Or, as the Chinese say, it’s the Year of the Florez.

Headlining the Times Square welcome to the New Year, the pop singer appeared to lose her grip on one of her signature songs. She called on the audience to take over.

Watch.

Carey messaged later on Instagram: Here’s to making more headlines in 2017.’

Not a bumper year for composers, with two outstanding exceptions

500 – Heinrich Isaac (1450-1517?)

450 – Monteverdi, Thomas Campion (both born 1567)

350 – Froberger, Pepusch

300 – Matthias Georg Monn (1717–1750), Johann Stamitz (1717–1757)

250 – Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), Bernhard Romberg (1767–1841)

200 – Niels Wilhelm Gade (1817–1890), Étienne-Nicolas Méhul (1763–1817)

150 – Amy Beach (1867–1944), Umberto Giordano (1867–1948), Enrique Granados (1867–1916), Charles Koechlin (1867–1950), Giovanni Pacini (1796–1867), Wilhelm Peterson-Berger (1867–1942), Simon Sechter (1788–1867)

100 – Scott Joplin (1868-1917), Richard Arnell (1917-2009), Teresa Carreño (1853–1917), Lou Harrison (1917–2003), Ulysses Kay (1917–1995), Rudolf Maros (1917–1982), Philipp Scharwenka (1847–1917), Robert Ward (1917–1994), Isang Yun (1917–1995)

50 – Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967), Marc Lavry (1903–1967), Matthijs Vermeulen (1888–1967), Franz Waxman (1906–1967), Jaromír Weinberger (1896–1967).

From an interview with Natalie Clein:

‘It’s a cliché that the cello is the closest any man-made instrument comes to the human voice, but true. The range of notes is much the same. And whenever I work with singers – as I will during the (Kings Place, London) “Unwrapped” season – I always feel that my bowing arm is related to the way the singer breathes.

‘Of course I’m biased, but I think this human quality is the reason why composers are often inspired to write their most heartfelt music for us. For virtuosity they go to the violin, but for sincerity it’s the cello.

‘We truly are social creatures – partly, I think, because we’re collaborative by nature. We’re used to playing bass lines, which means we’re conscious of structure and how we fit into it. You rarely find a selfish cellist: we’re a good thing, on the whole”.

Gustavo Dudamel looked like he was having fun at the New Year’s Day concert, and so did the Vienna Philharmonic.

But that’s so 2017.

Next New Year’s Day will be conducted by Riccardo Muti. It will be his fifth time.

December 2016 was a record month for this site in which we broke through the 1.5 million barrier.

More than 1,522,000 readers visited www.slippedisc.con over the course of December.

2016 was also a record year, with 15.5 million readers and a much-increased advertising volume.

We have major plans for 2017 but first we’d like to thank all our readers for their attention, all our commenters for their contributions and all our partners – editorial and commercial – for their invaluable assistance.

It’s your site. We can’t succeed without you.

The baritone Bryn Terfel, newly knighted, has announced his engagement to the harpist Hannah Stone, who is pregnant with his child.

Sir Bryn, 51, has three children by his first marriage.