Mariah Apologizes to Fans for Releasing the “Wrong” Version of New Single

When it comes to music, Mariah Carey is a notorious perfectionist, so you can imagine how she felt when she realized that the big unveiling of her new single "The Art of Letting Go" was one big fail: the wrong version of the song was uploaded to her Facebook page, and that's the one that everybody heard.

In a lengthy Facebook posting, Mariah explains what happened, blaming it on "a brand new sound engineer whose only task was to press the space bar and upload the song to Facebook."  She says she and her team were too busy celebrating and listening to the "real" version on her iPod, as well as answering fans' questions online, so she didn't notice until she got the bad news Thursday morning.

So why is she making such a big deal out of it?  Why not just upload the "real" version and be done with it?  Because, as Mariah explains, "Every nuance of the beat or vocal matters to me. Even if the differences may seem slight to you, I had put time, effort and emotions into 'The Art of Letting Go' and the real mix is how I intended for you to hear the song....this is something I'm upset about and I wish I would have known sooner."

She adds, "Rather than remove the old version from Facebook (the iTunes version is the real one), I just figured I would put up the real mix and allow you to listen to it back-to-back, should you choose to do so and tell me what you think the differences are."  She then offers a list of questions she'd like fans to consider, including, "1. Can you hear a difference at all? 2. Can you see why I like this version better? 3. Where can you hear the differences? 4. Does the song affect you different emotionally after hearing the real version?"

Mariah admits that she may sound like "a self absorbed diva on a 'woe-is-me' tangent," but tells fans, "The reality is this is me, focusing solely on the record, wanting you to hear it and experience it the right way."

The "real" version feature