Mortified is the word Mariah Carey is using to describe her New Year's Eve performance. During an interview with Entertainment Weekly on Tuesday, the singer opened about her performance mishap during Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest.
"All I can say is Dick Clark was an incredible person and I was lucky enough to work with him when I first started in the music business," she said about the performance, which saw her facing sound problems. "I'm of the opinion that Dick Clark would not have let an artist go through that and he would have been as mortified as I was in real time."
Mariah Carey has broken her silence on her now-infamous New Year's Eve performance Photo: Waterford Crystal
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Although visibly frustrated by the technical mishaps while on stage at the time, Mariah insisted the incident hasn't put her off doing another live on-air performance. "It's not going to stop me from doing a live event in the future," the 46-year-old added. "But it will make me less trusting of using anyone outside of my own team."
The singer also added a thank you to her "true fans" and the media that supported her following the mishap. "I'm so appreciative of them," she said. "It really was an incredible holiday season that turned into a horrible New Year's Eve."
Ever since the performance, during which technical difficulties seemingly forced the singer to stop and start throughout, questions have been asked of both the production company and Mariah.
The singer suffered a series of lip-synching mishaps during her appearance Photo: Waterford Crystal
New Year's Rockin' Eve co-host Jenny McCarthy also offered her take on the much-talked about incident during her SiriusXM show, The Jenny McCarthy Show. "Mouths [were] hanging open, everyone [was] shocked," the 44-year-old, who co-hosted the event live from NYC for the seventh year said. "We only gave you a shortened version of that. We had to go through another song of her walking around. It was just, it was so bad, and then for a moment I said, 'Take a step back, Jenny, and try to find some empathy right now.' And I did. All of a sudden I felt really bad for her, because it was that bad, it was a complete train wreck."
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On the day after the performance, TMZ cited a source who claimed that there were suspicions the TV company had "sabotaged" the singer's performance by providing her with a faulty earpiece, in order to score higher ratings.
New Year's Rockin Eve co-host Jenny McCarthy offered her take on the performance Photo: Instagram/@jennymccarthy
In response, Dick Clark Productions said in a statement: "As the premier producer of live television events for nearly 50 years, we pride ourselves on our reputation and long-standing relationships with artists. To suggest that [Dick Clark Productions], as producer of music shows including the American music awards, Billboard Music Awards, New Year's Rockin' Eve and Academy of Country Music Awards, would ever intentionally compromise the success of any artist is defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd."
The statement continued: "In very rare instances there are of course technical errors that can occur with live television, however, an initial investigation has indicated that [Dick Clark Productions] had no involvement in the challenges associated with Ms. Carey's New Year's Eve performance. We want to be clear that we have the utmost respect for Ms Carey as an artist and acknowledge her tremendous accomplishments in the industry."