Someone get this woman a functioning earpiece! Mariah Carey‘s disastrous New Year’s Eve performance gave Us flashbacks to when she suffered technical problems at the 2014 Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony. Relieve the two performances in the video mash-up above!
As fans may remember, the pop diva failed to hit several of her famed high-octave notes while performing her holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas Is You” at the December 2014 event, which was broadcast live from Rockefeller Center, in New York City. The much-talked-about performance went viral at the time after Deadspin’s The Concourse leaked an unedited isolated vocal track, which further magnified the issues.
Though the five-time Grammy winner didn’t publicly admit to any technical issues, she repeatedly fiddled with her earpiece throughout the song and even took it out at one point.
TMZ reported at the time that Carey was originally scheduled to pre-tape the tree lighting appearance, but arrived three hours late because she was meeting with lawyers to discuss her divorce from ex-husband Nick Cannon. She later took to Twitter to apologize to fans, writing, “Last night’s situation was beyond my control. I apologize to all that showed up, you know that I would never want to disappoint you.”
Fast-forward two years and Carey found herself in a similar situation on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest. Before the ball dropped and rang in 2017, the Mariah’s World star struggled on stage in New York’s Times Square for five-and-a-half minutes due to an issue with her earpiece. At one point, she was caught lip-synching when she pulled the microphone away from her face as the track continued to play. “This is the album version,” she admitted before exiting the stage.
Hours after the New Year’s Eve show, Carey tweeted, “S–t happens. Have a happy and healthy new year everybody! Here’s to making more headlines in 2017.”
The music icon’s team later claimed that Dick Clark Productions sabotaged the performance for ratings. In a statement to Us Weekly, the entertainment company called the allegations “defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd.”
