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Jewish World Review Feb. 4, 2013/ 24 Shevat, 5773 Here's the beef about lip-syncing By Mitch Albom
I won't bother telling you about the roar of the surf, the 100 yards worth of extension cords or carrying a Fender Rhodes piano across the sand. What I will say is, halfway through the first song, our band was attacked by bees. And we had to keep singing. They swarmed around. And we had to keep singing. We swatted with one hand, strummed guitars or hit a drum with the other. And we had to keep singing. I am sure we sounded terrible. We didn't sound very good without insects. But the point was, live performance was live performance. If we had been allowed to lip-sync, we could have used both hands to spray bug repellent and still sounded better than we did. So Sunday night, when Unlike what she did at President Obama's inauguration. "I am a perfectionist," "It was about the president and the inauguration, and I wanted to make him and my country proud, so I decided to sing along with my pre-recorded track, which is very common in the music industry." Now, there seems to be some confusion here, because singing along with a music track is not lip-syncing, it's karaoke. And if that's what But whether Personally, I blame dancing. Much of the time, when you see lip-synced performances, it's because the singers are so busy hoofing it up, they have no wind left to actually sing. If you really heard them, in the midst of all those twists, jumps and violent body shakes, it would sound like, "I . . . huh-huh-huh . . . love . . . whoo-whoo . . . grnnnzy . . . gasp, ehhhhh, gasp . . . ."
Since when did singers say that? It was easier in the old days. In the old days, you had a lead singer and backup singers, and the backups did all the dance moves, while the lead just, well, sang. Think You never expected Gladys to do that. But today, singers from Madonna to The thing about using a pre-recorded vocal is that even vocals aren't true vocals anymore. When singers record in a studio today, everything from echo to pitch correction to doubling or tripling the voice is done by engineers who -- with current equipment -- could make So when you lip-sync to your own voice, you're still getting the benefit of all that electronic assistance. It's like throwing down some pepperoni and claiming you made the whole pizza. Having said all this, let's be clear: there is no doubt But Sunday night, I'm sure, she will demonstrate her amazing talent. The true test, however, will not be how The true test comes when and if they release those bees.
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