Gary Trust of Billboard's Chart Beat discusses Mariah at length in his latest column:

Joel Whitburn's most recent version of "Top Pop Singles," which chronicles the first 50 years of the Hot 100 names Mariah Carey as the top performer of the '90s decade.

In Billboard's 1999 year-end issue, the combined song and album decade placement for the '90s had Mariah at the top spot!

While digesting all these rankings, the artist that comes to my mind when I think of the '90s decade's top performer is Mariah Carey.

I choose Carey for the '90s based on her 14 Hot 100 No. 1s during the decade, a run that includes time spent at the top spot in every year in that span. While grunge, and alternative in general, arguably reached a pop culture zenith in the '90s, the genre's biggest hits often did not make the impacts on the Hot 100 that one might expect. (Nirvana's biggest Hot 100 entry, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," peaked at No. 6).