We can now confirm two things that Jenny McCarthy is against:
1. Vaccinations.
2. Mariah Carey.
The former View co-host, who has helped anchor New Year’s Eve coverage on various programs for seven years, used her SiriusXM show on Tuesday to lay into the legendary singer.
McCarthy called Carey out for what most viewers agree was the single worst New Year’s Eve performance in the history of December 31.
Actually on hand in Times Square for the embarrassing event, McCarthy took listened behind the scenes a bit as she relayed her reaction to Mariah’s nationally-televised fail.
“Mouths are hanging open. Everyone is shocked. We only gave you a shortened version of that. We had to go through another song of her walking around,” McCarthy said on air today.
She added:
“It was so bad, and then for a moment I said, ‘Take a step back, Jenny, and try to find some empathy right now.’ And I did. All of a sudden I felt really bad for her, because it was that bad. It was a complete train wreck.”
Did you catch the performance?
It featured Carey having problems with her audio.
She was on stage, messing around with her ear piece, clearly confused and unsure what to do.
“We’re missing some of the vocals, but it is what it is … I’m gonna let the audience sing. We didn’t have a sound check for this New Year’s baby,” Carey told the crowd.
It was evident that Carey planned to lip-sync, but technical issues got in the way and she was unable to recover; i.e. simply go ahead and actually sing her own songs.
Watch footage from the humiliating “performance” below:
Shortly after this non-concert aired on ABC, Carey took to Twitter and shrugged it off.
“Sh-t happens,” she wrote.
But as the video got passed around the Internet in subsequent days and the embarrassment grew, Carey’s team went into crisis mode.
Sources in Carey’s camp actually told TMZ and Billboard that the artist was “sabotaged” and that “production set her up to fail.”
Why would producers do this? To garner ratings for the network’s New Year’s Eve special.
So the argument goes, that is.
But Dick Clark Productions wasn’t going to just sit around and let its good name be sullied.
The company responded to accusations of wrongdoing with the following statement:
As the premier producer of live television events for nearly 50 years, we pride ourselves on our reputation and long-standing relationships with artists.
To suggest that DCP, as producer of music shows including the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and Academy of Country Music Awards, would ever intentionally compromise the success of any artist is defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd…
We want to be clear that we have the utmost respect for Ms. Carey as an artist and acknowledge her tremendous accomplishments in the industry.
McCarthy, meanwhile, said she stopped sympathizing with Carey once her team accused Dick Clark Productions of somehow setting her up to fail.
“I do understand our egos, of course, want to blame everyone but itself for mistakes, but I literally had a visceral reaction to her saying that Dick Clark Productions did this on purpose and for ratings,” McCarthy said, continuing:
“If Dick Clark were alive today, I guarantee he would be on air right now fighting back. He’s not, so I’m going to.
“The truth of the matter is Mariah didn’t do a sound check. … She did whatever you would call, like, a dance move rehearsal holding her gold microphone, and she stood off to the side of the stage while she had a stand-in do a sound check.”
Husband Donnie Wahlberg was in the studio with McCarthy and agreed.
Having often performed live with New Kids on the Block, he chimed in with this take:
“The buck stops with the artist. If you’re gonna be a boss or you’re gonna be a diva, then you know, again, it’s your name, your face and your legacy on the line.
“So you leave something to someone else, you have no one to blame but yourself. The music track, missing a vocal, that’s on her. No rehearsal, that’s on her.”
