The ritual of performing has mesmerized humans for thousands of years. When done well, it has the ability to touch us emotionally, to affect us in uniquely transformative ways. When a musician, or a dancer, or an actor, or any artist, takes the stage, whether it's the Metropolitan Opera or a dusty street corner, an audience can become spellbound by the act.
This is also why humans have, over nearly as long a period of time, sought to pull back the cloak of mystery, to expose frauds, to tear down what they love. All to protect the sanctity of true art, of course.
And this is where lip-syncing comes in. This dark art has fascinated the public for decades, an interest that has coincided with the notion of authenticity in performance. Johnny Rotten was off-key during the Sex Pistols show at Winterland? Who cares. It's the polished pop singers that most come under the unforgiving lens of the microscope. When it came out that Whitney Houston had lip-synced her 1991 Super Bowl performance of the National Anthem, (most of) the world was shocked. The ensuing two decades though, have seen the public become more sympathetic to the plight of the live performer. Now, it is assumed that Super Bowl vocalists "sing" to a pre-recorded track: How could they not? Why take a chance? There's no way they could ensure a proper sound for the audience, not to mention an adequate monitor situation for the performers, in so short a set-up time. Jennifer Hudson lip-synced the Anthem at this past February's Super Bowl. We knew that, but we were cool. We're used to it now. We get it. And doubtless the ubiquity of quantity-over-quality digital audio also has something to do with our changed attitudes.
In fact, all we ask of our huge stars is that they don't stick it back in our faces; that they at least make some effort to act like they're really singing. We don't want to be reminded of the realities of what we're watching.
This is why the Ashlee Simpson hoedown so captured our imagination, and derision. We were confused as to how a professional act on a long-running, professional show could have so spectacularly collapsed. The infamous Simpson jig before the show cut to commercial only amplified the ridiculous nature of the situation. All of a sudden, we the viewers found ourselves staring Behind The Curtain. Nothing was there, and so we laughed at Simpson, but also subconsciously, or consciously, we wondered why the hell we spent time watching these people. We felt stupid.
So now in 2009, the public's attitude toward lip-syncing can be summed thusly:
1. We know you're lip-syncing. That's fine.
2. Don't make it obvious you are lip-syncing.
3. Please actually have the talent you purport to have.
It was that third item that was at the heart of yesterday's Beyonce brouhaha. On his radio show, Howard Stern played some audio of Beyonce's Today show performance in November. What we heard was Beyonce's isolated vocal - not what the audience at home and in person heard, but rather what Beyonce sang while the pre-recorded vocal was beamed out. When artists lip-sync onstage, they're not silently mouthing along - they've gotta sing, otherwise it looks fake. It was that vocal track that Stern had. You should listen - it's awful.
It's also fake. Hours after the audio hit the internet, the nature of the hoax was revealed: pitch distortion had been used liberally. Beyonce really was NOT that off-key. Beyonce had denied all along that the track was real, and was proven right. And so now will we become desensitized even further? Technology has made it possible to improve performances, as well as to sabotage them; it's an Auto-tune world. Now we can't even be sure if the unheard voices behind the lip-synced performances are real. But should we care either way?
( Blender Blog by Conrad Doucette - http://www.blender.com )
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