Checkout this video from Down Under where someone tapped into Britney Spears’ microphone during concerts.
Vocals from an SNL performance way-back-when. Can’t find the original clip on YouTube (copyright perhaps?), but there are plenty of the later-redubbed DVD release.
I suppose she can, but she rarely does; autotune and prerecorded tracks take care of those pesky non-dance details.
I expect that she can, being groomed up through Star Search and Disney performances. With her adult career and Autotune, however, she has never needed to sing on pitch anymore.
Few singers can sing and dance at the same time. It’s hard to stay on pitch when you’re running out of breath from dancing.
Yes, she can, and she’s very good at it. Unfortunately the star maker machine doesn’t feel that’s where the ROI is going to come from.
I’d bet money that this is exactly it. She probably can sing, and well. But so can lots of people. What lots of people can’t do is look like Britney and be willing to whore themselves out as thoroughly as she is.
I think Lakai has it right – it’s impossible (or nearly so) to do the kind of energetic performance Spears does and keep on tune as well, so you wouldn’t expect a mike-up of her during a concert to actually sound that good. (Which is why they don’t actually play that through the speakers at her concerts.) But on her albums (at least the first three, which are the ones I’ve got) (you heard me), it’s pretty obvious what parts are sung and what parts are digitally enhanced, so I think she probably can sing. And of course she sounds nothing like the really heavily auto-tuned folks.
And as always when the subject of Spears’ early works enters my head, I’m now going to be humming “Lucky” to myself for the next three days, so thanks for that.
–Cliffy
Spears can carry a tune, she ain’t no Minnie Ripperton, but who is? 
One of the issues I noticed with singers, moreso starting in the 80s is that when they make an album they don’t do a set of takes. You can literally have one song on a CD sung 100 times and then the producer takes those takes and splices the parts together. With digital this is even easy.
<rant> to me that is not producing that is trial and error </rant>
So the singers don’t sound like their records, because you are not hearing a true representation.
Contrast this to someone like Jo Stafford, in the 1940s. If you listen to her sing live at WWII rallies and such, she sound identical to her records. Indeed Jo Stafford says “We used to record two side in 90 minutes” She also admits she often didn’t know the material very well.
Diana Ross says when she made Mahogany they were so worried about how people would react to her acting that they were determained for her to have a Number One single. Ross says she recorded the theme to that movie so many times that not more than 10 seconds on the record is from one take.
So a lot of the digital manipulation prevents us from hearing singers as they are.
Question–I’m not familiar with music so sorry if this is a stupid thing to ask. But isn’t splicing together lots of parts doing a set of takes? Or, what do you mean by a “set of takes”?
Haven’t seen a lot of high school aged girls in the past, oh, 6 or 7 years have you?
In her defense, I never drove through New Mexico in the middle of the night with any Brittney Spears songs on such heavy rotation that I wanted to murder her and her progeny, even though Maya Rudolph turned out funny, though I don’t find her attractive.
Once upon a time,yes. And, inthis mildly Engrishy video, some Youtuber lays out the case she lost it around the turn of the millennium.
I blame Federline. But I blame lots of things on Federline, so take that with a grain of salt.
NO
There was a time when bands not only sang, but also played their own instruments.