It’s a special league of artists that make a major music industry impact.  The radio may seem flooded with budding young stars, but in reality, those that reach the airwaves represent a precious few among the throngs which would quickly take their place.  In today’s climate, even a single hit record is truly an accomplishment.

To have more than one hit?  That’s an honor reserved for only the most incredibly gifted, dedicated, enduring and (let’s face it) lucky persons in the world.  Music industry stardom really is an anomaly… everything has to fall together at the right place and in the right time.

However in the case of Mariah Carey, the whole world is fortunate that those stars aligned on this date 25 years ago.  June 12th, 1990 was the release date of Carey’s self-titled debut album, and the beginning of one of the greatest careers the pop music industry will ever know.

Here’s more on the milestone from Billboard.com….

Despite a particularly saturated female pop landscape in 1990 — recall, this is the era that saw Whitney, Janet and Madonna at their peaks — Carey carved a place among them at an astonishing rate. After arriving late to the party, Carey would surpass them all by the decade’s end, collecting more No. 1s than any female artist (a record she still holds.)

Yet for all the hits, Mariah Carey does little in the way of introducing the world to the woman behind the seismic scales and piercing high notes. It’s much more focused on the hit-making, but to the album’s credit, it succeeded to a remarkable degree. Despite entering the charts at a modest No. 80, the set eventually spent 11 weeks atop the Billboard 200, launched four (!) No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, and set the singer up to win a best new artist Grammy.

Right from the start, Carey was able to achieve feats nearly unknown to other artists of the time.  But as fans would later learn throughout the 1990s, Mariah Carey was merely the start of the singer’s dominance.

To celebrate this legendary artist, here’s one of her smash hits from that debut album… the dance jam Someday.

After a huge start with the self-titled debut, Carey went on to sell an astonishing 200 million records worldwide.  And she’s not done yet, with the recent release of her latest effort #1 To Infinity and a sold out residency in Las Vegas, the mega-music mogul is still going strong.  But on this day, it’s important to take a look back at how one of music’s greatest artists started down that path.  Congratulations to Mariah Carey on an unparalleled 25 years leading in the music industry.