Brenda K. Starr Brenda K. Starr was born as Brenda Kaplan on October 15, 1966 in New York City. She is an American singer originally in dance-pop, but now mostly in salsa-based music. Brenda was born to a Jewish American father, organist, Harvey Kaplan, and a Puerto Rican Roman Catholic mother. Her only album to make the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart was her self-titled second album (her major-label debut), which peaked at number 58. She has had two top forty hits on the Billboard Hot 100: "I Still Believe" (which peaked at #13) and "What You See is What You Get" (which peaked at #24).

Mariah met Brenda thanks to a drummer who had been for her. The musician told Mariah that one of Brenda's backup singers had recently quit and that she was looking for a replacement. Mariah was reluctant at first, especially when she found out that Brenda, despite being under contract to Epic Records, had so little money that she could not afford to keep her musicians and singers on more than a part-time basis. But her musician friend persisted and finally brought her around when he told her that it beat waitressing.

"I really didn't want to do it," Mariah told Fred Bronson, "but I said it's gonna be better than what I'm doing now. So I went to the audition, and Brenda was such a great person." On the appointed date, Mariah went to a small studio where Brenda K. Starr was holding auditions. There was an instant chemistry between the two. Brenda was an easy and quite naturallly friendly woman who had a mothering instinct, but that would not have made a bit of difference if Mariah had not blown her away during the audition with the strength and diversity of her voice. Mariah aced the audition and was now in the big time.

After the audition, Mariah performed with Brenda in a number of live shows. She never recorded as a part of Brenda's band. The experience of performing live in better situations was something that money could not buy. Brenda was a rarity in in the often cutthroat world of popular music. She was genuine, especially when it came to her dealings with Mariah. The singer was openly worried that Mariah's clothes were literally falling off her back and would often express her concern that her favorite backup singer would get sick. And while the unwritten rule in music was that the star should never do anything to promote a talented underling, Brenda would go out of her way to help get her protégé in front of the right people.

Over the course of their time together, Mariah and Brenda became good friends. Sometimes, when there were no gigs scheduled and Mariah wasn't working on her own material, the two would spend an evening sitting and chatting. Neither had grown up with a father, and it was a subject that still rankled them both. The friendship between the two quickly grew by leaps and bounds, and Brenda recognized and happily acknowledged Mariah's unique talent. "Most singers would have said, 'Stay in the background and don't sing too loud'," Mariah told People. Instead, Brenda began promoting her discovery. She took every opportunity to introduce Mariah to her music-industry contacts and was quick to hand out copies of Mariah's demo tape to anyone who expressed the slightest interest. "She helped me out a lot," said Mariah in a 1991 Ebony interview. "She was always saying, 'Here's my friend Mariah. Here's her tape. She sings. She writes.' "

By 1991, Mariah had become Sony/Columbia's star attraction, which caused Brenda's career to shrink in terms of commercial success. After being dropped from Sony/Columbia Records for lackluster sales of her album By Heart, she worked odd jobs to support herself and her family for several years, including one at a shopping mall in New Jersey.

In a wise decision, Brenda learned Spanish in order to rejuvenate her career, instead of chasing trends of the English language pop music market. From there, she became mostly a Salsa/Tropical and Latin Pop artist. After the release of her cover of Herida, which peaked at #16 on the Latin Pop Airplay and at #1 on the Latin Tropical/Salsa Airplay chart, her music career became successful again. From then, she released a string of popular, successful albums with many chart hits.

A few years later, Mariah had nothing but praise for her former boss. And once Mariah had achieved success, she never forgot Brenda. At one time, Brenda was going through a bad patch. She was living in New Jersey, trying to get by on very little money. Christmas was coming, and things looked bleak. Out of the blue, completely unannounced, Mariah arrived, bringing a rocking horse for Brenda's daughter and an extremely expensive makeup kit for Brenda herself. "She started laughing with the curls falling in her face," Brenda described the scene. "It was like she was Santa Claus. I started crying."

In 2005, Brenda wasn't so amicable anymore. "She's forgotten who she is and where she comes from, and she's never helped me the way I've helped her," she said. "I've stopped talking to Mariah because the only time she calls me is when she needs a favor."

Brenda claimed that she lost her own record contract with Tommy Mottola "to make room for Mariah. I never even got a finder's fee. I was left with nothing, resulting in me calling Mariah and saying, 'I need your help. I'm broke. I have two kids to feed, I can't get a record deal to save my life.' Her answer was, 'I really can't help you. I don't want to get involved.' "

Still, Brenda said she was there to support Mariah in 2001 when she had her much-publicized meltdown. "When she was breaking up with Tommy and when she was going through this nervous breakdown thing, I was the first to call her to ask her if she was OK." Conceding that Mariah loaned her $5,000 once to help "keep her house", Brenda said her old pal "sends me a box of popcorn for holidays. I'm like, 'What? Does this girl think I'm hungry?' "

But Mariah's manager, Benny Medina, counters: "Over the years, Mariah has generously provided thousands in loans, never seeking repayment, to Brenda and her family, as well as a variety of gifts to both her and her children. No request from Brenda has ever been denied by Mariah." He also downplayed Brenda's role in kick-starting Mariah's career. "Prior to signing with Sony, Mariah had a record deal in place with Warner Bros. Mariah has always, and will always, support and wish Brenda great luck and success."


Ben Marguiles Ben Margulies is a songwriter and record producer. Together, he and Mariah Carey lobbied record companies with their infamous 5 song demo tape with songs they had co-written and co-produced until Mariah got signed to Sony in 1988. Ben had first met Mariah while she was cutting demos of songs she had written with Gavin Christopher. Mariah's brother, Morgan Carey, asked his friend Chris Toland to work on the demo sessions. Toland was not available and he referred his writing partner Ben Margulies to help out.

"We needed someone to play the keyboards for a song I had written with a guy called Gavin Christopher," Mariah later recalled. "We called someone and he couldn't come, so by accident we stumbled upon Ben. Ben came to the session and he can't really play keyboards very well - he's really more of a drummer - but after that day we kept in touch, and we just sort of clicked as writers."

In 1983, Ben worked as a drummer, he joined the New York power trio Comateens, when they were looking for a drummer who could tour with them in support of their Virgin records Pictures On A String album, which had just made the charts. Ben went on to tour with Nicholas North, Lyn Byrd and Oliver North through Switzerland and France, and made an appearance in their music video "Get off my case" which had garnered a "Top Album Pick" in Billboard magazine.

Mariah found out that she and Ben had a lot in common. At age twenty-four, he was much older than seventeen-year-old singer. But the age difference was easily overcome by a similar nature and creative passions. Mariah and Ben kept in touch and eventually decided to try writing together. As luck would have it, Ben's father had long ago given his son permission to set up a studio in a back room of his cabinet factory Bedworks in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. It was there that Ben and Mariah set about creating music together. Ben recalled, "I didn't have much equipment, but we had a way of making demos sound incredible." The first song from this collaboration was the Motown-flavored "Here we go round again". Ben created the music, Mariah wrote the lyrics. As they listened to the complete tape, the excitement grew. It didn't just sound good, it sounded incredible.

The songwriting chemistry was definitely there, Ben told the New York Times. "Mariah had the ability to just hear things in the air and to start developing songs out of them. Often, I would sit down and start playing something and from the feel of the chord, she would start singing melody lines and come up with the concept."

While the songs Mariah and Ben had written were allowed to be used on Mariah's debut album, they were not allowed to produce songs for the most part on the album (Sony did let Mariah and Ben produce one song each).

In October 2007, Ben made the news when he signed singer Lisa Lavie. He discovered her seemingly by chance when he was handed her demo while visiting a recording studio in Las Vegas in 2004. After just one listen, Ben recalls it was "like the first time I heard Mariah". Calling her magical voice "one in a million", he knew Lisa had everything it takes to record a hit album.


Tommy Mottola Tommy Mottola, the former President and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, can easily be said to be the man who turned Mariah into a star. In late 1980s, Brenda K. Starr, of whom Mariah had been a back vocalist of, handed one of the demo cassettes of Mariah to him and after hearing the cassette that night, Mottola immediately decided to sign her into Columbia Records, a subsidiary label of Sony Music Entertainment. Then in 1990 Mariah released her self-titled debut album. Behind their musical and business partnership, the two were romantically involved and married in 1993. Though their marriage lasted only four years, Mariah remained as an artist of Sony until 2000 and released two more studio albums and one compilation album on the label.

Thomas Daniel "Tommy" Mottola, Jr. was born on July 14, 1949 in Bronx, New York. His family was a music-oriented, middle class Italian family and from the very early ages on, Tommy would be highly interested in music, too. This interest emerged as a particular skill on the trumpet, on which he was so talented that this particular talent eventually earned him a scholarship for a private education. However, he did not pay the attention he paid to music to his academic career and after graduating Iona Preparatory School in Rochelle, New York in 1967, he dropped out of Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Before these, Mottola had been sent to military school by his family, just to frequently run away and end up returning home.

So, Mottola headed into what he could do best and searched for a career in entertainment business. His first attempts were playing small roles in various unknown films before switching into singing from acting. After a few unsuccessful singles for Epic Records, he finally decided to remain in the dark side of the industry. His decision was followed by his marriage to Lisa Clark, the daughter of ABC Records founder Sam Clark, and thanks to this marriage, he began to work for Chappell Music Publishing Company. It was for the sake of this marriage that Mottola, a Catholic, became a Jew. The couple had two children.

While working for Chappell, he discovered Philadelphia-based Soul-Rock duo Hall & Oates, consisting of Daryl Hall and John Oates. His belief in the duo was highly strong and he did his best to support them relentlessly. Among his supports were some of the first specialized music videos and one of the first modern sponsored tours, for Beech-Nut's Panasonic, Care Free Gum and Pontiac. Thanks to his efforts, Hall & Oates became one of the most popular musical acts of the '70s and earned their young manager a large amount of money.

In 1975 Mottola expanded his business and founded Don Tommy Enterprises, which would be later renamed as Champion Entertainment, to manage other artists. Among those artists were Carly Simon and John Cougar Mellencamp, using only the name "Cougar" at that time. In 1977 Champion Entertainment and CBS Records made a production arrangement and by 1987 he was already the president of CBS. The following year CBS was bought out by Sony Corporation and Mottola was named as the President and CEO of the music division of the company. With this advancement, he ironically succeeded his former mentor Walter Yetnikoff, who had originally brought him into CBS. Just at the age of 39, he was the boss of the likes of Michael Jackson and Bob Dylan.

At a party in late '80s, Brenda K. Starr, one of the artists of Columbia Records, handed Tommy Mottola a demo tape of one of her backup singers and asked him to give it an ear. On his way back home in his limousine, Tommy decided to listen to the cassette though he had initially tossed it aside. After a short listening, the mogul was so amazed by the coloratura soprano on the tape that he hurried back to the party to find the owner of the voice. Though she had gone then, Mottola subsequently tracked that girl down and arranged a very lucrative deal by immediately signing her into Columbia Records. The deal was followed by one of the most expensive promotion campaigns ever for a new artist. Finally in June 1990, the whole world, too met the girl on the demo tape without knowing she would be one of the biggest superstars of all time. In just a few weeks, her name was already known by everybody. Just as her debut album suggested, she was Mariah Carey.

After the phenomenal success of Mariah's first two albums, which were released one after another in 1990 and 1991, and five consecutive charttopper singles, Mottola began to romantically involve in Mariah and even dared to divorce his wife for the sake of her. So the fairy tale saw a happy, or happy seeming let's say, ending in 1993 when the two married in a lavish ceremony, which famous guests such as Barbra Streisand, Robert DeNiro, Billy Joel and Gloria Estefan attended. That year saw the release of Music Box, Mariah's best selling album and the acknowledgement of both her international success and her love for Mottola: The album didn't only sell more than 30 million copies worldwide, see number one in 10 countries including the US and the UK, and produce US #1 singles "Dreamlover", "Hero" and UK #1 "Without You", but also included a song called "Now That I Know", a song obviously written for Tommy by Mariah. After one year, Mottola accompanied Mariah by starring Santa Claus in the video of "All I Want for Christmas Is You", the first single off Mariah's holiday album, the best selling holiday album of all time Merry Christmas.

Mottola was not only the boss of Mariah, but also her leading mentor in music. It is said that Mariah was not allowed to co-produce her music until "Daydream" (1995) because she was under the wings of Tommy.

She was undoubtedly the best new act of the '90s and the fastest selling artist of the time, she was living in an ultra luxurious mansion and she had more than all the things she couldn't even dream of just a few years ago, but Mariah was not happy. Tommy's extremely possesive attitudes, increasing jealousy and the restrictive life he brought to Mariah was oppressing her. According to an insider, Mariah was abruptly changing when a male guest came to their house and wearing sassy dresses such as short shorts and flirtatious gestures. Beginning with "Looking In", the closing track of Daydream, Mariah also expressed how trapped she had felt through her marriage. In her recent interviews in 2008, Mariah told she wanted to be kidnapped by someone in those days and the one who finally had kidnapped her was Nick Cannon, whom she married in the spring of 2008. She also referred to her days of marriage to Mottola as "violent times" and their mansion as "private hell" in the track "Side Effects" on her album E=MC2 (2008). From beginning to end, the song stresses how this marriage has haunted her since then. Mariah doesn't hide that the concept "emancipation" in her glamorous comeback album The Emancipation of Mimi (2005) comes from the fact she finally feels truly freed from the influence of Tommy on her.

The couple separated in 1997 and divorced in 1998. Between these two time points, Mariah released Butterfly (1997), her most personal and candid album until then. The release of the album was doubtleslly quite significant as it was, even with its title, a kind of announcement of Mariah's freedom both in her private life and in her musical style. The album was also a source of curiosity because it was not hard to foresee that it would include songs about her former marriage. The title track, "Butterfly", didn't let down these expectations as it was accepted as a song written to Mariah from Tommy's point of view after their separation.

Despite the fact that it was announced the two would remain friends and was still seeing each other after the divorce, Mariah left Columbia in 2000 though one album on her record contract remained. During the era of her first post-Columbia album, Glitter, which was released within the structure of Virgin Records in 2001, Tommy Mottola seemed to use every strategy via the artists of Sony to bruise Mariah's career. He didn't only set the release date of Destiny's Child's third single "Bootylicious" off their hit 2001 album Survivor as the same date as "Loverboy", Mariah's lead single off Glitter, but also led Jennifer Lopez to use the sample, which he heard Mariah had meant to use on "Loverboy", on the remix version of "I'm Real". In this remix was commissioned Ja Rule, who accompained Mariah on the song "If We" - also on Glitter - so that Mariah would be reluctant to release this song as a single in the future as it featured an artist who appeared on the song of another artist just a short time ago. With a lot of other reasons including her mental breakdown and the period of 9/11, Glitter flopped and formed the darkest corner of Mariah's career.

After separating Mariah, Tommy dated some other stars, reportedly including Jennifer Lopez, and continued discovering new stars such as Destiny's Child, Jessica Simpson and Dixie Chicks. By the late '90s, he had escalated as high as he could and firstly became the President and Chief Operating Officer and then the President and the CEO of Sony.

In 2000 Mottola married for the third time, this time Mexican sensation Thalía. This marriage still persists and in September 2007 the couple celebrated the birth of their first child together, a daughter named Sabrina Sakaë.

2000s did not serve well for Tommy Mottola. In early 2002, The King of Pop, Michael Jackson accused him of being racist and treating his black artists in a discriminative way. According to Jackson, Mottola was the Devil. He also reminded how former artists of Sony Music such as George Michael and Mariah were pressured during their days under the label just the way himself was pressured then, famously displaying a signboard on which the photos of all three with blocked mouths were put. As a response Sony issued a statement saying the allegations of racism were untrue, because Mottola were formerly married to Mariah, who is of Venezuelan descent, and he was currently married to Mexican superstar Thalía. This statement led many people to believe that Jackson's remarks were just an attempt to excuse the disappointing sales of his then newly released album Invincible (2001). In 2003, Mottola resigned Sony and bought out the rights to Casablanca Records. Lindsay Lohan and the Lebanese-British singer Mika are among the artists of the label. Around the same period he made one of his rare public appearances and served as a judge for the "Born the Diva" talent search series. Since then, Mottola has been busy with a new entertainment company which includes productions of music, television, fashion, acting as well as management and branding. The predominate artists of the company include Usher, Lindsay Lohan and Marc Anthony.

During Mottola's 15-year administration, Sony Music saw the fastest growth of its history, transforming into one of the biggest global companies with departments in more than 60 countries and annual revenues increasing from $800 million to $6 billion by the year 2000. Tommy Mottola is also credited for creating one of the biggest management teams in the industry, buying the rights to the Beatles catalogue, making Sony the first company to make available legal digital downloads, and most importantly establishing or rebuilding the careers of great artists such as Celine Dion, Destiny's Child and automatically Beyoncé, Lindsay Lohan, Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, and Billy Joel apart from Mariah. The Latin explosion in late '90s and early 2000s are mainly attributed to him and his championing likes of Ricky Martin, Shakira, Gloria Estefan, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, most of whom debuted thanks to Mottola. He is also known as a mentor and former talent manager, proteges of whom include Diana Ross, Carly Simon, John Mellencamp and Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band.

Besides his efforts as a businessman, Tommy Mottola is a remarkable philanthropist who has served on the Board of Directors of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Police Athletic League, T.J. Martell Foundation for Cancer, Leukemia and AIDS Research, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation and Museum, and the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation.

(by Can Özdilek)