Singer says the only reason she sounded “off” was because of the 13-year-old girl

Dec 21, 2012 08:06 GMT  ·  By

The other night on X Factor USA, for the Divas Duet night, Carly Rose Sonenclar, the 13-year-old singing sensation on Team Britney was paired with none other than LeAnn Rimes. The duet turned out pretty bad, and LeAnn is now blaming Carly for it.

As we also informed you at the time, the instant the duet aired, rumors started making the rounds that LeAnn was either under the influence or was not feeling well.

She forgot the words to the song at least on two separate and very obvious occasions, she seemed to be trying to out-sing Carly even though this was supposed to be the girl’s night and, at one point, she clung to Carly as if she needed balance.

Because of all this, many believed LeAnn was drunk. You can see the video below to judge for yourself.

Rimes is always up to speed with most things written about her online, so she issued a statement through her publicist to TMZ to say that the only reason she sounded “off” was because she was performing with an inexperienced little girl.

If anything, she was trying to help Carly handle the difficult song.

“I was trying to help this 13-year-old girl who was having some trouble with the song,” Rimes says through her publicist.

And then there’s more from the rep himself: “LeAnn was not performing the way she would normally perform, because she was on stage with a young girl. There have been a lot of untrue things said by others and it feeds into this sort of thing.”

Oddly enough, after TMZ ran this story, LeAnn issued another statement to say her previous one was made up. Presumably, she doesn’t want to be perceived as if she’s taking it out on a 13-year-old girl.

“It's a shame that gossip and lies are overshadowing the performance of Carly. It was an amazing opportunity to share this experience with Carly and I know I'll be watching for her to win tonight,” she says.

At the end of the day, though, it might not even matter why her performance was so bad: the people at home seem to have already decided that, of the two, Carly was the one who actually did wonderfully and behaved like a true pro.