Mariah Careyâs Saturday night performance on âDick Clarkâs New Yearâs Rockinâ Eve With Ryan Seacrestâ devolved into a cringeworthy spectacle as she claimed she couldnât hear through her monitors on stage.
A technical catastrophe on such a large scale was puzzling. Careyâs reps have blamed the ABC showâs producers for the confusion during her hits âEmotionsâ and âWe Belong Together,â saying there were technical problems with her performance.
âUnfortunately there was nothing she could do to continue with the performance given the circumstances,â spokesperson Nicole Perna told The Huffington Post, citing a âproduction issue.â
âWell, happy New Year!â Carey told the crowd as the problem emerged. âWe canât hear,â she said as she was left unable to sync the music blasting through speakers with her lyrics.
âA shame that production set her up to fail,â Perna told Billboard, claiming that the singer had rehearsed the night before and in the afternoon with âno sound issues.â Just before taking the stage in New Yorkâs Times Square, Perna said, Carey was told that an earpiece she claimed to be malfunctioning would work fine.
Careyâs manager, Stella Bulochnikov, went so far as to tell Us Weekly that producers continued to air her performance for ratings.
âI will never know the truth, but I do know that we told them three times that her mic pack was not working,â Bulochnikov told the outlet. âThey did not cut to a commercial. They did not cut to the West Coast feed. They left her out there to get ratings.â
In response to accusations, Dick Clark Productions, the company behind the annual show, issued a statement denying responsibility for the mangled performance, saying it âhad no involvement in the challenges associatedâ with it. According to TMZ, the company called the claims made by Careyâs reps âdefamatory.â (The gossip site also alleges that Dick Clark Productions employees admitted to the technical error offstage before officially denying any part.)
An audio producer who had worked on the New Yearâs Eve show many times also seemed to doubt Careyâs claims in an email to The New York Times.
âEvery monitor and in-ear device worked perfectly,â the producer said of the sound equipment he oversaw. âI canât comment beyond that and donât know what her nontechnical issue may have been.â
Because the show must always go on, the singer made efforts to gloss over the mishap while on stage.
âWeâre missing some of these vocals, but it is what it is. Let the audience sing,â Carey said, directing her microphone toward the crowd.
âGet these monitors on, please,â she added as she tried to continue with her choreography. âIâm trying to be a good sport here.â
After the performance, Carey seemed to brush off the whole dramatic sequence with one tweet.
âShit happens,â she wrote.