top 100 artists of the 90s!!!

[goodie]

just 2 recap the countdown so far....


#100. Meatloaf

#99. Take That

#98. Eternal

#97. Faith No More

#96. Hootie & The Blowfish

#95. Bruce Springsteen

#94. Amber

#93. 2 Unlimited

#92. Bell Biv DeVoe

#91. Boyzone


#90. 98 Degrees

#89. Deborah Cox

#88. Five

#87. S.W.V.

#86. The Prodigy

#85. Des'ree

#84. Silverchair

#83. Peter Andre

#82. Amy Grant

#81. Taylor Dayne


#80. BLACKstreet

#79. M.C. Sar & The Real McCoy

#78. UB40

#77. Snap!

#76. Belinda Carlisle

#75. The Cranberries

#74. M.C. Hammer

#73. Vanessa Williams

#72. Tina Arena

#71. Aaliyah


#70. Paula Abdul

#69. P.M. Dawn

#68. Tori Amos

#67. Warren G

#66. C + C Music Factory

#65. Live

#64. Aqua

#63. Luther Vandross

#62. Chris Isaak

#61. Kylie Minogue


#60. Jewel

#59. Technotronic

#58. Seal

#57. Shaggy

#56. Snoop Doggy Dogg

#55. Smashing Pumpkins

#54. Gloria Estefan

#53. Ricky Martin

#52. Rod Stewart

#51. Nirvana


#50. Roxette

#49. LeAnn Rimes

#48. 2 Pac

#47. Babyface

#46. R.E.M.

#45. Salt-N-Pepa

#44. Backstreet Boys

#43. Savage Garden

#42. Color Me Badd

#41. Eric Clapton


#40. Oasis

#39. Notorious B.I.G.

#38. Green Day

#37. Cher

#36. Coolio

#35. Guns N' Roses

#34. No Doubt

#33. Metallica

#32. Monica

#31. Lenny Kravitz


#30. Phil Collins

#29. Brandy

#28. The Offspring

#27. Prince

#26. Aerosmith

#25. Ace Of Base

#24. Shania Twain

#23. Michael Bolton

#22. En Vogue

#21. Will Smith


#20. Pearl Jam

#19. Spice Girls

#18. George Michael

#17. R. Kelly

#16. Sheryl Crow

#15. Alanis Morissette

#14. Elton John

#13. U2

#12. Toni Braxton

#11. Bon Jovi


#10. Red Hot Chili Peppers

#9. Janet Jackson

#8. Celine Dion

#7. Michael Jackson

#6. TLC

#5. Madonna

#4. Boyz II Men

#3. Whitney Houston

#2. Bryan Adams

[goodie]

#1. Mariah Carey

Biggest Hit of the 90s: Hero

Biggest Album of the 90s: Music Box

Other Singles from the 90s: Vision Of Love, Love Takes Time, Someday, I Don't Wanna Cry, There's Got To Be A Way, Emotions, Can't Let Go, Make It Happen, I'll Be There, Dreamlover, Without You, Never Forget You, Endless Love (with Luther Vandross), Anytime You Need A Friend, All I Want For Christmas Is You, Joy To The World, Fantasy, One Sweet Day (with Boyz II Men), Open Arms, Always Be My Baby, Forever, Honey, Butterfly, My All, Breakdown, Sweetheart, When You Believe (with Whitney Houston), I Still Believe, Heartbreaker (featuring Jay Z.), Thank God I Found You (with 98 Degrees & Joe) & Against All Odds (with Westlife).

Biography of the 90s: Mariah Carey is a Grammy-winning American hip hop and R&B singer, songwriter, record producer, music video director, and actress. Her debut was in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, and she became the first recording artist to have her first five singles top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Following her marriage to Mottola in 1993, a series of hit records established her position as Columbia's highest-selling act. According to Billboard magazine, she is the most successful artist of the 1990s in the United States.

Carey took much more control over her image and music following her separation from Mottola in 1997, and she introduced elements of hip hop into her album material. Her popularity was in decline when she left Columbia in 2001, and she was dropped by Virgin Records the following year after a highly publicized physical and emotional breakdown, and the poor reception of Glitter; her film and soundtrack project. In 2002, Carey signed with Island Records, and after an unsuccessful period, she returned to the forefront of pop music in 2005.

Carey was named the best selling female pop artist of the millennium at the 2000 World Music Awards. She has recorded the most number-one singles for a female solo artist (seventeen) in the United States, where she is the third best-selling female recording artist of all-time, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In addition to her commercial accomplishments, she has earned five Grammy Awards, and is well-known for her vocal range, power, melismatic style, and use of the whistle register. However, some critics have said Carey's efforts to showcase her vocal talents have been at the expense of communicating true emotion through song.

Carey co-wrote the tracks on her 1990 debut album, Mariah Carey, and she has continued to co-write nearly all her material throughout her career. She expressed dissatisfaction with the contributions of producers such as Ric Wake and Rhett Lawrence, whom executives at Columbia had enlisted to help make the album commercially viable. With substantial promotion it ascended to number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, where it remained for several weeks. It produced four number-one singles and made Carey a star in the United States, but it was less successful elsewhere. Critics rated the album highly, and Carey won Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (for her debut single, "Vision of Love").

Carey conceived Emotions, her second album, as a homage to Motown soul music (see Motown Sound), and she worked with Walter Afanasieff and Clivillés & Cole (from the dance group C&C Music Factory) on the record. It was released soon after her debut album — in late 1991 — but was neither critically nor commercially as successful; Rolling Stone described it as "more of the same, with less interesting material ... pop-psych love songs played with airless, intimidating expertise". The title track "Emotions" made Carey the only recording act to have their first five singles reach number-one on the U.S. Hot 100 chart, though the album's follow-up singles failed to match this feat. Carey had been lobbying to produce her own songs, and beginning with Emotions, she would co-produce most of her material. "I didn't want [Emotions] to be somebody else's vision of me," she said. "There's more of me on this album". She began writing and producing for other artists, such as Penny Ford and Daryl Hall, within the coming year.

Although she occasionally performed live, stage fright prevented Carey from embarking on any major tours. Her first widely seen concert appearance was on the television show MTV Unplugged in 1992, and she said she felt that her performance proved her vocal abilities were not, as some had previously speculated, simulated using studio techniques. In addition to acoustic versions of some of her earlier songs, Carey premiered a cover of The Jackson 5's "I'll Be There" with back-up singer Trey Lorenz. Released as a single, the duet reached number one in the U.S. and led to a record deal for Lorenz, whose debut album Carey co-produced. Because of strong ratings for the Unplugged television special, the concert's set list was released on the EP MTV Unplugged, which Entertainment Weekly called "the strongest, most genuinely musical record she has ever made ... Did this live performance help her take her first steps toward growing up?".

Carey and Tommy Mottola had become romantically involved during the making of her debut album, and in June 1993 they were married.

Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds consulted on the album Music Box, which was released later that year and became Carey's most successful worldwide. It yielded her first UK Singles Chart number-one, a cover of Badfinger's "Without You", as well as the U.S. number-ones "Dreamlover" and "Hero". Billboard magazine proclaimed it as "heart-piercing ... easily the most elemental of Carey's releases, her vocal eurythmics in natural sync with the songs", but TIME magazine lamented Carey's attempt at a mellower work: "[Music Box] seems perfunctory and almost passionless ... Carey could be a pop-soul great; instead she has once again settled for Salieri-like mediocrity". In response to such comments, Carey said, "As soon as you have a big success, a lot of people don't like that. There's nothing I can do about it. All I can do is make music I believe in." Most critics slighted the opening of her subsequent U.S. Music Box Tour.

After a hit duet with Luther Vandross on a cover of Lionel Richie and Diana Ross' "Endless Love" in late 1994, Carey released the holiday album Merry Christmas. It contained cover material and original compositions such as "All I Want for Christmas Is You", which became Carey's biggest single in Japan and, in subsequent years, emerged as one of her most perennially popular songs on U.S. radio. Critical reception of Merry Christmas was mixed, with All Music Guide calling it an "otherwise vanilla set ... pretensions to high opera on 'O Holy Night' and a horrid danceclub [sic] take on 'Joy to the World'". It became the most successful Christmas album of all time.

In 1995, Columbia released Carey's fifth album, Daydream, which combined the pop sensibilities of Music Box with downbeat R&B and hip hop influences. A remix of "Fantasy", its first single, featured rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard. Carey said that Columbia reacted negatively to her intentions for the album: "Everybody was like 'What, are you crazy?'. They're very nervous about breaking the formula." It became her biggest-selling album in the U.S. and its singles achieved similar success: "Fantasy" became the second single to debut at number-one in the U.S. and topped the Canadian Singles Chart for twelve weeks, "One Sweet Day" (a duet with Boyz II Men) spent a still-record-holding sixteen weeks at number one in the U.S., and "Always Be My Baby" (co-produced by Jermaine Dupri) was the biggest song on U.S. radio in 1996 (according to Billboard magazine). Daydream generated career-best reviews for Carey and publications such as The New York Times named it one of 1995's best albums; the Times wrote that its "best cuts bring pop candy-making to a new peak of textural refinement ... Carey's songwriting has taken a leap forward, becoming more relaxed, sexier and less reliant on thudding clichés". The short but profitable Daydream World Tour augmented sales of the album, which received six Grammy Award nominations.

Carey and Mottola separated in 1996. Although the public image of the marriage was a happy one, she said that in reality she had felt trapped by her relationship with Mottola, whom she often described as controlling. They officially announced their separation in 1997, and their divorce became final the following year. Soon after the separation, Carey hired an independent publicist and a new attorney and manager. She became a major songwriter and producer for other artists during this period, contributing to the debut albums of Allure and 7 Mile through her short-lived imprint Crave Records.

Carey's next album, Butterfly (1997), yielded the number-one single "Honey", the lyrics and music video for which presented a more overtly sexual image of her than had been previously seen. She stated that Butterfly marked the point that she attained full creative control over her music, which continued to move in a hip hop direction with material co-written and co-produced by rappers such as Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and Missy Elliott. However, she added: "I don't think it's that much of a departure from what I've done in the past ... It's not like I went psycho and thought I was going to be a rapper. Personally, this album is about doing whatever the hell I wanted to do." Reviews were generally positive: LAUNCHcast said Butterfly "pushes the envelope", a move its critic thought "may prove disconcerting to more conservative fans" but praised as "a welcome change". The Los Angeles Times wrote, "[Butterfly] is easily the most personal, confessional-sounding record she's ever done ... Carey-bashing just might become a thing of the past." The album was a commercial success, and "My All" (her thirteenth Hot 100 number-one) gave her the record for the most U.S. number-ones by a female artist.

Towards the turn of the millennium, Carey was developing the film project Glitter, and she wrote songs for the films Men in Black (1997) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000). During the production of Butterfly, Carey became romantically involved with New York Yankees baseball star Derek Jeter. Their relationship ended in 1998, with both parties citing media interference as the main reason for the split. That year, #1's, a collection of her U.S. number-one singles up to that point, was released. Carey said she recorded new material for the album as a way of rewarding her fans, and included "When You Believe", an Academy Award-winning duet with Whitney Houston; the song was from the soundtrack of The Prince of Egypt (1998). #1's sold above expectations, but a review in NME labeled Carey "a purveyor of saccharine bilge like 'Hero', whose message seems wholesome enough: that if you vacate your mind of all intelligent thought, flutter your eyelashes and wish hard, sweet babies and honey will follow". Also that year she appeared on the first televised VH1 Divas benefit concert program, though her alleged prima donna behavior had already led many to consider her a diva. By the following year, she had entered a relationship with singer Luis Miguel.

Rainbow, Carey's seventh studio album, was released in 1999. It comprised more R&B/hip hop-oriented songs, many of them co-created with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. "Heartbreaker" and "Thank God I Found You" (the former featuring Jay-Z, the latter featuring Joe and boy-band 98 Degrees) reached number one in the U.S., and the success of the former made Carey the only act to have a number-one single in each year of the 1990s. A cover of Phil Collins's "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" went to number one in the UK after Carey re-recorded it with boy band Westlife. Media reception of Rainbow was generally enthusiastic, with the Sunday Herald saying the album "sees her impressively tottering between soul ballads and collaborations with R&B heavyweights like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Usher ... It's a polished collection of pop-soul". VIBE magazine expressed similar sentiments, writing, "She pulls out all stops...Rainbow will garner even more adoration", but despite this it became Carey's lowest selling album up to that point, and there was a recurring criticism that the tracks were too alike. When the double A-side "Crybaby"/"Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)" became her first single to peak outside the U.S. top twenty, Carey accused Sony of under promoting it: "The political situation in my professional career is not positive ... I'm getting a lot of negative feedback from certain corporate people", she wrote on her official website.

[goodie]

no surprises that she would be #1!!!

i liked most of her 90s songs!!!

however i do think u yanks over-rated her!!!

i don't think all her #1 songs were worthy of the top position!!!

[FreakyFlyBry]

After I saw the rest of the list, I knew Mariah had to be #1

She had a lot of great songs in the 90's... how can I even begin? Deserving of the top spot ;D