Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Performance Debacle: Here’s What Went Wrong

“Production decided to just go live instead of cut to commercial to fix the problem,” person close to diva tells TheWrap

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Mariah Carey had a New Year’s Eve to forget last night, though it’s unlikely anyone will anytime soon.

The singer suffered a fairly disastrous audio equipment malfunction while on stage and live on ABC. As a result, she pretty much quit on even trying to salvage her headlining performance. Unfortunately for the “Mariah’s World” star and fortunately for Twitter, “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” did not cut away to commercial, making for an extremely awkward few minutes before midnight.

So what exactly went wrong? One of the singer’s reps told TheWrap this morning that Carey’s ear piece wasn’t working right from the get-go. When the pop diva was ready to walk to the stage, Mariah’s team informed Production of the problem — an issue that was essentially brushed off.

“Production said it’s because they didn’t work well in the tent and to go up to stage,” the rep told us. “Once on stage, [Mariah] told the stage manager that the ears were not working but production decided to just go live instead of cut to commercial to fix the problem.”

Dick Clark Productions declined commenting on the incident when reached by TheWrap. Ryan Seacrest Productions and ABC have not yet returned our requests for a statement on the matter.

By the way, in case you were wondering — yes, Mariah did do a rehearsal at 3 p.m. ET on Saturday, which we’re told “went totally fine” and had “no issues with sound.” Carey also rehearsed the evening before at Alvin Ailey — “she did not ‘wing’ this performance,” her rep told us.

In case you missed it, let’s just say Carey’s performance of her hit song “Emotions” didn’t exactly go according to plan. And let’s also just say you really need to click the “Also Read” above and watch the disaster unfold in video form.

Still, Carey’s shaking off what will go down in history as an all-time dropping-the-ball moment before the actual ball drop. Here’s what she had to say about the ABC debacle about 90 minutes after walking off stage:

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