If you've been following me since I started blogging back in July, you'll know that lip-syncing is a hot button for me anyway and you can read that article here. That post goes more into depth about the science and 'ethics' so I'll try not to here. People have been lip syncing since as early as the 70's and this continues to find it's way into our water-cooler discussions. So did Beyonce get caught mouthing our National Anthem? Looks that way, and the Marine Band faked their performance too... And she wouldn't be anywhere near the first songstress to do this at a high profile event. Here's the video once again, you be the judge... Or maybe consider not touching that gavel.

 

 

But honestly, who cares?? If Beyonce and the band mimed, they did so to recorded tracks of their own performances, not someone else's in the case of Milli Vanilli. In fact, lip-syncing is so prevalent, you have probably already seen it and cheered the performance and didn't even know it. We only have a problem with it if we find out about it. Miming is extremely difficult and is a skill in itself and Beyonce did a superb job of staying in time with herself. Even Michael Jackson did it for his live dance performance of Billie Jean on TV that everyone went gaga over, but nobody slammed him in fact we were so in awe, it didn't even occur to us to pick apart his performance.

Try this on for size too... Obama used a teleprompter to deliver his speech, not to mention he didn't even write it! So, in a way he should be in more hot water than Beyonce, right? Politicians almost never write their own speeches and commonly read from teleprompters too and while it may not sound as authentic as a speech made up on the fly, there are some serious downsides to winging it like that, especially when the stakes are high at a very important event. Singers use teleprompters very commonly too (even for songs that they wrote) just because it is really easy to get distracted under pressure like that. The public wants us to deliver and expects us to, so we do what we have to in order to make them happy. Although as you can see, this is an impossible feat.

 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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These people are entertainers and there is a lot that goes into entertaining that may not seem to us to be completely above board or arguably genuine, but as an entertainer myself, you have a job to do and we are human and things can go wrong, so sometimes in order to do our job for a sometimes unforgiving public we take precautions in case that human and highly visual element (which is what we all love the best) tanks. I'm actually proud of Beyonce and the Marine Corps band... I could never dream of pulling off a mime like that... Bravo! PS- I should note her in fairness that Kelly Clarkson seems not to have lip-synced her performance and the band played that one too, so kudos to her too. Both women brought it and you won't catch these divas cat-fighting about it... Especially a class-act like Kelly. Check out more on lip-syncing below...

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