Mariah Carey says she's 'mortified' by New Year's Eve fiasco

It seems we are never going to hear the end of Mariah Carey's botched Times Square New Year's Eve performance, and Carey herself is helping keep the story around to chew on for another day.

Carey spoke to a reporter for Entertainment Weekly late Tuesday, three days after the fiasco and only one day after Carey's team, including her manager, exchanged fire with Dick Clark Productions, which produces New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in Times Square, over who was to blame for the technical glitches that led the diva of divas to quit the stage in frustration and disgust.

Among other embarrassments, the shortened performance exposed Carey's lip-syncing on her hits and her inability to hit some high notes when she tried to sing because, she said, her earpieces weren't functioning.

So, she was asked, now that you've had a few days to think about it, "What are your feelings" about the mess seen live on TV by millions, and the over-the-top reaction on social media and regular media ever since?

Carey's response: An artful dodge that nevertheless mentioned the word "mortified."

"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," she said. "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."

This was a shift from Carey's early shrug-it-off attitude, expressed in a tweet she posted early Sunday morning, blithely dismissing the debacle as "(stuff) happens."

Mariah Carey botches NYE performance, leaves stage

This was followed on Monday and Tuesday by anonymous and then on-the-record sniping by Team Carey and Team DCP. Carey manager Stella Bulochnikov insisted the producers purposely allowed Carey to go on stage with defective equipment to pump up the ratings with "a viral moment at any expense."

The producers issued a statement saying any suggestion they would "intentionally compromise the success of any artist is defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd."

Mariah Carey's manager on NYE fiasco: 'They wanted a viral moment'

Meanwhile, mocking tweets and comments continued to rain down on her. Carey preferred to focus on the supportive messages.

"My true fans have been so supportive and I am so appreciative of them and everybody in the media that came out to support me after the fact because it really was an incredible holiday season that turned into a horrible New Year’s Eve," she told EW. 

The lesson learned, according to Carey? "It’s not going to stop me from doing a live event in the future," she said. "But it will make me less trusting of using anyone outside of my own team."

So why, after staying silent for three days, was Carey suddenly chatty?

It might have something to do with her desire to publicize her reality series on E!, Mariah’s World, not to mention her upcoming All the Hits tour with Lionel Richie starting in March, her first North American tour in seven years.

That's how a savvy self-promoter salvages some measure of victory from humiliating defeat.