Flipping through the stations during commercials, my friend and I stopped on the Olympic Closing Ceremonies. He started going on about how no one every sings live anymore. They record it at the studio and then just lip sync (or lip sing?) it. WTF is the point of a live performance anymore. He started telling me how for the last few years even the National Anthem at the Super Bowl has been pre recorded!
That is awful! I feel this is truly an outrage. Why even have the performer there at all now? Why not just play the stupid tape??
At first I did not believe him. I figured there was just something so morally wrong with fake live performances that they would never be committed! The huge group of singing kids was rather suspect… then that one young chick started singing on the pedestal- there was a strong wind blowing but none was picked up by the microphone! Boo I say! Booooooo! What a sham!!! I feel cheated and disgusted at the same time!!
Before I get all upset, he is correct, right?? Anyone else notice any awful pretend live performances lately? Maybe one where the singer stopped or coughed and the song kept going? I hope so!!! Serves the bastards right!!
When will this insult to real performers end? Or will it get worse? Like fake concerts?!?
[sup]I hope this has not been discussed before… If it has, go ahead and hate me! ;)[/sup]
FYI, Just this summer some bubble-gum pop female singer (Britney Spears, or some such clone) had her lip synch tape break (or get turned off) mid-performance! Yuk, yuk.
I don’t have any details, but maybe someone else can fill in the blanks.
I haven’t been to that many concerts lately, but in the recent ones where I’ve been close enough to the stage to tell, they haven’t been lip syncing. A lot of your special events(Super Bowl, Olympics, etc.) do have lip synced performances, but, in my experience, concerts have not done so. Given, the last big concert I went to was Barenaked Ladies, and they’re probably not good people to judge by. There were several parts during the performance where a word was forgotten, or some weird background noise filtered in. It was definitely all done live.
So, I guess the short answer is, sometimes, yes. But I bet there’s more performances done live than recorded.
Well I’ve been to Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and AC/DC concerts just this year and I know none of them were faked as there are some mistakes like missed lyrics bad notes etc.
I’ve only even been to one show that I thought might have been recorded and that was WASP. don’t know for sure though.
My purely unscientific opinion is that more and more performances are faked like this. Need I cite the hokey performances in the Macy’s Turkey Day Parade? The few televised halftime shows I’ve seen seem to be in the same category. Personally, I think this speaks to a lack of REAL talent - studio synthesis is today’s star-maker.
Where are the singers that can REALLY belt one out to the back row??? I miss Ethel Merman… <sigh>
There seems to be a very disturbing trend among the sickening bubblegum pop crap purveyors like Britney Spears and her army of clones to lip sync at many of their perfomances. The shows are more of a theatrical production than if you went to see a regular band or group performing, be it Dave Matthews or the Boston Pops.
Almost all “big time” events where there are musical performances use lip syncing. This is to minimize any potential technical or human problems such as instruments not being miked correctly or a singer forgetting the words (which has happened). Since these events are usually rigidly timed (ie halftime at the Super Bowl) music tracks are used instead of risking a technical mishap.
The lip syncing at the Olympics was pretty bad. I did notice though that the guy from Men At Work was singing live, because he improvised a little. The guy playing the flute, however, couldn’t even keep up with the music track.
What I noticed was that the poppier, more bubblegum acts were lip synching, while the more “serious” artists sang live. It was relatively easy to tell them apart, you could hear every note of the lip synchers perfectly, while the sound quality of the live singers was fairly abysmal.
Keith
This goes back a while. Back in '87, I had front row seats to a Run-DMC concert. They were singing (OK, OK, rapping) live OVER a recording. I was close enough to hear the difference when they would pause for breath, and the tape would continue.
The bubblegummers often forgo actually singing so that they can concentrate on doing their (admittably complex) choreography. They’ve admitted as much.
Almost all of your bubblegum stars nowdays use a voice modulator that makes the notes they’re singing “true” whether or not they can hit them correctly.
But hey, it’s all about projecting an image, right? Who cares if they can sing or not.
I don’t believe I’ve ever been to a lip-synched concert. I think I’d walk out if I ever suspected I was being done that way.
The last concert I went to was just a couple of weeks ago. We saw Peter Green & John Mayall. Awesome show. The club they were playing had no seats, so everyone had to stand. We were about three feet from the stage. One of the guys in Peter Green’s band, Nigel Watson, was singing, and all of a sudden, he was horribly off-key. I mean, the man was in a completely different county than the rest off the band. My husband suspects that maybe his monitor went out or something, because it’s not like he just whiffed a note or two. It was awful. He’d been fine all night, and he eventually got back on track, but for at least a full two minutes, he and the band were playing in completely different clubs.
But that’s why I love live music. Stuff like that lets you know that it’s live.
There were several parts during the performance where a word was forgotten, or some weird background noise filtered in. It was definitely all done live.