Mariah Carey’s NYE redemption

Mariah Carey returned to ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” for the second year in a row. Although her performance at Times Square was way better than her last year’s lip-synching fiasco, she strayed just enough to inspire an array of memes to start off the year. She sang two of her most famous ballads “Vision of Love” and “Hero.” Clothed in bleached hide and another sparkling low-cut, nude-illusion dress, she stayed on-brand almost throughout the performance. Carey avoided overusing long trills and falsettos; probably to shun accusations of lip-synching or maybe because her wardrobe couldn’t keep the New York winter at bay. This time around it wasn’t the performance that birthed the memes, what incited the audience instead was the fact that she wanted a break between the songs to have a jolly old tea time. “I just want to take a sip of tea if they’ll let me,” she said. “They told me there would be tea. Oh, it's a disaster.” Then she rushed on, “Okay, well, we'll just have to rough it. I'm going to be like everybody else, with no hot tea.” Mariah was clearly feeling the biting cold on stage, even though she looked fierce in her superstar outfit. She later posted a picture of herself on Twitter enjoying the aforementioned tea, captioned “Found my tea” with a hot green tea emoji. The diva routine may have been an elaborately staged wink towards last year’s disastrous bombing where the singer wandered around the sound stage complaining about her monitors as her prerecorded vocals kept playing over the instrumental. Ever the stage queen, Carey carried on her remarkable display of charisma with witty remarks to divert attention from her helplessness. The internet almost unanimously proclaimed that Carey’s golden years where behind her. This year, her “hot tea” comment inspired memes of Morticia Addams dastardly sipping some tea saying “That feeling when you steal Mariah Carey’s hot tea,” Mppet superstar Kermit the Frog gulping tea captioned “Meanwhile, Kermit is enjoying Mariah Carey’s tea” and so on. Twitter also had a lot to say about the comment such as “No tea? I guess I have to be like you peasants,” and “I’m using that line (I was told there would be tea) every time I’m disappointed in 2018.”