Mariah Carey
photo: shawn miller · public domain ↗Trained by an opera-singer mother but drawn to soul and gospel radio, Mariah Carey arrived in 1990 with a five-octave range and a whistle register few pop singers even attempted, let alone deployed as a hook. Across Vision of Love, Emotions, and Music Box she fused churchy melisma with adult-contemporary and hip-hop production, setting the template — the runs, the key changes, the diva-as-vocal-athlete framing — that a generation of 2000s and 2010s pop singers, Ariana Grande included, grew up trying to match.
Carey has cited Riperton directly as the reason she began experimenting with the whistle register in the first place, taking a technique Riperton popularized on one massive 1975 single and turning it into a recurring signature.
listen forLovin' You into Emotions is about as direct a lineage as this whole chart gets — the same superhuman whistle-register notes, decades apart, Carey picking up exactly where Riperton left off.
Carey has credited the Clark Sisters as among the most influential artists of her early years; their runs-heavy, praise-break gospel style is audible in the church-choir bridges and vocal ad-libs she leans on when a Mariah Carey song wants to build to something bigger than pop.
listen forIs My Living in Vain builds through stacked, riffing gospel vocals the same way Carey's own choir-backed bridge on Make It Happen does — same testimony structure, same climb.
Carey has named Franklin among the R&B and soul singers she grew up on, and Franklin's gospel-honed belting and ad-libbed testifying runs show up in how Carey pushes a note past where a pop melody would normally stop.
listen forHear Franklin tear open the bridge on (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, then Carey doing something similar on Hero — same instinct to abandon the written melody and just preach for a few bars.