Ryan Seacrest is finally expressing his feelings about Mariah Carey's debacle during her Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve performance.
Discussing the topic during On Air With Ryan Seacrest Thursday morning, the show's host remained fairly neutral. "It is difficult to perform in Times Square. I mean, she had done it before because she was the first musical guest that we had had live when I started doing the show a decade ago," he said. "So she had seen it; she knows what Times Square is about. It's complicated."
He continued, "I don't know what you realize on TV or you see, but imagine: Every single TV outlet in the world is there. There's all kinds of technical things going on."
Seacrest had introduced Carey to the stage before her performance, but explained that he didn't "have a visual" of it live as he was walking to the next stage when everything happened.
"It's live television, and things happen on live TV—if something goes wrong, it's unfortunate for anybody," he added.
In case you missed it, Carey experienced some technical difficulties on NYE that affected her sound. In turn, it affected her ability to properly perform along with the pre-recorded tracks (which is normal protocol for a singer who is performing live) of "Emotions" and "We Belong Together."
Though she continued her performance in stride, she eventually got a little irritated and told the crowd, "Well, happy New Year! We can't hear. I'll just get through the moment, OK?" she said, later adding, "I'm trying to be a good sport here."
She also explained, "We didn't have a check for this song, so we'll just say, it went to number one, and that's what it is, OK?"
When "We Belong Together" played, she tried to turn the problem around by asking for the crowd's help. "This is the album version, so I'm just going to let you put this thing on me and sing along," she told the audience. "It just don't get any better."
The incident caused quite a bit of back and forth between critics and Mariah's camp, who blamed Dick Clark Productions.
Carey, on the other hand, brushed it off. "S--t happens," she tweeted hours later. "Here's to making more headlines in 2017."