Mariah Carey fires creative director following New Year’s Eve flub

After a disastrous New Year's Eve performance, Mariah Carey has fired her longtime creative director, Anthony Burrell.

Jan 4, 2017

After a disastrous New Year’s Eve performance, Mariah Carey has fired her longtime creative director, Anthony Burrell.

According to Entertainment Tonight, Burrell was fired after the “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” debacle, with one source telling ET, “He’s not being brought back [in 2017] for a number of reasons.”

During the New Year’s Eve performance, Burrell apparently placed the backup singers at the bottom of the risers instead of onstage with her, and he did so without the approval of the management team.

–Mariah Carey’s team says New Year’s Eve debacle was ploy for ratings–

Without the backup singers and without a working earpiece, the source said that Burrell’s decision “left Mariah without any support.”

“I haven’t been able to watch NYE performance. 30 sec from live TV, boss couldn’t hear her own vocal in her in-ears from Mic. #heartbroken,” Burrell wrote on Twitter after the disaster unfolded on live TV.

Carey has since said that she was “mortified” by the performance.

“All I can say is Dick Clark was an incredible person and I was lucky enough to work with him when I first started in the music business,” Carey told Entertainment Weekly. “I’m of the opinion that Dick Clark would not have let an artist go through that and he would have been as mortified as I was in real time.”