Mariah Carey made it through her set on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” this year after bungling it last year.
Carey had technical difficulties during a live performance of her hit song “Emotions” on the ABC show in Times Square last year. She stopped singing, paced the stage and told the audience to finish the lyrics for her.
This year, she made it through cleanly despite frigid temperatures — and despite asking for hot tea that wasn’t there. She joked it was a “disaster.” Carey performed her hits, the 1990s “Vision of Love” and “Hero.”
It was the second-coldest Times Square New Year’s Eve on record. The temperature was only 10 degrees (minus 12 degrees Celsius) close to midnight. The coldest ball drop celebration was in 1917 when it was only 1 degree (minus 17 degrees Celsius).
Meanwhile, people around the world welcomed 2018 with fireworks displays, partying and an array of local traditions.
One of the first countries to welcome the new year was Australia, where fireworks exploded over the iconic Sydney Opera House as people watched from boats in the harbour nearby.
Hundreds of couples took part in a mass wedding ceremony in Jakarta, Indonesia, on New Year’s Eve designed to help the poor who were unable to afford a proper wedding.
Buddhists lit candles during New Year celebrations at Jogyesa temple in Seoul, South Korea.
In some other places, the tone was more sombre. Just hours after a fireworks display over the Taedong River in Pyongyang, North Korea, leader Kim Jong Un said in a New Year’s Day speech the country had achieved the historic feat of “completing” its nuclear forces despite U.S. opposition.
Some 100 people gathered outside the Reina nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, to remember victims of a New Year’s mass shooting a year ago. The group, holding carnations, observed a moment of silence for 39 people killed in the attack.
In Scotland, a torchlight procession began Edinburgh’s famed Hogmanay New Year’s Eve celebration.
A woman in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, threw flowers into the water to ask Yemanja, goddess of the sea, for good luck in the new year.
Revelers gathered for the annual ball drop in New York’s Times Square bundled in several layers of clothes to keep warm in frigid temperatures.
