Mariah Carey's Rep Sets Record Straight on New Year's Eve Performance

Mariah Carey‘s manager Stella Bulochnikov has given an extensive interview disclosing what really went down on New Year’s Eve, and blasting the producers of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest for wanting a “viral moment at any expense.”

Mariah did a sound check, contrary to reports, Stella said (you can see photos of Mariah at sound check in the gallery below). “Not only did she not ditch rehearsal, we got to Times Square at 2:30. They weren’t ready for her until 3:20. We waited around for their stage manager. We had the stage from 3:20 to 3:50. She had a dance stand-in for the musical number. She sat on the side of the stage with her ear-pack and her in-ears and her microphone to make sure she could do the sound check. The most important thing to her was the sound. The sound was coming in choppy. She was assured it would work by the evening,” she told EW.

Click inside to read a lot more about Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Eve performance…

On what happened just before going on stage: We told both stage managers �” remember this is not our production team, we’re out-sourcing our team which we never do – we told them the mic pack is not working. She can’t hear it, it’s faint. They brought her a new one, and that one didn’t work either, the mic pack was dead. They changed the battery pack. She said she still couldn’t hear. The second stage manager said, “It doesn’t work here in the tent, it will work on the stage.” She said, “Great, let’s go to the stage.” It’s now four minutes to showtime. She says, “I hear nothing in my ears, my ears are dead.” The other stage manager says, “It will work right when we go live.” Then things start to get chaotic. They start counting her down �” four minutes, three minutes. Mariah: “I can’t hear.” Them: “You’re gonna hear when it goes live �” two minutes!” So, right when it goes live, she can’t hear anything. The ears are dead. They’re dead. So she pulls them out of the ear because if the artist keeps them in their ears then all she hears is silence. Once she pulled them off her ear she was hoping to hear her music, but because of the circumstances �” there’s noise from Times Square and the music is reverberating from the buildings �” all she hears is chaos. She can’t hear her music. It’s a madhouse. At the point, there’s no way to recover.

On what happened after the show: She should have walked off and thrown the mic at somebody’s head �” that would have been a great moment. After the show, I called Mark Shimmel �” who begged her to do the show and had her cut her vacation short from Aspen. This is a verbatim conversation. I asked, “What happened?” He said, “I just talked to my guys and I confirmed her in-ears didn’t work. Couldn’t she just wing it?” I’m like, “What are you talking about ‘winging it’? Are you on glue?” He’s like, “What do you want me to do?” I said, “I want you to cut the West Coast feed.” He calls me back and says, “We can’t do it.” So I’m like, “You would prefer to air a show with technical glitches so you can have a viral moment rather than protect the integrity of your show and Dick Clark Productions?” He said, “We just won’t do it. Do you want to do a joint statement?” And I said, “No, I want you to go f�” yourself.”

On why producers didn’t cut to commercial: But even when it didn’t work [when live], when she pulled her ears out, they should have cut to commercial. That says to me they wanted a viral moment at any expense. And that’s not a company with integrity for 50-something years. That’s not who Dick Clark was. He loved artists.

Read the entire interview, where she talks lip-syncing claims and more, at EW.com.