Mariah Carey albums discography

American singer and songwriter Mariah Carey has released fourteen studio albums, one soundtrack album, one live album, three compilation albums, three greatest hits albums, one extended play, and one remix album. Carey is one of the best-selling music artists of all-time, having sold over 200 million records globally. She was presented with the Millennium Award at the 2000 World Music Awards for becoming the best-selling female artist of the millennium. According to the RIAA, she is the third best-selling female artist and sixteenth overall recording artist with shipments of 64 million albums in the US. She is also ranked as the best-selling female artist of the US Nielsen SoundScan era (from 1991) with album sales of 54 million. Her albums Mariah Carey, Music Box, Daydream and The Emancipation of Mimi are among the top 100 certified albums according to the RIAA.

Carey released her self-titled debut album in June 1990; it was certified nine-times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting shipments of nine million copies in the United States. Additionally, the album spawned four consecutive US number-one singles. Her second album, Emotions, was released a year later and sold eight million copies worldwide. In 1993, Carey released her most successful studio album to date, Music Box, which was certified Diamond in the United States and topped the charts in many countries around the world. Music Box is one of the best-selling albums of all time, with over 32 million copies sold. In 1994 Carey released her first holiday album, Merry Christmas, containing the worldwide Christmas classic "All I Want for Christmas Is You". After Carey's success in Asia with Merry Christmas, Billboard estimated Carey as the all-time best-selling international artist in Japan. By 1995, Carey released her fourth studio album, Daydream, which became her second Diamond certified album by the RIAA, with worldwide sales of 25 million copies.

Carey's fifth studio album Butterfly, and the compilation album, #1's, were both certified five-times Platinum in the US; the latter remains the best-selling album in Japan by a non-Asian artist, selling 3.25 million copies. Rainbow (1999), Carey's sixth studio effort, received triple platinum certification from RIAA. But it was her first album since Emotions to not reach number one in the US. Carey parted from Columbia/Sony Music in 2001 and signed a contract with EMI's Virgin Records worth a reported US$100 million, the largest record contract ever signed. She released her next album, Glitter, which was the soundtrack to the film of same name. The album suffered from poor publicity and became a commercial failure.

Carey signed a new deal in 2002 with Island Records and released her seventh studio album Charmbracelet, which also fell short of Carey's earlier success. The singer then took a three-year break to record new material and introduced a hip-hop inspired album, The Emancipation of Mimi, which became the best-selling album of 2005 in the US. It was certified six-times Platinum by the RIAA, sold twelve million copies worldwide, and produced the successful single "We Belong Together", it topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for fourteen weeks. In 2008, Carey released her ninth studio album, E=MC², which sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide and produced the single "Touch My Body" which broke her tie with Elvis Presley for the most number one singles by a solo artist on the Hot 100. Her subsequent release, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel (2009), managed sales of two million units, while her second holiday album Merry Christmas II You (2010) shipped over 500,000 copies in the United States. The singer's fourteenth effort, Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse, failed commercially, becoming the lowest selling release of her career.