War of words escalates between Mariah Carey, production team
The songbird should have just winged it.
That’s what angry Dick Clark Productions staffers griped about Mariah Carey moments after the pop diva’s disastrous New Year’s Eve performance.
“So what if her ear piece doesn’t work? Can’t she just wing it?” people from the production company said in frustration, according to sources.
The superstar’s earpiece malfunction left her struggling to sing along to a prerecorded track of her tunes, until she ultimately gave up and just stood on stage.
Carey’s camp has said the TV show’s producers sabotaged her performance for ratings by ignoring her repeated complaints about her equipment.
“To make matters worse, they won’t apologize and continue to throw Mariah under the bus,’’ a Carey source told The Post on Monday.
Dick Clark Productions fired back by calling the allegations “defamatory, outrageous and, frankly, absurd.”
“In very rare instances, there are, of course, technical errors that can occur with live television.
However, an initial investigation has indicated that DCP had no involvement in the challenges associated with Ms. Carey’s New Year’s Eve performance,” the company said in a statement.
DCP claimed that Carey declined to perform a sound check before the show. Rehearsal-audience member Mike Keenan told The Post that Carey “did not sing at all” during the run-through.
But the source close to Carey said, “She provided the sound-check vocals from the side of the stage while someone else stood in to do her dance moves. The sound in her ear was choppy, but the production team assured her it would be fixed.
“She did them a favor by appearing on the Dick Clark New Year’s Eve special,’’ the source added. “She was the biggest star there, and she did it for free because they begged her.”
Carey’s manager, Stella Bulochnikov, told Entertainment Weekly, “She should have walked off and thrown the mic at somebody’s head — that would have been a great moment.”
Carey made no mention of the debacle on her Instagram page Monday, instead writing about her Colorado vacation: “Fun in the snow. Aspen is a winter wonderland.”
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