Mariah Carey

"I have nodules on my vocal cords. My mother says I've had them since I was a kid. That's why I have the high register and the belting register and I can still be husky. A lot of people couldn't sing through the nodules the way I do; I've learned to sing through my vocal cords. The only thing that really affects my voice is sleep. Sometimes if I'm exhausted, I can't hit the really high notes. My doctors showed me my vocal cords and why I can hit those high notes. It's a certain part of the cord that not many people use—the very top. My natural voice is low. I have a raspy voice. I'm really more of an alto. But my airy voice can be high if I'm rested. ... When I was little, I'd talk in this really high whisper, and my mom would be like, 'You're being ridiculous'. I thought if I can talk like that I can sing like that. So I started just messing around with it. I'd practice and practice, and she'd be like, 'You're gonna hurt yourself'. I'd tell her, it doesn't hurt. If I were to try and belt two octaves lower than that, that would be a strain."
—Carey on her usage of the whistle register
Mariah Carey possesses a five-octave vocal range, and has the ability to reach notes beyond the 7th octave. Referred to as the "songbird supreme" by the Guinness World Records, she was ranked first in a 2003 MTV and Blender magazine countdown of the 22 Greatest Voices in Music, as voted by fans and readers in an online poll. Carey said of the poll, "What it really means is voice of the MTV generation. Of course, it's an enormous compliment, but I don't feel that way about myself." She also placed second in Cove magazine's list of "The 100 Outstanding Pop Vocalists".
Regarding her voice type, Carey said that she is an alto, though several critics have described her as a soprano. However, within contemporary forms of music, singers are classified by the style of music they sing. There is currently no authoritative voice classification system within non-classical music. Attempts have been made to adopt classical voice type terms to other forms of singing, but they are controversial, because the development of classical voice categorizations were made with the understanding that the singer would amplify his or her voice with their natural resonators, without a microphone.