Last night, the American Music Awards took place in Los Angeles, welcoming a host of stars from Cardi B to Twenty One Pilots in order to celebrate the last year of musical achievements. During the event, Taylor Swift got political, soul legend Gladys Knight performed a tribute for Aretha Franklin, and Mariah Carey sang her new hit, With You, live on stage.
... Or did she?
While a lot of people thought that the We Belong Together artist absolutely killed her performance, others were convinced that the star was lip-syncing throughout the whole thing.
Almost as soon as she set foot on stage, Twitter was awash with fans and critics commenting on the quality of her performance.
"Mariah Carey sucks so bad kick her off the stage with that lip sync bulls**t," wrote one person.
"Someone take Mariah to karaoke and teach her how to lipsync better," said another.
And one Twitter user even went so far as to say that the music icon had earned the right to mouth along to her own songs: "Mariah has earned her stripes so if she chose to lip sync tonight’s performance then so be it. Sis gave us “Butterfly” and for that flawless album I will always be grateful."
Carey has not confirmed or denied whether she was lip-syncing the "live" performance, but a representative did come forward to defend her for all the hard work she's put into her music and her career.
"Wow we can’t even get through five minutes without someone trying to tear her down," they said.
And it's true that Mariah has faced some harsh criticism in the past - but it's also true that she's been known to lip-sync at previous performances.
Nearly two years ago, at a 2016/17 New Year's Eve performance in Times Square, the singer struggled through her performance after mouthing the words to the wrong song. She tried to make excuses for her mistake, saying that she couldn't hear what she was supposed to be singing (though that didn't really explain why her backing track already had vocals on it).
"I’m trying to be a good sport here," she told the crowd. "We didn’t have a check for this song… we’re missing some of the vocals, but it is what it is."
In the end, she gave up on trying to save face and just held out the mic for the crowd, saying, "I’m just going to let the audience sing."
At least, this time around, there were no obvious giveaways that would suggest Mariah wasn't giving a live performance. So, if she was simply miming along, she's certainly got better at it than she was back in 2016. And if she wasn't - she absolutely killed it!
