A global diva, an Italian classic, and a football stadium full of judges: of course, the Winter Olympics opening ceremony turned into a lip-sync trial.
Mariah Carey walks into the San Siro in a white gown to sing “Volare” in Italian, and somehow the real sport of the night became watching her mouth more closely than the figure skaters’ feet.
By the time she hit the big notes, social media had already declared a different kind of gold medal: “Worst lip sync in years.”
The Moment
At the 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Milan’s San Siro stadium, Mariah Carey took the stage early in the show to perform “Volare,” the 1958 Italian standard that’s basically musical wallpaper in every espresso bar on earth.
She was in full goddess mode: flowing white dress, wind machine, the whole nine yards. But viewers at home and in the stadium zeroed in on one thing – her lips didn’t always seem to be matching the sound coming out of the speakers.
Clips spread fast on X, with users accusing the 55-year-old of phoning it in, calling the performance “stiff,” “awful lip syncing,” and saying she looked like she was “reading off a teleprompter.” Some complained her mouth was moving slower than the audio; others said she didn’t even bother to pretend she was really singing.
The Take
Let’s start here: no one hires Mariah Carey for subtlety. You book that voice and that persona, and you know you’re getting big hair, big notes, and a contract longer than the Olympic torch relay.
So the outrage over apparent lip-syncing at a massive, tightly produced global broadcast is… selective, at best.
Opening ceremonies are television events first, live concerts second. They’re choreographed within an inch of their lives. Weather, camera angles, stadium acoustics, timing to the second – producers love a pre-recorded vocal the way skaters love a well-cut blade.
Is it disappointing if you believed you were getting 100% live, in-Italian, high-wire Mariah in an open-air football stadium in February? Sure. Is it shocking? Not even a little.
What people are really mad about is that it looked fake. The spell broke. If you’re going to lip-sync, there’s an unspoken deal: keep the illusion intact. Hit your marks, sell the emotion, don’t let us see the seams.
The problem isn’t that Mariah might have mimed – it’s that she allegedly mimed badly, and at the Olympics, where the whole point is effort.
Add in the cultural politics: an American superstar singing an Italian classic, in Italian, at Italy’s big moment. Italians have their own legends who could have done “Volare” in their sleep. So when the performance appeared off, it didn’t just feel lazy; to some viewers, it felt like a snub.
But there’s another layer nobody wants to say out loud: we’ve watched Mariah for three decades. We’ve seen the prime, the comebacks, the New Year’s Eve mic issues, the memes. People arrive with a narrative loaded and ready. One shaky-looking performance – real or perceived – and it’s instantly filed under “diva past her prime,” whether that’s fair or not.
Meanwhile, opera training, decades of hits, and an insane vocal range don’t simply evaporate because a stadium show might use a backing track. If anything, the Olympics probably wanted the promise of perfection more than the risk of a cracked note in front of billions.
Receipts
Confirmed
- Mariah Carey performed “Volare” during the 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony at San Siro stadium in Milan, wearing a flowing white dress, according to on-site reporting and broadcast footage from the event.
- Multiple clips shared on X by viewers show apparent mismatches between Carey’s lip movements and the audio, leading many users to allege she was lip-syncing.
- Social media posts during the ceremony described the performance as “awful lip syncing,” “stiff,” and “the worst lip sync performance…in years,” echoing the backlash described in a Feb. 6, 2026, sports report.
- Carey has a documented background in vocal training and is known for her wide vocal range and whistle notes, as noted in long-standing music press profiles and biographies.
Unverified / Still Unknown
- Whether the Olympics production team officially required or encouraged a pre-recorded vocal track for Carey’s segment.
- Whether Carey sang live over a guide track, fully mimed to a pre-record, or used a mix of both, she and her team have not publicly clarified as of this writing.
- Any specific technical issues (audio delay, broadcast sync problems) that may have contributed to the appearance of lip-syncing.
Backstory (For the Casual Reader)
If you dipped out of pop radio somewhere around 2005, a refresher: Mariah Carey has been one of the defining voices in mainstream music since the early 1990s, famous for five-octave high notes, Christmas dominance, and a carefully curated diva persona. She’s also had her share of live-performance scrutiny – most infamously, a glitch-riddled New Year’s Eve TV performance years back that turned into a meme factory.
In the modern era of giant televised events – Super Bowls, award shows, Olympic ceremonies – it’s common for artists to sing over pre-recorded tracks or, in some cases, mime entirely, especially in tricky outdoor venues. The trade-off is supposed to be this: the audience gets big, cinematic perfection, and the artist gets protection from a headline-making disaster. The Mariah-in-Milan reaction shows how fragile that bargain has become. Viewers want perfection and proof it’s real, in 4K close-up… and they’re ready to pounce the second they think they’ve caught the magic trick.
Your turn: When it comes to massive TV spectacles like the Olympics, would you rather have a risky but truly live vocal – cracks and all – or a polished performance that might be mostly (or entirely) on tape?
Sources: A Feb. 6, 2026 British tabloid sports report on the Milan opening ceremony; widely shared viewer clips and commentary from the Olympic opening broadcast on X, captured Feb. 6-7, 2026.
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