Mariah Carey performs during the Mariah Carey's Christmas Time tour on Saturday, Nov 23, 2024, at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Photo: AP
Mariah Carey abruptly cancelled her Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, concert hours before showtime on Wednesday (Dec 11) after revealing she’d caught the flu.
“Pittsburgh, I am sorry to say, I’ve come down with the flu,” the 55-year-old songstress wrote on X just after 4pm. “It breaks my heart that I unfortunately have to cancel tonight’s show. I love you all so much.”
The performance at the PPG Paints Arena was supposed to be the latest stop on Mariah Carey’s Christmas Time Tour, a 20-city trek scheduled to close out in New York next week.
Her next show is scheduled for Friday (Dec 13) at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, followed by Belmont Park’s UBS Arena on Sunday, then wrapping up at Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center on Dec 16.
It wasn’t clear as of Wednesday whether her illness would keep her from any of her upcoming dates in the NYC area.
Fans responded to Carey’s cancellation announcement with well wishes (“Your health comes first”), sympathy (“Feel better queen”), advice (“Drink some chamomile tea”) and an overall outpouring of love.
It doesn’t appear the Pittsburgh concert will be rescheduled, though Ticketmaster assured fans they’d receive a full refund.
The Christmas Time Tour, which Carey does each year, has been billed as the superstar’s “grandest spectacle to date.” It celebrates the 30th anniversary of her 1994 album Merry Christmas, which includes the classic All I Want for Christmas Is You.
The iconic holiday tune proved its mettle once again, returning this week to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, an event her 13-year-old twins Moroccan and Monroe commemorated Monday with a surprise flower delivery onstage in Raleigh, North Carolina. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
