Another Mariah-inspired mishap. Stephen Colbert hilariously parodied Mariah Carey’s disastrous New Year’s Eve performance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, January 3. Watch it in the clip above!
The comedian, 52, opened the show by saying, “The year is starting off great for everyone but Mariah Carey. You may not have seen, but Mariah was performing in Times Square for New Year’s and had a few technical problems. No one knows exactly what happened. I blame Russian hackers.”
Colbert then mocked the pop star’s onstage confusion, which was broadcast live around the world. “This was not her fault. Mariah, you’re welcome to come on my show any time. … I’m sorry, there’s nothing in my prompter here,” he said.
Suddenly several dancers popped up around him while he yelled, “Is this getting fixed?” The dancers tried to distract from the debacle with giant feathers.
“I’m sorry … Is this … I was not informed. Am I supposed to be singing right now?” Colbert quipped. At the very end of the clip, one of the dancers attempted to pick up the late-night host, poking fun at the moment when Carey asked a male dancer to flip her around.
As previously reported, Carey couldn’t sing during her set because she claimed her earpiece was not working properly. The snafu started during her opening rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” when the audio track didn’t exactly match up with Carey’s vocals. She then started to sing her 1991 hit “Emotions,” but stopped and told the crowd she couldn’t hear while her voice continued to blast through the speakers. Finally, she was supposed to sing the 2005 track “We Belong Together,” but admitted defeat. “This is the album version,” she said before exiting the stage. “It just don’t get any better.”
The Mariah’s World star later told Entertainment Weekly that she was “mortified” by the incident. “It’s not going to stop me from doing a live event in the future,” she said. “But it will make me less trusting of using anyone outside of my own team.”
