What singer was so embarrassed to be caught lipsyncing that she ran
off stage on SNL? And what pop icon accidentally mouthed the
wrong words during a New Year's Eve show? Keep watching for all the uncomfortable details.
Let's kick things off with an oldie but a goodie: Ashlee Simpson's infamous Saturday
Night Live performance. The first of her two 2004 performances, where she sang "Pieces of Me',
went off without a hitch. The second performance kicked off with Simpson's
disembodied voice singing… the intro to her hit "Pieces of Me", again,
as her band quickly switched from playing "Autograph" back to an encore of their first
song. Simpson just started doing an uncomfortable dance routine before deciding to leave the stage.
During the closing monologue, Simpson stood next to that night's host, Jude Law,
who seemed to apologize to the audience. She promptly threw her band under the bus.
"What can I say? Live TV." "Exactly! I feel so bad. My
band started playing the wrong song, and I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd do
a hoedown. I'm sorry!" “Ashlee Simpson!”
Not only did the lip-syncing debacle haunt Simpson's career, but the controversy it
caused also haunted SNL for ages. Kate Winslet was the host the following Saturday,
and she spoke with Hamptons Film in 2020 about the
state of the SNL crew a week after the Simpson incident. She revealed:
"Let me tell you, that studio was just a hotbed of anxiety."
In 2018, Simpson spoke about the fiasco on Watch What Happens Live and explained that she had woken
up that day with no voice. She admitted to host Andy Cohen that she should never have gone on.
Britney Spears has faced lip-syncing allegations many times throughout her career. In 2008,
she was accused of miming her way through "Womanizer" on The
X-Factor. Shortly after her performance, the Daily Mail reported that a spokesperson for the event
said that there were "some live vocals" and that:
"Everyone knows Britney's performances are about the dancing and performing.
Just as she would have mimed five years ago, she also mimed on the show on Saturday."
But fans on YouTube were unbothered by the accusations,
and didn't really seem to care if she lip-synced. One commenter wrote:
"X factor is not a 'singing' show. [...] They are looking for someone with the whole package.
Britney Spears is the perfect performer because she is marketable and is iconic."
According to Rolling Stone, Spears addressed the lip-syncing accusations
in an interview with a TV station in Tel Aviv before a 2017 performance, saying:
"A lot of people think that I don't sing live [...] because I'm dancing so much I do have a
little bit of playback, but there's a mixture of my voice and the playback.
It really pisses me off because I am busting my ass out there
and singing at the same time and nobody ever really gives me credit for it."
In promotion of her debut album Speak, Lindsay Lohan appeared on Good Morning
America in 2004 to perform her single, "Rumors." The performance made headlines,
not for the song itself, but because it was evident that Lohan was lip-syncing.
A rep from her album denied the accusations in a statement that said:
"Lindsay sang 100 percent live. Her band played 100 percent live."
Lohan told People that she chose the songs on her album specifically
for their live quality. She told the magazine:
"The main concern for me was I wanted to sing songs that,
when I sing live, sound the same. [...] I wanted it to have all aspects of my
voice in it. I wanted it to just be me, raw, as much as it could be."
Lohan told Launch.com that she was aware of the
accusations of not performing her songs live. She admitted:
"I wanna be able to sing stuff to show that I have a voice and I can actually project. And I wanna
find things I'm not gonna have to lip-sync to, and that, when I sing it in the studio,
it's something that I could also sing live and sound just as good as I did on the CD."
Superstar Beyoncé faced her own lip-syncing scandal in 2013,
when she sang the national anthem at President Barack Obama's second inauguration ceremony.
Within 24 hours of the superstar singer's performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner,"
fans and onlookers criticized her for her apparent lip-syncing.
ABC News noted that not only was her performance lip-synced, but she also
acted as though she was singing live, even pulling out her earpiece at one point.
But it wasn't just Beyoncé who was miming. The Marine Corps Band pretended to play
their instruments during the performance and later confirmed that they didn't play live.
Before her Super Bowl performance in 2013, Beyoncé held a press conference, during
which she explained why she chose to lip-sync during her inauguration performance. She said:
"I did not have time to rehearse with the orchestra.
It was a live television show, and a very, very important, emotional show for me."
She went on to say that it was
"...One of my proudest moments."
Beyoncé also got into the technical difficulties she was facing that day, saying:
"Due to the weather, due to the delay,
due to no proper sound check, I did not feel comfortable taking a risk."
In a confessional moment, Beyoncé spoke for the entire music industry and admitted:
"I decided to sing along with my pre-recorded track, which is very common."
Seeing Mariah Carey's name on this list might not be a huge surprise. The singer has a known
history of lip-syncing, but Carey's most famous fail occurred on New Year's Eve as New York
City rang in 2017. While performing live in Times Square during Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve
with Ryan Seacrest, her song "Emotion" started playing, but Carey mouthed the wrong words.
It was obviously a huge flub caught on live TV,
and Carey tried to make the best of it, saying to the crowd:
"I'm trying to be a good sport here."
Carey then said on camera:
"We didn't have a check for this song […] we're missing some of the vocals, but it is what it is."
Carey blamed Dick Clark Productions for the mistake,
and said she was mortified by the mishap. She told Entertainment Weekly:
"It will make me less trusting of using anyone outside of my own team."
A rep for Carey told Billboard that the production company set her up to fail.
Dick Clark Productions, on the other hand, denied any wrongdoing.
But sound engineer Phil Palazzolo spoke with Cosmopolitan about Carey's entire
performance that night, claiming that other songs also had vocal tracks added. He said:
"With 'Auld Lang Syne,' you could tell that was lip sync. The third song ['We Belong Together']
was lip-sync. Possibly, she was expecting a vocal track to be there [for 'Emotions']."
That's a lot of lip-syncing. She rebounded at the following New Year's Eve show,
through great hardship.
"Oh, it's a disaster,
ok. Well, we'll just have to rough it. I'm gonna be just like everybody else with no hot tea."
One of the most epic lip-syncing fails comes from the R&B group Milli Vanilli, a German-French duo
that became huge in the 1980s. German producer Frank Farian had dreams of making a pop group
and signed dancers Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan for their looks. Their 1989 album Girl You
Know It's True achieved worldwide success, even though Pilatus and Morvan never sang
a single word of the album. They took home a Grammy and three American Music Awards in 1990.
But that same year, Farian came clean about the lip-syncing after a debacle at a 1989
concert in Bristol, Connecticut, where a recording of one of the group's hits began
skipping in front of a live audience. Pilatus told the Los Angeles Times:
"I knew right then and there, it was the beginning of the end for Milli Vanilli.
When my voice got stuck in the computer, and it just kept repeating and repeating,
I panicked. I didn't know what to do. I just ran off the stage."
The performer added:
"We sold our souls to the devil."
Morvan said of the entire Milli Vanilli experience, :
"Rob and I never meant for it to go this way. Our producer tricked us. We signed contracts as
singers but were never allowed to contribute. It was a nightmare. We were living a lie."
The duo was never able to bounce back,
and tragically, Pilatus died from a drug overdose in 1998 at the young age of 32.
Selena Gomez had an uncomfortable performance at KIIS FM's Jingle Ball in 2013 when there was
an evident microphone problem. During the show, Gomez pulled out her earpiece and tried to get
help for the sound issues from someone off stage. When that didn't work, she got upset and said:
"What the f—?"
An eyewitness told E! News that it was pretty clear Gomez was lip-syncing.
According to Us Weekly, the singer addressed the crowd, saying:
"Sorry, the sound isn't working! Are you guys having a good night? I promise,
a lot cooler people are gonna come out tonight.
Is it okay if I perform two more songs and you guys can get to it?"
A seemingly flustered Gomez went on to say to the audience as the problems continued:
"I have to thank you guys so much for allowing me to be able to perform the music that I love."
But she only performed her hit "Come & Get It" before walking off stage
and skipping her planned last song.
Lots of fans had plenty of opinions about the performance on YouTube. One fan wrote:
"Lip syncing is the worst thing an artist can do, it's disrespectful to the fans
who go to see them. You might as well just listen to their song on youtube."
Another commenter added:
"No I'm sorry but if your fans are paying loads of money to hear you sing LIVE
that's [what] they should be getting."
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