Entertainment & Arts
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How to Tell When Your Favorite Artist is Lip Syncing


Lip syncing isn’t always a bad thing


There are a number of reasons why an artist would lip sync. It’s not always because “oh they can’t sing live.”
Some of the best vocalists of all time would still lip sync from time to time. So I don’t want y'all to think that I’m being a hater lol.

I like all these artists that I’m using as examples. I think they’re all extremely talented and they have proven that they can in fact sing live.

How to Tell When Your Favorite Artist is Lip Syncing

- Vocal preservation:

These artists are on tour singing for 2 hours every night, in 100 shows, for a year straight. Even someone with perfect vocal technique is gonna need to rest their voice to prevent damage. So artists will lip a couple songs or just the hard parts of a song to prevent losing or damaging their voice.

-Choreography:
Artists who are known for intense choreography will lip to the track for dance break downs. You gotta do what you gotta do for the sake of performance lol

How to Tell When Your Favorite Artist is Lip Syncing

-They are forced to

Certain events will require the performing artists to lip sync. For example, The Macys Thanksgiving Parade. Every song is lip synced. I’ve heard it’s because the cold temperature affects the microphones although that doesn’t sound entirely true.

Michelle from The Mamas and the Papas protested being required to lip sync on the Ed Sullivan show by eating a banana while “singing” lol

They’re Lip Syncing to the Studio Version of the Song

This is the most obvious…

There are times where singers will lip sync to the same track that we hear on the radio. It’s pretty easy to notice and that’s why singers don’t do it often.

They will usually prerecord a new ‘live sounding’ version or even take the audio from a previous performance in order to sound more convincing. People usually take hearing the artist taking breaths or skipping words as an indication that it must be live. Thats not always the case. They purposely lip to tracks that sound live.

Michael Jackson would lip sync to his original songs very often.

His iconic 1983 performance of Billie Jean was lip synced. As you can hear, this is the original studio version of the song. Nothing about it sounds live. It’s completely identical to the actual song.


Now there is a chance that maybe he was singing live and then the producers edited the track over it just for quality purposes. Either way, this is not live singing that we’re hearing.

Facial Expressions and Body Language

Sometimes it’s easy to tell that a vocal performance is not live by the look on the singers face…

When they dont have to focus on the singing, they can focus on looking pretty instead lol.

you’ll see a singer smiling big, winking at the camera, fixing their hair all while simultaneously hitting a high 20 second sustained belt. Yeah I don’t buy it, bitch lmaooo.

It’s also a lot easier to tell when you’re a big fan of an artist and you’ve watched many performances. You start to pick up that their body language when they’re singing live vs lip syncing changes.

For example, y’all know I love Ariana Grande lol. I religiously watch her performances. I can tell when she’s not singing live pretty much immediately.

Her body language changes drastically. She holds the mic really close to her lips so you can’t see that she’s lip syncing. She doesn’t put the mic down at all. She tilts her head back and does this weird leaning thing to the side. She closes her eyes. she's just not a good lip syncer…

I can also pick up on Beyoncé’s lip syncing body language. She closes her eyes, tilts her head down, etc.

i’ll mention MJ again. He would put his head down and put his hand over his lips. He would turn his back to the audience a lot…

When you have no life like me and you just analyze pop performances all day, you pick up on these habits lol.

They Use the Same Tracks Over and Over Again…

This is another one that you’ll only notice if you watch several performances of the same song. Theyre not gonna prerecord a different track for every concert on a tour. It’s the same track. So you can compare and contrast and notice sometimes the vocals are identical.

”but it’s their voice! Of course they’re gonna sound the same every time!”

Wrong.

Even a perfect vocalist is not gonna sound identical for 100 concerts… especially if we’re comparing complex belts and runs. Sometimes performances are so identical that you can layer the audio on top of each other and you won’t hear the difference.

That’s just not realistic.

The Singing is TOO Perfect

Im not denying that there are artists who are capable of providing a pretty perfect vocal performance… Just because someone sounds good doesn’t mean it’s not live. I realize that.
Sometimes the vocals are just a little TOO perfect for the circumstances..

Singers are gonna be out of breath when hitting hard choreography. They’re not gonna have pristine vocals while doing a damn back flip on stage. No matter how good they are.

Or sometimes the vocals just SOUND prerecorded and even auto tuned. It’s one thing to lip sync to your own live vocal track. But lipping to a track that is already edited is kinda crazy lol

here's a clip of Beyonce performing at VMAs years ago.

I don’t think this performance is entirely lipped. The first song certainly is though.
there's no way that she sounds like that upside down while shaking her head like that.

They miss their cue…

y'all are probably thinking “notice how all the examples are pop singers! Thats why I listen to rock ! Blah blah blah”

this one’s for you:

This is a KISS concert where Eric messed up. He kept playing guitar when he wasn’t supposed to. This messed up the timing for the track and Paul missed his cue to lip sync the next line:

Differences in Audio or Voice Quality

Singers very often partially lip concerts. They lip sync a couple songs and then go back to singing live. So you can notice a difference when they switch between the two.

They might be struggling vocally for one song and out of breath and then all the sudden they sound perfect out of nowhere.

Thats an indication that they switched to a track. Sometimes they even do this mid song.

It’s not just the sound of their voice but the actual quality of the audio. Sometimes the voice tech seems to forget to raise the volume of the track. Now all the sudden their voice is 3 times quieter than it was 3 seconds ago. What happened? 🤨

here's Mariah Carey performing We Belong Together at the BET awards.

Mariah was sick during this performance and it shows in the vocals. She doesn’t sound bad but she doesn’t sound her best either.
She was a bit raspy and struggling through the beginning of the song.
Then you hear a drastic change of quality when it gets to climax of the song.
All the sudden she sounds like she’s in her prime again..at the hardest part of the song nonetheless.
She partially lip syncs the same part of this song pretty much every time she performs it

Now Let’s Play a Game!

Which of these performances are live and which are lip synced?

Doja Cat

Victoria Monet



Michael Jackson

Ariana Grande

The Weeknd

answers:

Doja: live

Victoria: lipped (vocals are too steady for the amount of dancing she’s doing. Her facial expressions give it away. She’s also wearing a grill which makes it difficult to speak properly, much less sing)

Michael: Lipped. (Studio version of the songs. Vocals too steady for the amount of dancing)

Ariana: Partially lipped. Verses are lipped, chorus and bridge is live. You can hear the change in audio between and track and live vocals. She also messes up the words at one part)

The Weeknd: Live

How to Tell When Your Favorite Artist is Lip Syncing
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