For decades, lip-syncing has been a time-honored — and not honored — tradition in the music industry. Watch any Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, American Bandstand segment, or Super Bowl halftime show if you don’t believe me. It’s always been embraced in mainstream entertainment as a “safety measure” to prevent musicians from going rogue live on air, or talented singers from making a fool of themselves in front of millions. But what if the pre-recorded track isn’t working?
What happens when the rest of the world discovers that their favorite credited artists never had any singing talent to begin with?
Enter Milli Vanilli’s perfect storm.
Depending on your age, you either experienced this disaster firsthand or learned about it from a men-with-braids meme. Milli Vanilli had it all in the late 1980s: three number one hits (five in the Top 10), seven million copies of their credited debut album sold, and, to top it all off, a Grammy Award for “Best New Artist.” They also had the best hair, the best bums, and the best darn shoulder pads in the music industry.
But, on July 21, 1989, it all came crashing down, and they had only themselves to blame, not “the rain.” The German duo of Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan were singing their mega-hit, “Girl You Know It’s True,” while on the Club MTV Tour in Bristol, Connecticut, when their live backing track began to skip.
Backup track technology has only evolved and become more popular in the years after Milli Vanilli’s demise. Many more artists have struggled through historic “performances” that flopped on a grand scale.
Justin Bieber (2012)
I’ve caught Bieber fever, and the only way to cure it is to keep lip-syncing. Justin Bieber gave his fans something to remember on the first night of his world tour: a night of pre-recorded songs and milk vomit (so he claims). Beliebers in Arizona were treated to a show that involved him vomiting in the middle of a song while his vocals played in the background. The upchucking was later attributed to drinking “too much milk” by the Canadian artist. However, it’s not what made the fans cry.
Beyoncé (2013)
Look, Beyoncé can’t seem to do anything wrong (not that bad things don’t happen to her). She could sing a medley of ’80s sitcom theme songs and still be a smash credit hit. However, she received criticism for lip-syncing at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013. She preferred to sing to a pre-recorded track because she didn’t have enough time to rehearse with the orchestra or soundcheck. Unlike other lip-sync failures, Beyonce’s was smooth and sounded terrific — in other words, she wasn’t captured as much as she was revealed later. Queen B, as predicted, walked away unscathed from this one.
Mariah Carey (2017)
As we rang in the new year on December 31, 2016, the ball wasn’t the only thing that fell. Mariah Carey and her dancing ensemble messed up the pacing and the “sync” aspect of the lip-sync after singing the credit song “Auld Lang Syne” during their medley of hits.
There was something for everyone in this classic train wreck: singing to backing vocals, not singing to backing vocals, dancing to backing vocals, and confused backup dancers dancing to pre-recorded music as their star stood there, giving viewers a play-by-play of what she was messing up. She blamed the lack of a soundcheck, informed the ostensibly non-existent audio engineers that her monitors were broken, and referred to herself as a “good sport,” but eventually walked off when “We Belong Together” ironically fell apart.