Mariah Carey is the debut album by American singer Mariah Carey, released in the United States on June 12, 1990 (see 1990 in music) by Columbia Records.

Although sales were initially slow, it made Carey a star in her home country and yielded four number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, with the album itself spending eleven weeks at the top of the Billboard 200. The album and its combination of R&B-tinged pop ballads (including the singles "Vision of Love", "Love Takes Time" and "I Don't Wanna Cry") and up-tempo numbers ("Someday", "There's Got to Be a Way") impressed many critics, though not all reviews were favorable. To date, the album has sold more than nine million copies in the U.S. and over 17.5 million copies worldwide. It is Carey's third best-selling album in the U.S. after Daydream (1995) and Music Box (1993). After Carey had secured her recording contract, she and her writing partner Ben Margulies were excited at the prospect of being able to professionally record all of the songs they had written together. Because Tommy Mottola and other Sony/Columbia executives believed that Carey had high potential to be the next big superstar, her debut album was carefully co-ordinated by a panel of executives, and as a result it was deemed unwise for Carey and Margulies to produce. The pair had already produced her famous demo tape and other rough demos, but the executive committee believed those recordings were too heavily influenced by R&B. Mottola and the committee wanted a debut album with a more contemporary sound (much like Whitney Houston's 1985 debut album Whitney Houston, which many critics called Carey out for making her album too similar to) that would cross over and appeal to both the R&B and mainstream music markets.

The committee enlisted some of the top producers of the time to produce the songs that Margulies and Carey had written, and to produce and co-write new material with Carey herself. The producers included Rhett Lawrence, Ric Wake, and Narada Michael Walden, and only six of the nearly twenty songs that Carey and Margulies had written made the album initially, though eventually the two were each allowed to produce one more song for the album. With ten tracks finished, Carey's album was mixed and sent to be pressed. During a promotional trip, Carey decided to play a new song that she and Margulies had written called "Love Takes Time", which she thought would be perfect for her next album. Sony executives were extremely impressed by the track, and argued that it should be on the first album. Carey and Margulies were eventually persuaded to add the song to the track listing of Mariah Carey, and producer Walter Afanasieff was given the task of producing the song in only a few days to make the deadline of the album's pressing. Though he made the deadline, a few early copies of the album were mislabeled and made it onto the retail market. To boost sales in Australia Sony Music released a limited double disc edition of the album. One disc contained the international eleven-track set, and a separate five-track disc included Carey's performance of "Don't Play That Song" by Ben E. King — Carey paid tribute to Aretha Franklin (who covered the song) at her showcase in New York City in 1989 — and live versions of tracks such as "Vanishing", as well as an exclusive interview and "questions and answers" session. In order to raise her profile before the release of Mariah Carey, Carey performed three songs, accompanied only by Richard Tee on the piano, in front of an invitation-only audience at an intimate soiree. She made her television debut on The Arsenio Hall Show, and Columbia Records arranged for her to perform "America the Beautiful" at the NBA National basketball finals. Carey was also asked to go on tour, but she refused as she suffered from severe stage fright at the time.