The Most Embarrassing Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve Performances Of All Time

Few New Year's Eve traditions are as iconic as the ball drop in Times Square, and the broadcasting landscape is centered around that breathtaking countdown where one year becomes another. The moment signals a chance to start over, a reason to drink some champagne, have a kiss, and make some resolutions to be a better person in the 12 months ahead as we leave the stresses of the previous year behind. No broadcast is as synonymous with the ball drop as "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve," named for the legendary TV host who guided the ceremony each year starting in 1973.

Clark told the Archive of American Television, "It's very nice to be welcomed into people's celebrations. ... Though we're probably wallpaper in the background for a lot of people, when that five minutes before midnight hits, there's an awful lot of people counting down with you." In more recent years, the celebrations have been hosted by Ryan Seacrest, who took over duties when Clark suffered a stroke in 2004 and later died in 2012.

While earlier broadcasts focused more on news and pre-recorded performances from elsewhere, the 2000s saw the show expand to include live artists entertaining the crowd. This meant a new New Year's pastime: watching to see who messes up. Especially thanks to social media, "New Year's Rockin' Eve" has become a watch-along event, and we've taken a look back at some of the most embarrassing performances of all time below.

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 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, even though "Steal My Girl" is often listed as one of the band's songs that shows off his vocals best: PopCrush, for example, wrote, "We knew it was a hit as soon as Zayn started hitting notes only dogs can hear." 

However, 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. "I was soo upset ...  because I couldn't hear Zayn's high notes," one fan tweeted, before concluding in all caps, "THEY'RE NECESSARY."

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 as the New York Post reported, Lauper was surprised by the intrusion, awkwardly shouting, "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," Lauper said. "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." 

However, while it may have been in theory an admirable attempt to rouse the spirits of a nation left flagging after a tumultuous year, the new song did not translate well to television. To put it charitably, Lauper's performance sounded awkward and hollow in a Times Square left mostly empty by the pandemic. A less-charitable reaction would be one that notes that Lauper's dance moves appeared so awkward, one fan on YouTube edited the clip to extend her strange choreography. 

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 wandered around the stage complaining. While the backing track for hits like "Emotion" played unheeded, Carey's interjections — such as, "Just let the audience sing" and "Get these monitors on, please!" — went viral instantly.

Carey released a statement on Twitter a week later. "It's a shame that we were put into the hands of a production team with technical issues who chose to capitalize on circumstances beyond our control," she said, before suggesting that they were 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: "To suggest that DCP ... would ever intentionally compromise the success of any artist is defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd."

When Mimi returned to ring in 2018, she sounded better, but she still couldn't resist (hilariously) being her usual and self-proclaimed diva self: Between songs, Carey called for a hot tea she was promised, before moaning that it was a "disaster" when the tea didn't materialize.

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 instant-classic Disney song "Let It Go" was rough, to say the least. The song famously includes some gravity-defying notes in the final chorus that Menzel couldn't reach, and everything sounded raw instead of the more polished sounds that parents of soundtrack replay-happy children were used to hearing.

Time magazine noted that 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, and probably growing tired of everyone online making the exact same joke we've made in the title of this section here, Menzel shared an interview excerpt on Twitter the following morning, pointing to an answer where she had spoken about allowing herself space to make mistakes.

"I am more than the notes I hit," Menzel had said. "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, which was planted right on her lips after the ball dropped at midnight, while Gaga's face was covered by a gigantic, circular, bejeweled mask.

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." Um... whatever that means.

Mayor Bloomberg, however, couldn't avoid questions from the press about the smooch. "Lady Gaga is very charming. It was fun," he said at a press conference (via the Daily Mail). Even Bloomberg's longtime girlfriend, Diana Taylor — who was standing off to the side as the billionaire mayor planted one on the pop star — 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 NYE 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. "Now, the way that I would say that and the way that I would feel that kind of pain is a lot different," Swift later told MTV News of the lyrics that didn't age well. Ah, the 2000s.

However, 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 "the most awkward New Year's Eve TV moment of all time."

Swift returned to the show and performed again years later ... and she fell down the stairs afterward. Thankfully, the embarrassing moment was only captured in a fan's backstage cell phone video, rather than broadcast on television for the world to cringe about like they had a few years earlier.

"The Masked Singer" host and noted anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy joined the team at "New Year's Rockin' Eve" in 2010. "I was reminded how great Jenny is at live broadcasting when she recently stopped by my radio show. That day, with Dick's blessing, I invited her to join us in Times Square!" co-host Ryan Seacrest said in a statement announcing her new gig (via MTV News).

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 (via People), "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. 

"Macklemore looks like a Diced Watermelon in his poncho rn," one fan tweeted. 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 that an initial press release said featured "the largest indoor immersive stage productions in the world" (via The Hollywood Reporter). The pop princess' contract with Planet Hollywood (and her oppressive conservatorship at the time) limited her ability to entertain in locations other than Vegas, but thanks to the marvel of modern technology, Spears could broadcast worldwide.

Beforehand, things seemed to be looking up; the singer tweeted, "It's almost showtime! I just want to say thank you to the #PieceOfMe cast and crew, the city of Las Vegas, and all of the fans who came out to sing, dance and party!!" (Her renditions of "Toxic" and "Work B***h" were not just the first televised performances of 2018; NME noted that they also marked the final night of "Piece of Me.") 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. "...Oops," indeed!

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 unfortunately less glowing. After singing her 2020 single "In the Morning," she asked the crowd, "How y'all feeling?!" Unfortunately, there were not many people in Times Square due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting cheer felt sad. 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, per PopCulture. Though the multi-hyphenate is known for many things she does very well, a Steven Tyler screech is not exactly in her wheelhouse. Finally, while ending the medley with "Dance Again," JLo slid right into the camera, which felt awkward without the uproarious crowd reaction one would normally expect from such a stunt.

2021 would be JLo's year, nonetheless, even leading her to reunite with one-time flame Ben Affleck.