NEW YORK — To say that Mariah Carey’s performance on the nationally telecast Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve was flawed would be putting it mildly. The pop music diva was able to sing only the first of three songs, and to underscore the difficulties she said she was experiencing with her IEMs, she ended up pulling them out of her ears.
Exactly what went wrong that night is hard to pin down, however. The performance appeared to have started off fine, with Carey surrounded by feather fans and a bevy of male dancers opening with a rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.” Next up were the opening bars of the hit “Emotions,” with the dancers in perfect sync with the rhythm section on the track.
Carey made two attempts to sing with the track, but then gave up, pointing the mic at the audience and asking them to sing. Moving to a raised platform for “We Belong Together,” the next number, she started off in sync with the music but later held the mic at waist level while the pre-recorded lead vocal track played, making it clear to viewers that at least part of this performance would have been lip-synched.
After the show, speculation on the source of the troubles ran rampant. Some theorized that Carey’s in-ear monitors were malfunctioning or improperly set.
The P.A. provider for the event was Maryland Sound Industries. Bob Goldstein, MSI owner, stood behind the integrity of the gear. “Every monitor and in-ear device worked perfectly,” he noted.
Carey’s management, however, went so far to suggest that the fiasco was an intentional set-up designed to boost ratings. Dick Clark Productions issued a vehement denial, calling that accusation “defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd.”
Early reports suggested that the artist had skipped the sound check, but these were then later refuted. Others suggested that perhaps the wrong backing tracks were played.
Some noted that Carey had problems hearing host Ryan Seacrest during an earlier interview segment, suggesting there were indeed issues with her IEMs. According to two inside sources quoted in a Billboard article, the RF might have been “set to the wrong frequency.”
Few could disagree with Carey’s tweet of the event, which started off with a two-word summary. “[Expletive deleted] happens.” She went on to tweet, “Have a happy and healthy new year everybody! Here’s to making more headlines in 2017!”
