Do we like Mariah Carey?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Visible, on-the-record support for LGBTQ+ fans and no harmful words found, held back by unresolved staff disputes and thin reporting on her wider politics.
Mariah grew up on Long Island with very little money. Her parents split when she was three, and she was raised by her mother, a trained opera singer, with the family moving around a lot. She was writing songs by junior high and working as a demo singer, then a backup singer, until a demo tape reached a Columbia Records boss in 1988. Her self-titled debut hit number one in 1990.
Her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, is where the family drama lives. Her brother sued her for $20 million, claiming it defamed him by portraying him as violent and accusing him of cocaine trafficking. This month a New York judge dismissed the case, finding he hadn't shown she acted with “actual malice”. His lawyer says they disagree and will appeal.
She's also been to court as the defendant in the Christmas-song case. Songwriters sued over All I Want for Christmas Is You, and a Los Angeles federal judge ruled for her in March 2025. The judge found the songs weren't similar enough to support an infringement claim and ordered the plaintiffs to cover part of her legal fees.
On the harm check, the record we found is good. At Brighton Pride in August 2025 she wore a dress in the trans Pride flag colours and a jacket reading “Protect The Dolls”. She told the crowd she would “always be there for you”. We found nothing from her on women, migrants, climate or vaccines in the reporting we read, so that side of the picture is honestly thin. That's a gap, not a red flag.
The Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Milan was the big moment this year. She sang Volare in Italian, and the stadium cheered. Some online critics questioned the lip-syncing and a teleprompter with phonetic lyrics. Organisers dodged the lip-sync question, said the teleprompter was part of the show, and said she wasn't paid. Hardly a scandal, more a bit of a stoush.
The staff side is where the asterisk comes from. In 2019 she sued a former assistant, alleging the assistant secretly recorded intimate videos and threatened to release them unless she was paid. That case was settled in 2021 on private terms. The assistant separately sued her in Los Angeles over alleged harassment, and we couldn't confirm how that ended, so we're not calling it either way.