Celebrities Who Can't Stand Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey is a polarizing figure. No one can deny her talent, but not everyone is a fan of her uber-diva persona. In fact, some fellow celebs flat-out can't stand the "Fantasy" singer—and they're not always quiet about it. These stars all have beef with the self-proclaimed "Elusive Chanteuse."

On her SiriusXM radio show (via Fox News), Jenny McCarthy, 44, went on the offensive after Carey's disastrous New Year's Rockin' Eve performance. At first, she started out sympathetic to Carey, but got defensive of Dick Clark Productions, who Carey's manager, Stella Bulochnikov, accused of "sabotage" after the performance. "Now I do understand our egos of course want to blame everyone but itself for mistakes, but I literally had a visceral reaction to her saying that Dick Clark Productions did this on purpose and for ratings," McCarthy, who's co-hosted New Year's Rockin' Eve for the last seven years, snapped. "Dick Clark Productions has been doing this show for 45 years. So for Mariah to defame them was so incredibly insulting for the group of people who work their balls off preparing and rehearsing for their musical guests."

"The truth of the matter is, Mariah didn't do a sound check, she said it there," McCarthy—who also questioned whether Carey could see the prompter containing the lyrics to her song—added. "She did whatever you would call like a dance move rehearsal, holding her gold microphone, and she stood off to the side of the stage while she had a stand-in do a sound check." (For the record, some sources dispute McCarthy's account, and Carey was photographed rehearsing for the show.)

"Now, when you're doing a show live in Times Square, this is a location that's tough," McCarthy insisted. "Out of all the places that you're going to need to do a sound check, you do it there ... I think Mariah was nervous as hell. I think she chose really tough songs to try to sing along with. I think 'Emotions,' that song, I mean her voice is not there anymore. I don't believe there was a problem with her inner ears. I just don't. I think she used it as an excuse."

Carey didn't respond to McCarthy's account of the events.

McCarthy wasn't the only other celeb who wasn't thrilled with Carey's performance and behavior on New Year's Rockin' Eve. Singer Josh Groban tweeted, then deleted (via People), "Any time one of the greatest voices of my generation lip syncs, an angel loses its wings." However, he backtracked shortly after, writing, "Deleted my tweets about a certain performance because it was made in humor but taken way more meanly [sic] than intended. Not out to diss artists."

Carey's beef with Nicki Minaj was televised...a lot. Before season 12 of American Idol even began airing in 2013, footage leaked of the two judges at each other's throats. In one viral clip from auditions, Minaj snaps, "I told them I'm not putting up with her f**king highness no more...I'm not gonna sit here every f**king minute to have you come down and harass me every minute every day." Then, Minaj really got mad, snapping, "Think this s**t is a f**king joke? Say one more f**king disrespectful thing to me. Off with your head."

After the video leaked, there were even reports that Minaj threatened Carey's life with a gun, which Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe, as well as Minaj herself, adamantly denied.

The feud continued throughout the entire season, with Minaj laying into Mariah Carey on Twitter and calling her "insecure," and Carey shading Minaj in an interview with Barbara Walters.

However, Carey later told the Kyle And Jackie O show (via BET). "Let's just say, I don't think they had any intentions of us having a good experience through that show. Pitting two females against each other wasn't cool...It should have been about the contestants instead of about some non-existent feud that turned into even more ridiculousness."

For her part, Minaj told Ellen in January 2013, "It was just two big old divas I guess...before I went in there I heard all the stuff that was being said but I didn't believe it. I heard them saying Mariah doesn't want you on the panel but I was like, 'No. I am friends with Mariah.' I went there and I started to feel a bit of the shade, and I just kind of over compensated by being crazier. It's like a defense mechanism...Your feelings are hurt and you can't believe it so you kind of just compensate with being crazy." She concluded, "We're fine. I cannot hold a grudge against Mariah Carey. What people don't understand is that I've looked up to her for so many years."

Carey's allegedly controlling ex-husband, Tommy Mottola, was accused of sabotaging her after their divorce. On Jennifer Lopez's second album, J.LO, her track "I'm Real" samples the classic disco song "Firecracker" by Yellow Magic Orchestra. Carey had allegedly planned to sample "Firecracker" for "Loverboy," her lead single from her 2001 soundtrack to Glitter, a Sony film, and had to scrap it and use a different sample ("Candy" by Cameo) for the song, which ended up not being a hit.

Another track on Glitter was Carey's duet "If We" with Ja Rule, which was supposed to be a slower "give and take" vocal. So, imagine her surprise when Lopez's "I'm Real" remix dropped, featuring a slower "give and take" vocal with Ja Rule. If you thought it was a coincidence, we have some magic beans to sell you, and Irv Gotti revealed that it was all very deliberate on Mottola's part.

Gotti told XXL (via Fox News), "Ja wrote a song with him and Mariah singing back and forth on the title track. I get a call from Tommy Mottola, who I have a great relationship with, and he's like, 'I need you to do me a favor. I want you to do this remix for Jennifer Lopez. I want you to put Ja on the record.' Immediately I knew what he was doing because we just finished the Mariah record." A Glitter insider revealed to Fox News that Mottola was actually spying on Carey, the recording sessions for the tracks, and the filming of the movie.

The publisher of "Firecracker" said, "Mariah Carey called us to license a sample from "Firecracker" first. Then, within a month, Jennifer Lopez also called for it." The publisher also noted that prior to the two divas, no one had ever made an attempt to sample the song.

Carey was able to use the sample shadiness to get out of her Sony contract and away from the seemingly vindictive Mottola for good.

Phew! After all that went down with Lopez and Mottola, Carey appeared on a foreign TV show and was asked how she feels about Lopez. Carey offered a pretty diplomatic, "I don't know her," and immediately launched a thousand memes.

It's unclear whether Lopez even knew what was happening with Mottola behind closed doors.

Lopez kept mum about their alleged beef and never publicly commented on it until 2014, when she told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live (via Yahoo! Celebrity), "I know from back in the day, I've read things that she's said about me that were not the greatest, but we have never met. Like, we don't know each other. I think it's kind of from word of mouth of things that have happened in the past that I'm not really aware of. I would love to meet her and I would love to be friends with her...I think she's incredibly talented and I've always been a fan of hers...I just love her. It saddens me to hear anything that's negative because I'm a fan of hers."

In May 2015, Lopez was busted texting during Carey's Billboard Music Awards performance, later telling Cohen once more on Watch What Happens Live, "It was a long performance! I watched most of it! I may have looked down for one second. So not fair." In 2016, she Wendy Williams that Carey must be "forgetful."

A few months later, in her own Watch What Happens Live segment, when Cohen asked Carey yet again if she knows Lopez, she responded, "I've spoken to you at least three times, right? I mean, we've had many conversations together. Do you think I know your every waking thought? If somebody asked me, we've met, we've spoken, we've had conversations, we've talked. I know you."

After Carey rejected Eminem in the early 2000s (or just denied dating him, depending on who you ask), he apparently got really upset. He started fairly diplomatically, telling Rolling Stone in 2002, "I just don't like her as a person." Carey responded by shading him during her tour in 2003 with a marionette in his likeness. Then he really got mad, playing voicemails allegedly from Carey during his own tour in 2005. In 2006, he told Shade 45 that he and Carey dated for "six or seven months" and claimed that her denial that anything happened between them bothered him. He then spoke of her in very vulgar terms about her on his 2006 song "Jimmy Crack Corn," then again on "Bagpipes From Baghdad" in 2009. Carey retaliated with her "Obsessed" video the same year, and then he flipped out again, releasing another vulgar track, "The Warning," in 2010.

Carey got the last laugh (so far) when Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen asked her to say nice things about Eminem in 2014.

Christina Aguilera met her match when she attempted to shade the Shade Queen in 2006. Aguilera told GQ, "One time, we were at a party and I think she got really drunk, and she had just really derogatory things to say to me," adding, "But it was at that time that she had that breakdown, so she might have been very medicated" (via People).

That didn't end well for Aguilera, because Carey's subsequent shade pretty much owned her. "I had hoped that Christina was in a better place now than the last time I saw her, when she showed up uninvited at one of my parties and displayed questionable behavior," Carey told Access Hollywood (via Pop Sugar). "It is sad yet predictable that she would use my name at this time to reinvent past incidents for her promotional gain. It is in my heart to forgive and I will keep her in my prayers."

Aguilera then backtracked in a big way, but then in 2015 may have thrown shade again. A source told The National Enquirer (via Celeb Dirty Laundry) that Aguilera criticized artists Carey, Lopez, and Britney Spears for having Las Vegas residencies. "I won a Grammy this year," she reportedly said. "Why would I go to Vegas and join Britney and Mariah in an oldies act? I don't have to spend three nights a week reliving the past."

Outspoken and "Confident," Demi Lovato didn't think twice about voicing her real opinion of  Mariah Carey, even though no one actually asked her about it directly. In June 2016, a fan posted a meme of Carey alongside Ariana Grande that read, "When you order it online vs. when it arrives." Lovato commented (via Page Six), "You got it the wrong way around, honey." She added, "Mariah is a legend and so talented but constantly disses people. It's nasty the way she treats Jennifer. Ari did nothing wrong...Jen keeps it classy but I'm afraid to say s**t. The woman is mean for no reason. Extremely talented? Yes. Superhuman? Possibly. Unnecessarily rude? Absolutely."

Carey didn't take kindly to the comments, responding in December 2016 on Watch What Happens Live, "I don't know her either and so I wouldn't say anything to her. She should come up, introduce herself to me, say, 'Here's my opinion, what do you think about it?' That's how you handle s**t, OK?"

Miley Cyrus shaded Carey in the October 2016 issue of Elle. "I've never really been a fan, because it's so much about Mariah Carey," she said. "That's part of her shtick; I can see through that. That's part of what makes her a gay icon; like, it's about Mimi! It's about what she's wearing, and it's about her. What I make isn't about me. It's about sharing my story; it's about someone being connected to what I'm saying." She added, "That's why you don't see me, like, on the sides of buses, selling s**t. I mean, what am I going to do—sell makeup? Mostly, I tell people, 'Don't wear makeup.'...I don't really [wear makeup] for the contestants, because some of these girls come from f**king Arkansas with cake face on. Like, I don't want these kids to come out here and wear a bunch of makeup." She may have been referring to Carey's deal with MAC cosmetics, which launched a festive and successful holiday line.

Even talk show host Wendy Williams chimed in, saying on her show, "Miley, it is about you. We all know that Mariah could sing you under the table...to me Mariah is the real deal, and Miley is a carnival act."

When Andy Cohen asked Carey about Cyrus on Watch What Happens Live, Mimi dismissed the former Hannah Montana star (who also shilled a lot of wares since back in her Disney days). "I think we met in a bathroom or something," she said with a wave of her hand.

Madonna was once quoted back in the 1990s as saying Mariah Carey is "not particularly bright" and reportedly said she'd "rather kill herself" than be the "One Sweet Day" songbird. Carey responded with her legendary shade, telling reporters, "I haven't really paid that much attention to Madonna since I was in seventh or eighth grade when she used to be popular, so I didn't hear that."