VH1 Divas

In 1998, VH1 debuted the first annual VH1 Divas concert. VH1 Divas Live was created to support the channel's Save The Music Foundation and subsequent concerts in the series have also benefited that foundation. The VH1 Divas concerts aired annually from 1998 to 2004. After a five-year hiatus, the series returned in 2009 with a younger-skewed revamp. In 2010 the concert saluted the troops and in 2011 it celebrated soul music, doubling the previous year's ratings. The latest edition, which aired live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on December 16, 2012, celebrated dance music and paid tribute to Whitney Houston and Donna Summer.

VH1 Divas Live

VH1 Divas Live: An Honors Concert For The VH1 Save The Music Foundation aired live on April 14, 1998.

Summary

The very first "VH1 Divas" show at New York's Beacon Theatre offered an unprecedented summit of stars - Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Shania Twain and Gloria Estefan. The spontaneity continued with the guest appearance of singer-songwriter Carole King, who led the team through versions of her own "You've Got a Friend" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman."

Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969 or 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She rose to prominence after the release of the first single taken from her eponymous debut album in 1990, "Vision of Love". More than two decades later, Rolling Stone defined the song as an influence on "virtually every other female R&B singer since the nineties". Mariah Carey produced four chart-topping singles in the US and began what would become a string of commercially successful albums which solidified the singer as Columbia's highest selling act. Carey and Boyz II Men spent a record sixteen weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 with "One Sweet Day", which remains the longest-running number-one song in US chart history. Following a contemptuous divorce from Sony Music head Tommy Mottola, Carey adopted a new image and traversed towards R&B with the release of Butterfly (1997). In 1998, she was honored as the world's best-selling recording artist of the 1990s at the World Music Awards and subsequently named the best-selling female artist of the millennium in 2000.

VH1

VH1 (stylized as Vl+1, sometimes as VH-1 and originally an initialism of Video Hits One) is an American cable television network based in New York City that is owned by Viacom Music and Entertainment Group, a unit of the Viacom Media Networks division of Viacom. It launched on January 1, 1985, in the old space of Turner Broadcasting System's short-lived Cable Music Channel. The original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly older demographic than its sister channel, focusing on the lighter, softer side of popular music.

The channel was originally created by Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, at the time a division of Warner Communications and owner of MTV. Both VH1 and its sister channel MTV are a part of Viacom Media Networks. While VH1 has played music videos in the past, its recent claim to fame has been in the area of music-related reality programming, such as Behind the Music, the I Love… series, the Celebreality block of programming, and the channel's overall focus on popular culture. As of December 2015, VH1 no longer plays music videos.

Diana Ross

Diana Ernestine Earle Ross (born March 26, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, actress and record producer. Born and raised in Detroit, she rose to fame as a founding member and lead singer of the vocal group The Supremes, which, during the 1960s, became Motown's most successful act and is to this day America's most successful vocal group as well as one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time. As part of the Supremes, Ross most notably rivaled the career of The Beatles in worldwide popularity, and her success made it possible for future African American R&B and soul acts to find mainstream success. The group set a record scoring twelve number-one hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100 including the hits "Where Did Our Love Go", "Baby Love", "Come See About Me", "Stop! In the Name of Love", "You Can't Hurry Love", "You Keep Me Hangin' On", "Love Child" and "Someday We'll Be Together".

Following her departure from the Supremes in 1970, Ross released her debut solo album, Diana Ross, which contained the hits "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" and the number-one hit "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". She released the album Touch Me in the Morning in 1973. Its title track reached number 1, becoming her second solo hit. By 1975, the Mahogany soundtrack included her 3rd number-one hit "Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)". Her 1976 album Diana Ross included her fourth number-one hit "Love Hangover". In 1979, Ross released the album The Boss. Her 1980 album Diana which reached number 2 on the Billboard albums chart and spawned the number-one hit "Upside Down" and the international hit "I'm Coming Out". After leaving Motown, Ross achieved her sixth and final number-one hit with the duet "Endless Love".

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer and musician. Franklin began her career singing gospel at her father, minister C. L. Franklin's church as a child. In 1960, at the age of 18, Franklin embarked on a secular career, recording for Columbia Records but only achieving modest success. Following her signing to Atlantic Records in 1967, Franklin achieved commercial acclaim and success with songs such as "Respect", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and "Think". These hits and more helped her to gain the title The Queen of Soul by the end of the 1960s decade.

Franklin eventually recorded a total of 112 charted singles on Billboard, including 77 Hot 100 entries, 17 top ten pop singles, 100 R&B entries and twenty number-one R&B singles, becoming the most charted female artist in the chart's history. Franklin also recorded acclaimed albums such as I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, Lady Soul, Young, Gifted & Black and Amazing Grace before experiencing problems with her record company by the mid-1970s. After her father was shot in 1979, Franklin left Atlantic and signed with Arista Records, finding success with her part in the film, The Blues Brothers and with the albums, Jump to It and Who's Zoomin' Who?. In 1998, Franklin won international acclaim for singing the opera aria, "Nessun Dorma", at the Grammys of that year replacing Luciano Pavarotti. Later that same year, she scored her final Top 40 recording with "A Rose Is Still a Rose". Franklin's other popular and well known hits include, "Rock Steady", "Something He Can Feel" (from the soundtrack to the 1976 film Sparkle), "Jump to It", "Freeway of Love", "Who's Zoomin' Who", "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves", "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" (with George Michael), "It Isn't, It Wasn't, It Ain't Never Gonna Be" (with Whitney Houston) and a remake of The Rolling Stones song "Jumpin' Jack Flash".