We Need to Talk About Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Eve

Accusations of musical sabotage! Legal threats! A formally attired trip to a marijuana dispensary! No, we’re not talking about the latest plot of Empire, we’re talking about Mariah Carey’s unforgettable New Year’s Eve performance and its ensuing aftermath, which continues to make headlines three days into 2017.
For those of you who might have missed Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2017 special (or somehow impressively avoided all encounters with the Internet in the new year), Carey has been taking some heat online for her televised performance at Times Square. While Mimi kicked off with a decent lip-synced rendition of “Auld Lang Syne,” things went south from there. During her performance of “Emotions,” Carey stopped singing altogether while pre-recorded vocals kept on going, instead addressing the crowd. “Alright, we didn’t have a check for this song,” said Carey. “So we’ll just say it went to number one, and that’s what it is.” Halfway through her final song, “We Belong Together,” the singer all but gave up, and held the simply mic down by her hips as the vocals continued to blast on the speakers.
Clips of the performance went viral within minutes. GIFs of Carey in her sparkly nude bodysuit proliferated around midnight, and the singer officially became the very first meme subject of 2017. In turn, she took to Twitter at 2:00 a.m. to address the controversy. Her explanation? “Shit happens.”
But the drama didn’t stop there. On Sunday morning, her manager, Stella Bulochnikov, sent a letter to the production team behind the New Year’s Eve special alleging they had purposely sabotaged Carey in order to score higher ratings. “You know her inner ears were not working and your entire production team did not set her up to win,” read the letter. “They kept ignoring her. She took a hit honoring her commitment to you. I should have pulled her off the stage. This is sabotage.” She later suggested Carey would seek legal action if the producers of the show didn’t publicly apologize for their mistakes.
Dick Clark Productions wasted no time in responding with an equally brusque statement later on Sunday. “As the premier producer of live television events for nearly 50 years, we pride ourselves on our reputation and long-standing relationships with artists,” it read, before stating that any suggestion that they intentionally set up Mariah to fail is “defamatory, outrageous, and frankly absurd.”
But problems with Carey’s performance might have been expected from the start. According to the New York Post, there was a special team in place solely to ensure the famously tardy artist would make it on time for the New Year’s Eve taping. Well, at least she made it up on stage at the right time—and anyways, a good diva never lets a little scandal get her down.