Putting it behind her. Mariah Carey sang on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, February 15, in her first live performance since her disastrous New Year’s Eve gig.
The Grammy winner wore a curve-hugging red dress with a plunging neckline as she sang her new single, “I Don’t,” about her headline-making split from fiancé Australian billionaire James Packer.
The Mariah’s World star sang the song with accompaniment from a live band and rapper YG.
As Us Weekly previously reported, Carey’s performance at Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rocking’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest on December 31 was a catastrophe on an epic scale.
The singer kicked off her set with “Auld Lang Syne,” but as she transitioned into her next song, “Emotions,” her vocal track didn’t match what she appeared to be singing. She told the audience that she couldn’t hear the music and said that they hadn’t properly rehearsed for the performance. As she went into her third song, “We Belong Together,” she appeared to give up, lowering her mic and muttering, “It just don’t get any better.”
In the days that followed, the singer and her team claimed that Dick Clark Productions had sabotaged her performance — an allegation that the production company slammed as “defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd.”
On January 8, Carey addressed the embarrassing incident on Twitter in an audio message.
“I came to New Year’s Eve in New York in great spirits and was looking forward to a celebratory moment with the world,” she said. “It’s a shame that we were put into the hands of a production team with technical issues who chose to capitalize on circumstances beyond our control.”
“It’s not practical for a singer to sing live and be able to hear themselves properly in the middle of Times Square with all the noise, in the freezing cold, the smoke from the smoke machines, thousands of people celebrating, especially when their ear monitors were not working at all,” Carey added. “Listen, guys. They foiled me. Thus, it turned into an opportunity to humiliate me and all those who were excited to ring in the new year with me.”
