It appears the first axe has fallen in the wake of the Mariah Carey New Year's Eve lip-syncing fiasco.
The singer will no longer work with her longtime creative director, tour choreographer and dancer Anthony Burrell, according to Entertainment Tonight.
"He's not being brought back [in 2017] for a number of reasons," an unnamed source told the outlet.
The source claims that it was Burrell's decision to move Carey's backup singers off her main stage - and onto the base of the audience risers - to make room for more dancers.
Burrell allegedly made this call without the approval of Carey or her management team, and the switch "left Mariah without any support", the source explained. Had they been closer, the backup singers could have helped Carey pick up cues after her inner earpiece failed, leaving her unable to hear the music - or at least provided emotional support.
Burrell tweeted about the performance on Monday, defending Carey.
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There have been multiple explanations about what went wrong on stage that night. Carey's team implied earlier this week that she was the victim of "sabotage", accusing the production company of ignoring her complaints that her earpieces weren't working.
Dick Clark Productions fired back, saying the accusation was "defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd".
Today, Carey herself spoke out for the first time about the performance, saying: "It's not going to stop me from doing a live event in the future. But it will make me less trusting of using anyone outside of my own team."
Kate Storey is the author of White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port and the senior features editor at Rolling Stone. She was previously a staff writer at Esquire, where she covered culture and politics, and has written long-form profiles and narrative features for Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Town & Country, and other publications.
