Just one flop was enough to seal Mariah Carey’s fate. Her record label, EMI, has opted to pay out $28 million to cancel her contract. The singer, who has sold more records in the last decade than any other female artist, has fallen casualty to a situation where the music industry needs instant hits to compensate for one of the worst periods in its history. Britney Spears, Nsync and Backstreet Boys are today’s hot stars, shifting five million units. It remains to be seen how they will age.

Thirty-one-year-old Mariah fell when she was unable to sustain the interest of record-buyers. Glitter, her last album, was released on the less-than-auspicious date of September 11, and has barely sold two million copies. The eponymously-titled film in which she starred – the hackneyed tale of a musical Cinderella – was cruelly slated and survived just weeks on the cinema screens.

EMI, which last April paid Mariah between $80 and $100 million, if rumours are to be believed, for a five-album contract, has decided not to run the risk of their second record failing.

To read about Mariah´s EMI payoff in more detail, check out this week´s HELLO! magazine, on sale now.