Usually, when one makes a very public faux pas, like, say, coming unannounced onto TRL in an oversized shirt and pretending to sell ice cream, they try to keep a low profile by not returning to the scene of the crime for a while. Not so in Mariah Carey’s case with regard to her freshly announced New Year’s Eve appearance in Times Square. For those who have amnesia and don’t remember why this is ill-advised programming was so talked about, let’s refresh. After capping off what we all naively thought was the worst year in human history to date, 2016, Mariah proved there was no end to the death that encapsulated those 365 days–as we all assumed it would be the death of her career, too, when she blundered through her songs, missed many a note and didn’t even bother attempting a convincing lip sync. And now, all too ready to return to the source of her recent embarrassment, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve (with Ryan Seacrest), one has to assume there’s a hidden agenda to Mariah’s performance beyond mere redemption for last year’s antics. Here are some potential motives.
She wants to do the same exact thing–a vocal massacre–making a metaphorical statement to us all that there can be no happy ending, no atonement for those who have already sinned.
She is planning to take her mask off at the end of her performance to reveal her true identity as Kim Jong-un and then set off a bomb that makes all of New York go kabluey.
She wants to give on again off again boyfriend/backup dancer (and therefore a man of nebulous sexuality) Brian Tanaka a chance to propose to her in a very public way.
She’s counting on Britney Spears to create more of a spectacle for humiliation even though she hasn’t done anything like that since the 2007 VMAs.
She’s figured out a way to get everyone in Times Square to participate in a flash mob during “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” allowing the opportunity to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for creating the largest flash mob.
She is planning to take her mask off at the end of the performance to reveal her true identity as Notorious B.I.G. and scream, “It was all a dream,” as we’re transported back in time to 1992 when everything was scandal-free and there hadn’t even been a puny attempt to blow up the Twin Towers yet.
She is hoping to send a message to James Packer that, since he never paid her an inconvenience fee, she’s now stuck working hard every New Year’s for the money.
She is going to announce the release of a third Christmas album and that if we don’t all buy it by the stroke of midnight, her twins will be sold into slavery (a.k.a. pimped out for a Gap ad).
She is conducting a seance to return Whitney Houston so they can sing “When You Believe” as a means to assure us all that if we believe in impeachment it will happen.
There is no motive. She is as delusional and self-denying as the rest of us who still return to the sites of places where we have embarrassed ourselves as though nothing has occurred.
