No place to hide: Mariah Carey loses it in Times Square

No place to hide: Mariah Carey loses it in Times Square

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norman lebrecht

January 01, 2017

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.’

Comments

  • DrummerMan says:

    It’s amazing that with all of the millions of dollars spent on this New Years Eve television extravaganza that they can’t get the sound right. I think she handled the situation very well, under the circumstances.

  • Daniel F. says:

    Can someone tell me what went wrong?? Why couldn’t she sing the song (such as it was)?

    • Alexandra Ivanoff says:

      Evidently, she couldn’t hear what was being played through her own monitors. Her last words on the video were: “Put these monitors on, please!”

    • Leo says:

      She couldn’t hear the backing track but I don’t think she had any ear plugs in to pick this up so it looked a bit odd.

      • V.Lind says:

        She may have ditched it by the time you saw her. She had complained previously about its not working; “people” had told her it would work when she was out there, but it did not. She was left rather high and dry.

        What in God’s name was her stylist thinking when he dressed here? She does not have the figure for a rigout like that, with those great thighs and posterior. She’s also getting a bit old for it, though she is following precedents.

    • Dennis says:

      She can’t sing. What went wrong is her loss of ability to lip-sync. Disgraceful lack of talent shown up by tech problems.

      • Martin says:

        Couldn’t agree more. There have been other performance videos over the past several years in which it is patently obvious that folks are paying to hear her as she was and not as she is. She was a great singer in her time. The illusion as to her current ability was shattered . . . and how about the low energy on top of it. Why couldn’t she just dance the night away?

  • Patrick says:

    Who cares? No, seriously, who cares?

    • Marshall says:

      Right you are! Lebrecht has gone pop.

      Sorry to confess again, I don’t have a clear idea who Maria Carey is.
      How do you people have such time to spend on this?

      I looked at the US channels-briefly, apparently missed this, but was amazed how they didn’t break to the slaughter in Istanbul. I’m afraid we accept this stuff as the new normal-why people are voting the way they are-they can’t stand it any longer.

      • Sue says:

        Carey was recently ditched by James Packer (Australian billionaire) because, obviously, she wasn’t cheap or common enough. James just wants brassy with big glockenspiels.

  • Christopher Culver says:

    “I looked at the US channels-briefly, apparently missed this, but was amazed how they didn’t break to the slaughter in Istanbul.”

    Many media sources chose to wait a few hours to comment on Istanbul because the Turkish government imposed a media blackout. Print media could at least interview a few people and upload articles, but there was no question of walking around with cameras, and without camera footage TV networks can’t really cover an event. Nothing to do with the “new normal”, and if the Turkish government hadn’t given that order, I’m sure the event in Istanbul would have got all the same flashy coverage as any other recent attack.

    • Marshall says:

      That is interesting, what you say, but I’m not sure how true it is. I confess to being intentionally rhetorical (after all I’m on the Internet), but actually here, MSNBC had live coverage-and dropped their NY’s Eve stuff, for quite a while. What surprised me was the rest didn’t even have a crawl with what was already known. By the way all the other sites on the Internet had coverage of it, and the NYT’s had a headline instantly.

      But you’re right to characterize it as “flashy coverage” with the same style on all TV outlets. The showing and re-showing of the tiny bit of footage, the breathless reporters standing by the barricades, the endless pointless speculation. I’m surprised they all didn’t switch-violence sells more ads. I think the advertising revenues depend on frequent attacks by now, and in the US we have so much photogenic domestic violence anyway.

      My reference to the “new normal” is how the world continues to accept this. To go into the NY Philharmonic now, you go through a metal detector, you’re checked out by a guard, then sniffed by a dog-this is civilization. Sort of undermines the whole point of the music.

      • V.Lind says:

        You seem to want it both ways. Why are they not covering it live? But:

        [The showing and re-showing of the tiny bit of footage, the breathless reporters standing by the barricades, the endless pointless speculation.]

        That’s all you can offer people like you who demand live coverage when you are restricted from access and either being spoonfed bits of information or getting nothing at all for long stretches.

        Take your pick. Wait for a clear report, or have your people “there” throughout.

  • Boris Buriev says:

    she have to do sound check before performance, probably she didn’t show up there on sound check, everyone was singing and was right , only she can’t hear? “Diva”

  • M2N2K says:

    To begin with, she (just like all other “stars” there) was lip-syncing and not really singing live at all, so virtually any malfunction of the soundtrack was obviously fatal.

  • Sue says:

    I saw the NYC midnight ‘celebrations’ and I’ve seen more excitement at the daily opening of the NY Stock Exchange.

    Get with the program, folks; only Sydney really knows how to do it!!

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