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50 free Mariah Carey trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free Mariah Carey trivia questions with answers. Mariah Carey has more number-one singles than any solo artist in history, and this quiz covers how she got them. Forty-five questions run from the demo tape she handed Tommy Mottola in 1988 through Vision of Love, MTV Unplugged, Music Box, Daydream and Butterfly, the Glitter disaster, the Emancipation of Mimi comeback and the Christmas song that returns to number one every December. Easy questions ask about her nickname, her vocal range and her Christmas crown; hard ones want the Broadway musical she was named after, the Tom Tom Club sample in Fantasy, the size of her Virgin deal and the label she founded in 2002. Made for the Lambs, karaoke nights and anyone who has heard that whistle note. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Carey, her albums and her singles, and each question shows the sentence that backs it up. No lyrics are quoted, so it's safe to read aloud anywhere.
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Q 01In which year was Mariah Carey born?
1969
She was born in Huntington on Long Island, the youngest of three children of an opera-singer mother and an aeronautical-engineer father.
Q 02Mariah Carey's first name comes from a song in which Broadway musical?
Paint Your Wagon
'They Call the Wind Maria' comes from the 1951 show; her surname was adopted by her Venezuelan grandfather.
Q 03What vocal range is Mariah Carey famous for?
Five octaves
Her whistle-register high notes are her trademark, though she has described her natural voice as an alto.
Q 04Which nickname have the Recording Academy and Guinness World Records given Carey?
Songbird Supreme
Rolling Stone ranked her the fifth-greatest singer of all time in 2023.
Q 05Which record executive discovered Carey after she handed him a demo tape at a party in 1988?
Tommy Mottola
He heard it in his car, turned around to find her, and then spent two weeks tracking her down; they married in 1993.
Q 06Carey's first public performance was 'America the Beautiful' at which 1990 event?
The NBA Finals
Her closing whistle note prompted CBS anchor Pat O'Brien to declare, 'The palace now has a queen.'
Q 07What was Mariah Carey's first number-one single?
Vision of Love
It won her a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and she also took Best New Artist that night.
Q 08Carey holds a record no other artist has matched: her first how many singles all hit number one in the US?
Five
The streak ran from Vision of Love to the title track of her second album, Emotions.
Q 09Which Jackson 5 song did Carey cover on MTV Unplugged in 1992, silencing 'studio worm' critics?
I'll Be There
The live version became her sixth US number one, and the seven-song set was released as an EP.
Q 10Which is Carey's best-selling album, with worldwide sales above 28M copies?
Music Box
Its singles Dreamlover and Hero were her seventh and eighth US number ones.
Q 11Carey's cover of which Badfinger song became her first number one in the UK, Germany and Sweden?
Without You
Harry Nilsson had made the ballad famous in 1972; Carey's version came from Music Box.
Q 12In which year did Carey release her Christmas album Merry Christmas?
1994
It became the best-selling Christmas album by a female artist, with over 15 million sold worldwide.
Q 13Who co-wrote and co-produced 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' with Carey?
Walter Afanasieff
Carey had Christmas decorations put up in the studio for the August 1994 recording session.
Q 21What was the value of the record deal Carey signed with Virgin Records in 2001?
$80 million
Virgin bought her out for $28 million within a year after Glitter flopped.
Q 22What award did Carey 'win' for her performance in the 2001 film Glitter?
A Golden Raspberry (worst actress)
The film and its soundtrack were delayed after her hospitalisation and both bombed.
Q 23Which 2005 album marked Carey's big comeback?
The Emancipation of Mimi
It earned ten Grammy nominations and became her best-seller of the 21st century.
Q 14How many weeks has 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' spent at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, a record?
22
It first hit number one 25 years after release, the longest gap in US chart history.
Q 15How long after its 1994 release did 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' first reach number one in the US?
25 years
Streaming revived it; in the UK the gap was 26 years, another record.
Q 16What title has Carey earned thanks to her enduring holiday music?
Queen of Christmas
A survey once found the song was the least popular among American retail workers, who hear it on repeat every December.
Q 17Carey's 1995 lead single from Daydream famously samples which Tom Tom Club song?
Genius of Love
Carey heard the 1981 track on the radio and asked Dave Hall to build the song around it; the Ol' Dirty Bastard remix reshaped her image.
Q 18Carey's 1995 Daydream lead single set which Billboard milestone for a female artist?
Debuting at number one on the Hot 100
Only Michael Jackson's You Are Not Alone had debuted at number one before it.
Q 19Which vocal group joined Carey on 'One Sweet Day', which held number one for a then-record 16 weeks?
Boyz II Men
Billboard later named it the most successful song of the 1990s.
Q 20Which Carey album, produced with Sean Combs and Q-Tip, cemented her move to hip-hop and R&B?
Butterfly
Released in 1997 after her split from Mottola, it followed the direction Daydream had started.
Q 24How many non-consecutive weeks did 'We Belong Together' spend at number one in 2005?
Fourteen
It debuted at a lowly number 81 and was later named Billboard's song of the 2000s.
Q 25Which Mariah Carey song sat at number two behind 'We Belong Together' in September 2005?
Shake It Off
Ashanti had done it in 2002 only as a featured singer.
Q 26Which 2009 film earned Carey acclaim, and a Breakthrough Actress award, for playing a social worker?
Precious
Variety called her performance 'pitch-perfect'; the film adapts Sapphire's novel Push.
Q 27Whom did Carey marry in the Bahamas in 2008?
Nick Cannon
They met filming the Bye Bye video and had fraternal twins in 2011; he filed for divorce in 2014.
Q 28On what date were Carey's twins born, the same date as her wedding anniversary?
April 30, 2011
They were delivered by caesarean at 35 weeks.
Q 29Which baseball star did Carey date in 1997-98?
Derek Jeter
She then dated Mexican singer Luis Miguel from 1998 to 2001.
Q 30Which Australian billionaire was Carey briefly engaged to in 2016?
James Packer
The engagement was called off by October; she then dated choreographer Bryan Tanaka until 2023.