contemporary charts, producing four No. 1 hits.
A string of chart-toppers followed, making Mariah one of the best-selling artists of all time.
Several songwriters said she plagiarized their melodies or lyrics, and the cases that weren’t dismissed were settled out of court for undisclosed sums.
In June 1993, the 24-year-old entertainer married Mottola, 43, but the two split up in 1997.
While her songs still topped the charts, her life was getting bad reviews because of her hard-partying habits and her high-profile fling with Yankee superstar Derek Jeter.
And then came a devastating breakup with her boyfriend, Latin crooner Luis Miguel.
Friends and associates say her behavior had become erratic in recent weeks, a frame of mind that exploded into a glass-shattering breakdown in a TriBeCa hotel.
“Someone said I never paid any dues,” she told a reporter recently.
“I feel my whole life was struggling, because we were poor. We were alone, we had nothing, no security.
“I feel I have paid my dues. I’ve been paying my dues all my life.”