Like a beautiful crystal-covered phoenix, Mariah Carey has risen jubilant from the ashes of her “disastrous” New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest performance last year, having put on a perfectly adequate set as part of Sunday night’s show. It appears that pre-show soundcheck worked.
Carey famously suffered one of the most fascinating meltdowns of the Digital age last New Year’s Eve when she claimed her earpiece malfunctioned and gave up halfway through her set, but that didn’t stop her from taking the stage again this year. The woman who made Glitter does not back down in the face of paramount humiliation, after all. And though non-believers waited attentively to see if she’d wreak havoc once again, ABC reports Carey did just fine, performing glitch-free versions of “Vision of Love” and “Hero.”
Still, Carey is never one to pass up a Moment, and between songs she offered naysayers a small sliver of hope that disaster was on the horizon when she complained onstage that she had no hot tea to soothe her voice to get her through the next performance (it was in the single digits in Times Square last night).
“They told me there would be tea,” she said. “Oh, it’s a disaster. Okay, well, we’ll just have to rough it. I’m going to be like everybody else, with no hot tea.”
Never mind that Mariah Carey never was and never will be like everybody else, but she made it through her second song without the tea. It appears she got some after the show:
2018 is off to quite a start.
DISCUSSION
I think the reason I’ve grown to appreciate Mariah so much is that no matter how much bullshit is going on in the wider world, she manages to not let it affect her at all and just focuses on herself. Maybe not the best trait, but something I’ve never figured out how to do, which is why it fascinates me so much. Also, I could never begrudge Mariah the fact that she seems to be the only person who hasn’t, ah, experienced the anxiety of the last year. If I could escape it too, I probably would.