How did J-Lo fall so far in only ten years?
Why did Jenny McCarthy have such an embarrassing New Year's Eve tradition? And does anyone remember
when Macklemore was a thing? These are the most embarrassing NYE performances ever.
When One Direction appeared on "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" to ring in 2015,
little did the boys know it would end up being the worst year of the band's all-too-brief existence.
By that March, Zayn Malik would stun the fandom with an announcement that he would be going solo.
That August, the rest of the group would reveal that they would be going on an
extended hiatus after releasing one last album as a foursome, "Made in the A.M.,"
which came out that November. And then... 1D was over.
But back on New Year's Eve, their performance of fan-favorite single "Steal My Girl" unfortunately
failed to impress. The boys, usually beloved for their on-stage goofiness, were curiously
low-energy. Malik appeared particularly uninterested in what they were performing.
This performance of the hit seemed so lackluster that fans complained about it on social media,
especially since Malik didn't go for his iconic high note at the end of the song.
At the end of 2020, Cyndi Lauper was one of the few performers who appeared live in Times Square
on a more somber, COVID-19-restricted edition of "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve." After
a duet of her classic song "Time After Time" featuring Billy Porter, things seemed to fall
apart. Her team came on stage to make sure she was looking her best before she continued, but
Lauper was surprised by the intrusion, awkwardly shouting, quote, "I'm on camera! I'm on camera!"
As NME noted, her speech before her next song "Hope" was inspiring, at least.
"This has been a year of great loss. But in my heart, I feel that if we stick together,
we just stick together and help each other, we can make it through. I have hope."
Unfortunately, Lauper's performance sounded
awkward and hollow in a Times Square left mostly empty by the pandemic.
By far the most infamous embarrassing NYE performance of all time was Mariah Carey's flub
in the final hours of 2016. She claimed not to be able to hear her in-ear monitors and,
rather than just going for it, she instead spent most of her time wandering around the
stage complaining. While the backing track for hits like "Emotion" played unheeded,
Carey's interjections went viral instantly.
Carey released a statement on Twitter a week later, before suggesting that she was
intentionally sabotaged. Her manager told Rolling Stone that she'd asked for the performance to be
removed from the West Coast feed, but it aired unedited anyway, allowing those who hadn't already
seen every cringeworthy moment on social media to catch it all. Dick Clark Productions disputed
the accusation that they tried to capitalize on Carey's failure in their own statement.
When Carey returned to ring in 2018,
she sounded better, but her previous year's performance will never be forgotten.
Perhaps no movie had more of a grip on popular culture in 2014 than "Frozen," so it was only
fitting that "Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve" invited Idina Menzel — Elsa herself — to
their telecast celebrating the arrival of 2015. Though Menzel is a seasoned Broadway star used
to showing off her powerhouse live vocals, she really seemed to struggle during the appearance,
and her performance of "Let It Go" was rough, to say the least.
Fans on social media were quick to joke about the cold, indeed, bothering her anyway,
suggesting that low temperatures were to blame for Menzel's struggling vocal cords.
After the criticism, Menzel shared an interview excerpt on Twitter the following morning,
"I am more than the notes I hit. And that's how I try to approach my life."
Hometown girl Lady Gaga helped ring in the New Year in Times Square as 2011 became 2012,
hot off the success of her album "Born this Way." However, it wasn't her performance of
a medley of songs from that record that sparked the most headlines. It wasn't even her campy,
glittery costuming reminiscent of the infamous crystal-encrusted Times Square Ball itself.
Instead, fans couldn't stop talking about an uncomfortable kiss from then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
Afterwards, in the early-morning hours of a brand new year in New York, Gaga tweeted,
"I cant even quite describe what tonight felt like. Sort of poetic madness. A dream come true.
Moments recalling a leather taking the subway."
What does that mean?
"I missed out on the whole thing to be honest with you. I was confused by it. I
was confused by the whole thing, if we're being honest.”
Mayor Bloomberg, however, couldn't avoid questions from the press about the smooch.
Even Bloomberg's longtime girlfriend, Diana Taylor, was made to answer for the kiss.
New York Magazine reported that Taylor told reporters,
"He always asks for forgiveness, never permission."
Early on in her career, Taylor Swift joined "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin Eve" to sing a medley of
hits, most of which were taken from her sophomore album "Fearless." While she's developed a lot as a
singer over the last fifteen or so years, the New Year's Eve performance admittedly wasn't her best,
vocally speaking. ​​In addition, the medley marked one of the last times she performed
the track "Picture to Burn" from her debut album live; for the broadcast,
she altered the song's original lyrics about maliciously telling someone your ex is gay.
Tone-deaf lyrics aside, the real embarrassment came later,
as Swift joined other celebs on stage to watch the ball drop ... including recent
ex-boyfriend Joe Jonas. The two avoided eye contact, perhaps thinking about the
fact that Jonas had recently dumped her in an infamously-short phone call.
E! later called it, quote, "the most awkward New Year's Eve TV moment of all time."
"The Masked Singer" host and noted anti-vaxxer
Jenny McCarthy joined the team at "New Year's Rockin' Eve" in 2010.
While part of the show, McCarthy provided some of the yearly broadcast's most memorable — and most
cringe-worthy — moments, typically reporting from down in the crowd in Times Square.
In the first minutes of 2011, McCarthy kissed a "totally hot guy" in the crowd,
pretending he was a stranger, but People reported that he was in fact her boyfriend at the time.
In 2013, wearing a gigantic hat, McCarthy had an impromptu twerk session on some
unsuspecting NYPD cops, who looked alternately confused and bemused.
For a while, McCarthy would select a random man to kiss at midnight each year. That first year,
it was a police officer whose name she didn't know; on Today a few days later, she said,
"If he's out there, will you please get a hold of me?"
McCarthy did not return to see the arrival of 2020, deciding to spend the holiday with her
family instead. Calling her decade with the show "a wonderful time," she told Seacrest,
"I'm going to be so excited watching you from my sofa."
It's sometimes interesting to look back on older "New Year's Rockin' Eve" appearances, because
they serve as a tidy little time capsule of what was popular that year. See, for example, Hilary
Duff's jaunty beret and gigantic belt during her NYE performance of "Come Clean" in 2006, or
everything about Fergie's entire existence while she performed "London Bridge" the following year.
A more recent example of a performance that has nonetheless aged quickly into cringe-dom
is Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' rendition of "Thrift Shop,"
a novelty song that absolutely dominated the airwaves in 2013.
Their appearance at "New Year's Rockin' Eve" was an odd capstone to that year, and an odd way to
look forward to the next one; Macklemore sounded out of breath and out of time with the music,
and he wore a presumably-thrifted poncho that made the whole performance feel strange.
The garment came off for "Can't Hold Us," another hit, but it was hard to shake off
the sense that we were watching something so of-the-moment that it felt weird.
Not all "New Year's Rockin' Eve" performers sing live from Times Square, which is for the best;
not only can the late-December temperatures make for rough conditions, but also pre-planned
numbers streamed in from elsewhere allow for bigger stages and higher production values.
At least, that was probably the hope when the show booked Britney Spears to perform
live from "Piece of Me," her Las Vegas residency. The pop princess' contract
with Planet Hollywood limited her ability to entertain in locations other than Vegas,
but thanks to the marvel of modern technology, Spears could broadcast worldwide.
Unfortunately, though she's had many iconic television moments,
the segment was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Not only did it appear that her trademark lip-syncing was on full display,
fans also noticed — thanks to one particularly-revealing camera
angle — that Spears had bright-green gum still in her mouth while singing.
As 2009 became 2010, Jennifer Lopez rocked the "New Year's Rockin' Eve" stage for a
medley of songs that included iconic hits like "Waiting for Tonight" and "Let's Get Loud,"
in addition to a, shall we say, less-iconic single called "Louboutins".
She had made headlines for falling during the American Music Awards a couple months earlier,
but her New Year's Eve performance was, by most accounts, a rousing success.
In 2020, Jenny from the Block returned to the "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" stage for
another medley, which also doubled as a convenient advertisement for her JLo Beauty brand. This time,
the reviews were less glowing. After singing her 2020 single "In the Morning," she asked the crowd,
"How y'all feeling?!...Seventeen more minutes."
Then, she launched into a speech positioning a muted version of the usually-upbeat "Waiting
for Tonight" as an inspirational song, blending it into a cover of Aerosmith's "Dream On," which many
felt didn't suit her voice at all. Finally, while ending the medley with "Dance Again," JLo slid
right into the camera, which just felt awkward. Well, there's always next time.
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