Mariah Carey on Her 'American Idol' Tenure: 'It Was a Bleak Experience'

In case you didn't remember, Mariah Carey was a judge during "American Idol"s 12th season (yes, when it was still on Fox) and didn't have the greatest time sitting next to Keith Urban, Randy Jackson and Nicki Minaj. In fact, she now calls it a rather "bleak experience."

That stint was so horrible for her that when the singer stopped by "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" to promote her new Las Vegas show, Jimmy Kimmel asked her if she had warned her friend and former touring partner Lionel Richie about signing on for ABC's reboot.

"Is it true that you told him not to do 'American Idol' when he was thinking about whether or not he should judge it?" he asked Carey.

"If I didn't, I should have," Carey she responded to laughter from the audience.

"Oh wait, can I just clarify?" she said, coming back around to the topic a minute later. "I keep interrupting my own promotion. I wasn't saying that Lionel wouldn't be a great judge. I was just saying I didn't have the world's best experience on that –"

"Oh, I think everybody got that," Kimmel interjected.

"Oh, OK. Well just in case. Because people like to interpret things."

When Kimmel asked Carey what the worst part about the job was, she decided to instead tell him what the "best part" was, which was, of course, the memes that came out of her ape
Carey said before miming her own exasperated head shake, which, yes, has been GIF-ed

"It was bleak, darling," she added. "It was a bleak experience. We don't have to go back there. But there were some good hairstyles. It's all good. We'll stick the positives. My hairstyles were good… I mean everybody else's were great too."