The Worst of the Best Podcast

Lip Syncing Fails.mp3
Welcome to the worst of the best podcast. You wanted the best. Well, they didn't freaking make it. So here's what you get from Canada, Ryan and Jason.
Welcome to the worst of the best podcast. I'm your host and with me today is my brother, Jason. Jason, how are you doing?
I'm doing pretty good. I'm suffering from a little bit of a lingering cold. So hopefully it won't show too much through this recording.
You know what's funny? It would be amazing is what we could do is we could go back and record your clear voice over your gravelly voice, just like lip seekers. You can lip sync this podcast.
Well, I do have to apologize. The reason why we haven't had a podcast for the last little bit was because I was suffering from a pretty nasty cold.
We're a week or so behind.
We're a little bit more than that.
Oh, are we?
Yeah.
That's a lot to do with me.
It's funny, Jason, that you bring that up. For those who are actually, we've got a few listeners who, I guess, follow our show just regardless of the topic.
So I'll speak to those people. Yeah.
The podcast is not dead and it's not dying. It's just the regularity of the episodes aren't as frequent as we'd hope.
Both Jason and I are, of course, full-time workers and family and all that good stuff.
And just not only that, my job for the next couple of months is really increasing activity.
I'm currently reteaching basic training, longer days, weirder hours.
So it's just harder for Jason and I to even sync up and my free time is just more limited until July anyways.
So that being said, this podcast will never die. It's going to keep going until the topics run out.
And the topics will never run out because the internet is eternal and infinite.
So, Jason, you and I have listened to music, of course. We've talked about many, many music episodes.
And some of the things that you and I, I know, especially when we're teenagers and then, of course, the early advent of the internet,
when we saw the topic come to fruition a little bit as, you know, cell cameras go out there, record artists.
Singing live or performing live is probably a better way of saying this.
Performing live, backing tracks, supporting tracks, and even lip syncing has become more and more harder to, quote-unquote, hide from the public.
It's just harder to hide lip syncing. It's harder to hide almost anything because of the internet.
I mean, just the mass amount of technology that's available for us to surveil our existence makes it almost impossible to hide any deep, dark secret.
But having said that, even before all of this advent, we would kind of sniff out people who were cheating on live performances, often through music awards.
We would like question, I don't like to say it, but Michael Jackson.
Yes.
I would often question him live all the time.
His dance moves. It never always kind of lined up.
The way to hide the microphone in front of their mouth.
I remember specifically his sister, Janet.
I'd be like, there's no way she's singing this live.
Those are just two examples because they're fresh in my mind.
I remember specifically being able to kind of feel bad that I was witnessing this.
So it's been a trick of the trade, I think, for generations, actually.
And it seems to be pop stars.
Now, not to say that rock stars haven't been caught or haven't used backing vocals.
Actually, bringing that up, Bon Jovi is getting busted for it.
Oh, is he?
Yeah.
There's been a couple of clips that have popped up in my feeds pointing out Bon Jovi.
Who's the other guy?
I know Kiss have been on.
Yes, that's right.
Paul.
Yeah.
Paul Stanley.
And you know who should have been lip syncing for the last 15, 20 years is Vince Neil.
Well, he should know that 30 years.
Poor guy.
You know what's funny about Vince Neil is like he nails it in the studio.
And even before quote unquote auto tuning.
But I think that's the only time he ever does it.
It's like, I've done my work in this studio.
I've sold the albums and I'm going to move on.
Yeah.
Studios and recordings, they hide a multitude of sins.
And that's why they do lip syncing.
So yeah, so even some of our bands that we've enjoyed and that's it.
Here's the thing.
That's the thing.
It's like, again, I can't sing, but I'm also not a singer.
Like that's not my profession.
I'm not pretending to perform these things.
I think what we're about to show or listen to with our audience right now with our listeners
on the podcast, it'll be a little bit tricky because obviously if we play the audio of some
of these concerts, it'll be like, well, it sounds like the studio.
That's the whole point.
So we're not going to where applicable.
We'll show you what we can, where it's lip syncing versus not.
But we'll tell you about the performance, what happened, how these people were exposed.
I think part of what makes these kind of the top 10 is that these are very popular artists.
This is a little bit more current stuff.
I guess it lasts 20 years.
One of the first examples we'll get into wasn't, but it ties into what the overall theme here
is when is it, when are we led to believe it's real versus when it's not?
I think that's the, I think that's the problem is I can excuse if somebody comes out and says,
I'm performing, I'm running around on stage.
I'm going to be a little bit of backing track.
You know, when we cringe as a public audience is when we're led to believe it's supposed to
be real versus it's not.
There's times where we kind of feel like a two hour concert, maybe just Pink or Janet Jackson
in our day needed a little bit of help because they've been running around for two hours dancing.
That's almost expected.
I kind of get the performing.
It's a visual performance.
Metallica, James Hetfield.
You know, we know he's raw singing because you hear it, you hear what it cracks.
That's okay.
But we, you know, we recognize he's 55, 56 now, or even Axl Rose.
He's almost 60.
He's 60.
He just turned 60.
No, he just turned 60.
So we kind of expect age to be.
So I appreciate speaking of Axl.
Okay.
His voice isn't what it used to be, but Hey, he's not lip syncing.
You got to give credit where credit's due.
He's still just performing.
You know, the voices go like they're just, he's not 25 anymore.
Right.
So for me, I liked the fact that it's not a hundred percent.
I want to hear real.
That's where I'm from.
And if you have to change your approach to the song, singing a different register or whatever, however they do it.
I'm cool with that.
I'm not going to pretend that you're going to be the same as you were 30 years ago.
What I appreciate about some of the stars and the bands that we've enjoyed our whole lives is that they still give it a go with very little.
I think there is magic behind the scenes with all of them at different degrees and variances.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The mix.
Right.
I mean, that makes all the, that makes all the difference, but to basically flat out fake the whole performance.
I'm not keen on, you spend a lot of money on these concerts.
And if you want to listen to the CD to stay or the CB showing my age, if you want to listen to the music, just stay at home.
Watch the music video.
Exactly.
Let's start with number 10.
And this one that goes way back.
That's probably our earliest example of the audience being hoodwinked is probably the best way to say it.
So it turns out, Jason, Audrey Hepburn, of course, you heard of her famous actress.
She's done a few musicals in her career.
Well, it was very disconcerting to fans of hers to find out that she did not do the singing on My Fair Lady.
Now, she's performing.
It almost just sounds just like her voice.
Now, we've known this before with musicals.
A lot of actors and actresses have performed their songs.
Now, they'll sing it in studio.
And what we see on screen is the studio version of the performance of them acting.
We know, but still their voice is singing in the studio as they perform the scene on the movie.
However, My Fair Lady, it was actually a person named Marnie Nixon.
She was the ghost singer behind Hepburn.
Now, Audrey Hepburn herself is not a bad singer.
We actually got an audio example here, Jason, of My Fair Lady.
And I will say this is Marnie singing.
This is Audrey singing.
So basically, the Marnie singing is what we as audience saw in the theaters.
So, you know, 1960s, people were like, oh, Audrey's such a great singer.
Now, she's not bad.
But you'll kind of see why they used Marnie's version over Audrey's.
So this part here, of course, is Marnie singing.
Stars burning above.
If you're in love, show me.
Tell me no dreams filled with desire.
If you're on fire, show me.
Okay, now here's Audrey singing.
Not bad.
You'll listen to it coming up.
But not bad.
But you'll see kind of why they used it together.
Don't talk of stars burning above.
If you're in love, show me.
Tell me no dreams filled with desire.
If you're on fire, show me.
Here we are together in the middle of the night.
Don't talk of spring, just hold me tight.
Anyone who's ever been in love will tell you that.
This is no time for a chat.
Here we are together in the middle of the night.
Don't talk of spring, just hold me tight.
Anyone who's ever been in love will tell you that.
This is no time for a chat.
I mean, Audrey doesn't sound bad.
Certainly, I couldn't sing like that.
But you kind of get that crisp and the way it flows.
Just that Marnie singer is just, you can tell,
an absolute professional singer compared to someone who can sing good.
And if this was done today, they would have just auto-tuned Audrey
and made it work.
Sure.
They would have used some type of studio magic and made it work.
So that Audrey could have been, like,
I don't know what was available to them.
I don't find it was that far off between the two.
It was pretty close.
It's pretty close.
Yeah, there was some kind of just the phrasing and spacing of some of the words.
I think it was the end notes.
If I'm overhandling, I'm still like a vocal coach here.
But I think it was the note at the end was more drawn out with the singer,
whereas Audrey kind of just rubbed it out a little bit more.
Yeah.
Which would be fixed today.
I think they would have made it work.
Yeah.
All right.
So for number nine, we have Ashley Simpson.
Do you remember Ashley Simpson?
I remember the name more than the individual.
This one is very cringe.
So let me try to set the stage here.
We'll speak of stage.
She's on the Saturday Night Live music stage.
She's the musical guest performance.
This is an example of where the band plays live.
So the band will play live, but the singer has a vocal track.
So you won't be able to see this, but the band's playing and she is about to sing.
But apparently the band was playing, quote unquote, the wrong song.
But she does like a little jig.
You're going to have to watch this on YouTube to see the jig.
So Ashley Simpson lip sync fail on Saturday Night Live.
Just Google that or search for that on YouTube.
You'll see what I'm talking about.
But her band plays and they sort of keep playing while she's like embarrassingly stands there.
Doesn't know what to do because she doesn't have the song.
She can't.
Here's the thing.
They start playing the wrong song, but she can't sing.
So she's not ready to sing the real song.
It's real cringe.
This is a really cringe moment.
I'll let you watch this, Jay.
Shockingly, it appears Simpson had been lip syncing to pieces of me or at least singing along with the track.
Her band, Gamely, plays on, as you can see, while Simpson fumbles her way through a bizarre jig before wandering off stage.
And we thought her sister Jessica had some embarrassing TV moments.
What's worse, Simpson decided to pay lip service to the disastrous musical moment.
Here she is at the end of the show with host Jude Law.
Ladies and gentlemen, what can I say?
Live TV.
Exactly.
I feel so bad.
My band started playing the wrong song.
And I know what to do.
So I thought I'd do a hoedown.
I'm sorry.
Ashley Simpson.
Wow.
But could you?
It's your song.
Yes, right.
Can't you lip sync to the?
I don't know.
I don't know.
So, yeah.
So we heard the vocal track kicked in, but she was unable to sing along.
Something happened.
I think she was thrown off.
I think two things are happening here.
It was the wrong song.
She's right about that.
But you're right, too.
It's like, in theory, could you just jump in to start?
Like, you'd be able to sing along.
But she was so thrown off by it that she stopped performing.
Yeah.
I mean, it's your track.
So I don't understand that they don't rehearse these things and don't know which button to push.
Here, the band's playing.
The song comes on.
She's not ready for it.
And she just does that little dance off the stage.
And the band keeps playing awkwardly.
Oh.
And she throws her band under the bus.
Yeah.
You're right.
She should have just.
Or she could have stopped the band.
If you're the leader, say, whoa, whoa, guys, let's do it again from the top.
The other song.
Like, she could have stopped.
But because it's not a real performance, she can't do that.
Yeah.
That one was.
That's bad.
All right, Jay, you got number eight here.
Okay.
So, yeah.
Lindsay Lohan.
I had completely forgotten about her.
What happened?
I mean.
Drugs.
What happened to her?
Drugs.
Yeah.
I mean.
Mental health and drugs.
Yeah.
Because she was talented.
She was charismatic.
Pretty.
All the things that make a star, you know.
And she tried performing music and did okay.
This performance here is kind of embarrassing.
But, you know, we all.
Well, not all of us.
But we remember Lindsay Lohan from The Parent Trap, Mean Girls.
I mean, she had an up and coming career in Hollywood for years to come.
But that obviously fell apart.
And then in 2004, she had a musical.
Tried to get into a musical career.
She had an album called Speak featuring the single Rumors.
She went for a punk style, young new artist kind of feel.
And she went to perform this song, Rumors, on Good Morning America.
The performance sounds good, but sounding almost too good.
Well, here's the situation here.
Listen to this, folks.
And you'll be able to hear her.
You'll hear the vocals of Lindsay Lohan.
They're from the studio.
At the end of the day, they're from the studio.
I found where you can catch a lip sync.
You still be able to see a J.
But for our listening audience, you'll hear the band's playing live.
So it's a decent band.
They're just playing a rock song live.
And it's actually, fun enough, it's actually not a bad song.
It's 18 years ago.
But, I mean, for a pop rock song, it's fair to middle.
And it's fine.
It's a good rock song or pop song for whatever age she was at this time.
She's 35 now.
That's it?
Yeah.
Wow.
So this is 18 years ago, quick math.
So 17, 18 years old now.
So she's just entering her adulthood life here.
That's kind of what this is about.
She's becoming an adult.
You know, there's rumors about me.
And that's the idea.
Let me speak.
Yeah, the paparazzi.
Yeah.
They're following me around.
They're taking pictures.
They're taking pictures of me.
But that's what promotes me.
It's that idea.
Like, I don't want to be left alone.
But not left alone.
Okay, so here's some of the sound of the band.
But you'll see where she messes up the lip sync.
In this bit of a cringe.
I'm good under my life.
I don't want to do.
I'm tired of rumors starting.
I'm sick of being followed.
I'm tired of people lying.
Saying what they want about me.
Why can't they back up on me?
Why can't they let me live?
I'm going to do it my way.
Take this for just what it is.
I just need to breathe my mind.
So, of course, our audience are listening.
Wow.
Like, it sounds like a normal vocal.
You can tell it's a studio vocal.
But what Jason...
She literally just stopped singing for, like, five words.
Five words.
Yeah.
And stood in front of her microphone.
She forgot to start singing that line.
And look at her face here.
Oh.
Pause.
I said, oops.
Oof.
She recognized at that moment, shoot, they're going to catch me.
Because, yeah, you can't sing without moving your mouth.
Last time I checked.
She's a fat truck, West.
Also.
Sure.
All right.
So, we wish Lindsay Lohan good health and all the best.
Yeah.
That wasn't a good look at all.
Probably derailed her career.
Oh, yeah.
This is Good Morning America.
Yeah.
If you think about it, you only have one song to sing.
You're not singing the whole...
This is where I feel like the lip syncing shouldn't be done.
We've got a few of these examples.
Again, an hour and a half, 90-minute concert.
Okay.
Maybe your voice is getting tired.
You're a pop star because you're dancing.
I can kind of give a little bit of a pass.
I'll be honest with you.
With dancing stars.
But you've got one performance here.
A three-minute cardio.
All you've got to do is sing one song for three minutes.
It's your own song.
She couldn't do it.
But the other thing, too, is I think they used the dancing in all the moves.
All the moving around to hide the fact that they're lip syncing.
They often hold the microphone right in front of their face.
You can't really follow along.
It only depends on certain angles.
You can see that they're actually not singing with the track.
It's like a mask.
At any rate, she got busted big time there.
That's not...
Yeah, that wasn't good.
So, yeah.
Number seven is Sarah Hardy.
Now, I've never heard of her.
No, either have I.
Yeah.
She was the lead singer for the old girl band called Girls Aloud.
You know the old saying, no girls allowed on a boy's door?
Well, this is Girls Aloud.
Oh, that's cheesy.
But then Aloud is A-L-O-U-D.
Oh, yeah.
You get it?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Anyways.
Well, she's dead now.
Like, for real?
Yeah.
She passed away from breast cancer.
Oh.
Oh.
It's horrible.
However, she gets to live on with her musical performances.
But she was performing on a local...
Again, this is another situation where you have one song.
You are the singer of a band.
And apparently she can sing live.
And this is what I mean by expectations versus reality.
She can apparently sing.
She has proven herself a singer.
There's many, many clips of her singing just fine live.
But for whatever reason, she decided on this talk show to just not sing live at all.
And now, again, for listening to the audience, you're just going to hear the vocal track.
So if you're hearing this in your musical...
Sorry.
If you're hearing this in your earbuds right now, you would just assume it's a studio vocal.
And you would assume correctly.
Other than that, it's recorded off a TV with someone's cell phone.
So keep that in mind as well with the audio.
But you'll hear the vocal track and the way she's moving around.
That's the thing.
She's going crazy.
But her vocals do not strain at all.
Check it out.
Oh.
Oh.
They're not even trying to hide.
And she is over singing, if that makes sense.
Is she high on drugs or something?
You know how when you sing in the bathroom with a hairbrush like in a 1980s teen comedy film?
That's what she looks like.
You know when you over sing the exaggeration?
She's not even singing the same emotive experience that she sang in the studio.
She's literally just moving her lips.
She's not even singing.
She's not even doing the words.
That'd be me trying to sing along with that track because I've never heard it before.
I would look exactly the same.
Yeah.
And the drummer didn't look quite like the drummer.
No.
I don't think anybody there was playing their musical instruments.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
This is an example of not only was the singer lip syncing, but the band was lip playing.
How do you call it?
How do you call it?
Fake play.
Air band.
Performance.
Holy.
That was bad.
If you want to see this incredible clip, folks, just search for Sarah Harding lip syncing on Lorraine.
Sarah Harding lip syncing on Lorraine.
You'll see what we're talking about.
It's an absolute disaster.
The band should be embarrassed.
May she rest in peace.
I got like the internet lives forever though.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So Britney Spears.
Are we surprised that she's on this list?
I'll give a little bit of background before we go into this.
I actually worked at Britney Spears concert security.
There were times when it was obvious that she was lip syncing.
And the only time that was obvious that she wasn't lip syncing was when she would sit down and do like kind of an acoustic or very mellow song.
And you could hear the breathing through the microphone.
It was real.
But then when she did the big dance numbers and everything, it became very obvious that she's lip syncing.
So the fact is, is it appeared to me.
I mean, I was like 25 feet from her for the whole show.
I could see times where she's obviously lip syncing and at other times it was obvious that she wasn't.
So kudos to her when she wasn't.
And it was unfortunate to see how much was fake.
But I don't think any of us are really surprised by these.
Like you say, it's these pop singers that they're doing too much.
And there's such frauds within the studio because they have so much help in the studio that it's impossible to recreate that live.
It's a fraud either way.
But at any rate, here she is in 2007 MTV Music Awards.
I think it was kind of a bit of a comeback of hers.
We all know that she went through a horrible period with, again, mental illness and her marriage falling apart and all the rest.
And so this is kind of like a resurgence, supposed to be a resurgence for her.
This also didn't go well.
It became obvious that she's lip syncing through this performance.
Now what makes this one interesting is not only the problem isn't that she's just lip syncing, Jason.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Sorry, I forgot the big part.
It's not even her song.
How could you put on a $30 million production and push the button on the wrong song?
It's not even her song.
Yeah, from what little I gathered, I think she did a song with Sia.
Yeah.
S-I-A.
S-I-A.
And the song's called Perfume.
But I think Sia, it's my understanding Sia and Britney did the song together.
So Britney has singing parts and Sia has singing parts.
I don't know who, I didn't want to, I listened to a little bit of the song, but I don't, I can't tell the difference between who's singing what.
But so I think what was happening during this performance is Britney is singing, quote unquote, the whole song.
And the other singers part, it'd be like Dolly Parton lip syncing Kenny Rogers parts about, you know.
Why would they even pick a song?
I don't know.
When you push the vocal track, I don't know.
I don't know how they could screw this up.
You put one mp3 file, that's it.
There's no, I don't think, was she even supposed to sing this song or was it a completely different song?
I don't know if this is a mistake.
It's like, hey, this is a big, this is a big song for Britney.
She's got a Sia duet called Perfume.
Let's get her to play.
Yeah.
So she's singing the Sia parts, the other person's parts, but it's not her vocal.
I don't know if I can make this clear.
Like she's saying she's changed her voice.
It's funny when I was watching this clip, which was, you know, sadly, this particular video that I watched.
It was confusing to me.
I'm like, that doesn't sound like her, but I'm not familiar enough with her music to go.
I mean, everything's so auto-tuned nowadays.
Right.
And then they mentioned Sia.
I'm like, yes, that's Sia's voice.
Yeah.
Britney's literally singing to Sia's track.
Jason, I found some clips here real quickly of Britney's isolated vocals.
You want to hear that?
Yeah.
Voice, lover, at the road.
Hollywood girl.
She might have a microphone.
That's isolated.
But that's not what the crowd hears.
The crowd hears the track.
And she's just singing along because it's probably a lot easier to sing along for real with your own track.
But it's so low on the mix that the crowd won't hear it.
And also, it's a legitimate way for her to say, I'm not lip syncing.
I'm actually singing.
Yeah.
With the supporting track.
So it's a lie.
But anyway, I'm not sure if we're done with Britney Spears.
Yeah.
Well, that was it for Britney.
Yeah.
So number five is Beyonce.
So I'm not going to play any of this clip because it's just the national anthem.
But at the inauguration 2013 for, of course, Barack Obama, they had to get Beyonce to sing the national anthem.
And she admitted that she did indeed lip sync the national anthem.
The reason why, Jason, she said that she wanted to ensure that the focus was on the president, not her performance.
How noble of her.
Yeah.
Now, Kelly Clarkson, who performed at this performance, she made sure the focus, I guess, was on her because she sang.
She did live syncs.
Neither did other people.
But Beyonce wanted to ensure that, hey, President Obama, this is for you.
I'm going to lip sync this performance for you because it's about you and not the chance that I might blow it on.
On stage.
Yeah.
That's what she's trying to say, that I could blow this and take the focus off you.
Come on.
How brave of her.
Way to throw Obama under the bus.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's what a weird statement.
But, you know, this kind of reminds me, brings up most of the or a lot of Super Bowl performances are fake.
Yeah.
Which is really unfortunate.
Like Bruce Springsteen, he got caught.
I wonder why, though.
It became really apparent with Bruce Springsteen because people called him out on it.
He said it just takes too much time to set up a stage in the middle of the field, all hooked up.
No sound check.
People probably understand.
It's like the band will do a sound check.
The acoustics of the environment in which they're performing in has to be tweaked before the show.
And often in the first couple songs of a show, they are continuing to tweak because the sound is different when the venue was full of people versus empty.
So they kind of do an empty sound check, make sure all the guitars are plugged in, et cetera, et cetera.
And then they have to use the first couple songs in a show to retweak a mix because the dynamics of people in the building changes the acoustics of the building.
And so often if you go to a show, the first song or two might not actually be that great.
And it will improve after about two to three songs as they readjust their thing.
So at Super Bowl, if you're bringing a band, I think Red Hot Chili Peppers got caught as well.
Like Bruce Springsteen, who has a huge band.
You've only got like a couple of minutes to throw those things together on stage.
And there's no ability to readjust microphones, the drum kit sound.
And so I get it.
But that's fair.
That makes sense for Super Bowl.
Yeah.
In and out.
Yeah.
You can't.
Right.
Right.
That's fair.
But the thing is, is Beyonce, you pre-recorded your vocals knowing that you're in hoodwink people.
Yeah.
This is all planned.
This is no last minute decision.
Okay.
We got to use the actual.
No, no.
She did a studio perfect voice.
And when you watch the performance, you Google it.
She does a really good job lipsticking it.
But by her own admission, she did.
So you don't have to analyze it.
But I'll say her performance of it was.
As far as performances go, she nailed a lipsticking performance.
I'll give her credit for that.
It's not my worst pick.
She gave a great lipsticking performance.
She didn't do a dance off the stage.
A little jig like Ashley Simpson.
All right.
You got the next one, Jay.
Number four.
So Katy Perry.
She was at a music award.
Looks like it was back in Europe.
She's performing her song, Roar.
It was a little bit kind of confusing if you watched the video.
Because I'm not quite sure.
It's obvious that she wasn't singing.
The first, in my understanding, it's a different language.
I think it might be French.
I didn't quite.
The hoax or somebody talks to her mid-song.
I don't know if that was planned because it's in different language.
But basically the first half of the performance, she's lipsticking.
And then they stopped halfway through.
They stopped halfway through the song.
Maybe we could just watch that part where they stopped.
Because when she starts again, she sings for real.
So this is my thoughts.
I watched it.
And I couldn't quite understand if they just cut the song short and then redid it or they cut the song short.
And then, yeah, I wasn't quite sure.
I kind of think her microphone was off.
And all you could hear is her backing track.
And they needed to readjust the microphone to turn back on so that it became her singing.
To her credit, you could tell that she's now singing live.
And there isn't any track that she's singing along with.
And she did a good job for a pop singer.
And for mid whatever hiccup that they were dealing with, she did a pretty good job at addressing the issue and finish it off live.
Let's hear a little bit of the pre or the lipsticking.
Before they stopped.
The host comes out now.
So the host walks out on stage during this performance.
That was definitely the studio version of Katy Perry.
Absolutely.
Now you hear, oh, oh, oh, the sound there.
She doesn't have the microphone next to her mouth.
And now the host is about to talk to her.
He's waving his arms.
Stop, stop, stop.
He's waving his arms to stop.
The host is doing this.
Yeah.
The host kisses her hand.
Katy is just looking at him.
So he says we can restart.
What do you think?
Was this a bit of a publicity stunt to show that she actually can sing her stuff live?
Let me just look at the YouTube comments really quickly.
Oh, so apparently they put the lip sync track on without her knowing.
That's what I was thinking.
I was thinking that maybe they had the track and didn't have her microphone on.
She handled it well.
Now, granted, she's not the best singer in the world.
But look, I don't mean to undersell, but the studio track sounds very good.
I think it's kind of either a stunt because she came back without hesitation and picked up where they left off.
No problem.
Who knows?
Who knows?
Because the host comes out and she doesn't seem too befuddled by it.
The whole stuff performs.
Now they're going to go back.
So let's hear.
So now they've restarted it.
Well, actually, let's hear what he keeps saying here.
Let's see what he says in the morning.
We have another energy because we had a little problem with the sound.
I didn't understand.
But anyway, I'm sorry to stop all your energy.
I'm really sorry that I prefer you to be the best.
Je préfère que vous soyez la meilleure.
OK?
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath.
Get to rock the ball and make a mess.
So I said quietly, I grieve what I need.
I guess that I forgot I had my choice.
I let you push me across the breaking point.
I stood for nothing.
So I felt that everything.
I don't know.
Still pretty rough.
Yeah, it's just rougher than I remembered it when I first watched it.
Maybe just focusing on her looks.
You weren't looking at her and hearing her singing.
That was kind of rough.
But she went ahead with it, though.
She went ahead with it.
Give her credit.
She went ahead.
Yeah.
This is a lip-seeking moment,
but she turned it around.
She sang it.
You got to give her credit.
She sang.
Unlike our next example, number three, Selena Gomez.
Oof.
This is one I can't even really play for our audience
because it's just her studio singing almost the whole time.
But this guy did a – check this out on YouTube.
It's called the Selena Gomez Lip Sync Compilation.
This guy just ad-libs with everything.
Let's see if we can get a little bit here.
There's parts at the beginning where she – yeah, she's a classic.
She moves the microphone away from her mouth while she's still singing.
Those are just classic moments.
But he says here that her vocals go from shaking bad to okay in the same performance.
So you'll hear this.
What's this?
What's this award show?
What's this award show?
Oh, this is – yeah, this is like an American talent or –
America's got talent?
X Factor.
X Factor.
Okay.
She's doing this on X Factor to prove to all the people that are trying to break into the industry how it's done.
I'll show you how it's done.
And you totally blow a lip sync.
The people at X Factor could do a better job than her if they could actually sing live.
Yeah, they can't lip sync their performance in front of the judge.
No.
I find it ironic too, Jason.
I totally agree that here you are lip syncing at a live competition.
Yeah.
You could be a pop star like me one day.
And the band – look at the band playing.
Come on.
Yeah.
They're all actors.
This is just – Selene Goldman, what a joke.
Is she really a singer still?
I'm going to see a couple more clips because –
See if I can find more examples.
I don't know if it's going to translate to the podcast, but I'll show you here.
Yeah.
Look, yeah.
People were listening.
You heard that singing that she was doing?
Well, she was running with the mic by her hip the whole time there.
I think what's happening to me in the industry, and I'm not sure what year this is,
is it's becoming very apparent that they're singing to their own tracks,
kind of like that Britney Spears Isolated.
They have a backing track that they can lip sync, or I'm not sure if it's even called lip sync,
but they can sing along.
Their volume through the microphone is low.
The mix is much higher for their actual backing track.
And it's a way that they can balance between the performance,
art, saying that I'm actually not lip syncing.
There are times when I am singing.
They can kind of justify it both ways.
The microphone is live when I choose to sing into it,
but when I choose not to or I forget, well, the track carries on without me anyways.
It's like WWF wrestling or WWE now.
Right.
Sure, sure.
You know, it's like, yeah, some of the movies are real, and a lot of them hurt,
but we also know it's scripted.
It's scripted, but they're still athletes,
and that's kind of why I'm saying with,
I say with pop stars, they get a bit of a pass,
meaning they're dancing, they're performing,
they've got costumes back.
It's a performance art, but it's scripted.
And even Kiss, I kind of give them a pass.
They're aging rock stars.
They're all about the glitz glamour, the costumes.
They're more of a show than a concert, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that's true.
So I kind of give them a pass.
Metallica, I would never give them a pass.
That would be unsat.
If I saw James Leipzig, I'd be...
The most vocal effect of James used so far
is when he just does the echo effect on some of his songs.
Oh, sure.
I mean, that's for impact.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Number two.
Oh, this one's bad, Jay.
It is.
So Mariah Carey, she's doing the New Year's Eve 2016,
and she's supposed to be performing one of her songs.
And I honestly don't know what she was doing.
Yeah.
Okay.
Was she supposed to sing with her own song?
I think...
She didn't even know what song she was singing to?
I think what you're talking about happened here.
I think that main track that she was supposed to sing along with didn't happen.
Oh, the backing track didn't kick in.
The main track, which she would sing...
She would sing back up to her own track, yes.
Right.
Didn't kick in, so she just rattascatted.
Which is weird because it's not like she can't sing.
Yeah, watch.
I mean, listen.
You need to practice.
We didn't have a check for this song, so we'll just say,
it went to number one, and that's what it is.
Okay.
Feels like a dream.
Do you not know your own song?
Yeah, so that's exactly what's happened, Jay.
So that main track, so the backup vocals are still there.
Yeah.
Those are still there, but the Mariah part, it's almost like somebody is pranking her.
Because why is that main part gone now?
How hard is it to play her music?
Just play the song?
That's all we're hearing is the track of the CD or the album, whatever.
But her track has mysteriously disappeared, leaving her out in the open exposed.
So listen to some of her Radiskat Skat.
And she dances.
To her credit, she kind of dances around, but she'll still do a little bit of Mariah.
Like, you'll hear some live Mariah Carey Radiskat Skat.
I'm going to say let the audience sing, okay?
We didn't have a sound check, but it's New Year's, baby.
That's okay, you guys.
Girls.
Put these monitors on, please.
All right, just for laughs to the lips.
I told you.
Just quit me, just you know how to do it.
And.
I want a holiday too.
Can I not have one?
I'm trying to be a good support here.
So you hear that high?
That's her classic high-pitched thing.
That's the studio.
Oh, yeah.
She's choked.
So we heard the studio track kicks back in later in the performance.
And she doesn't hide a lipstick to it either.
I don't know why.
Let's be honest.
Do you think she was 100% sober here?
Come on.
Let's be honest.
I actually think she was.
I think she's just incapable of performing properly without a backing track.
That was funny.
That's the most fun video.
I've watched it a few times.
I love how she just keeps going.
All right, guys.
Hey.
No sound check.
No problem.
Let's go.
Yeah.
Get these monitors on, please.
I think she would have been better to have said nothing and just perform the routine, the choreography.
Because she's like walking around, not only talking to a microphone, giving excuses as she goes.
But she's not even really doing.
All the backup dancers are trying to just carry on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, boy.
Okay.
All right.
Last one.
This is the big one.
Okay.
Now, it doesn't mean necessarily that Jason and I are going to pick this as the worst or the most whatever.
I still don't even know quite what I'm falling on here.
But the Milli Vanilli story.
Now, this was one that happened in our time.
In our time.
In our youth.
Okay.
And this was a big exposure.
This kind of falls under the same umbrella as Audrey Hepburn.
Okay.
But beyond that, though, because these individuals, Milli and Vanilli, these two guys, they were legit young kids.
I get it.
Okay.
They were 18, 19 years old when they were discovered by this producer named Frank Farian.
Okay.
This guy, Frank Farian, is a, he's a, he's a, you know, creep's not the right word.
He's a liar.
He's about money.
Look, the music is all about money.
I get it.
But these two poor kids, Rob and Fabrice, okay, they were like a dancing couple.
They met each other.
They performed.
They actually had a demo tape and they brought this demo tape to Frank's studio.
And Frank liked how they looked.
They're two young black kids.
They were good looking kids, athletic, all that.
And they sang okay.
So they actually hired them on to do 10 songs a year.
That was the contract.
And they didn't even read the contract, apparently.
So they were hired on to do 10 songs a year.
But Frank's like, Frank Farian, the producer, is like, oh, you know, you guys don't sound that great in the studio.
You got the right look.
We'll take care of it.
So Farian hired five different singers, Charles Shaw, John Davis, Brad Howe, Jody Rocco, and Linda Rocco to handle the vocals on these albums.
Poor Rob and Fabrice, known as Milli Vanilli, they were literally the performers.
These not only were lip-syncers, Jason, they were lip-syncing other people's music as their own.
So it's one thing to say that Britney Spears is lip-syncing her music on stage and can't sing that well.
At least it's her in the studio.
However it's manipulated, it's her voice coming from her chest and all the other acts we talked about.
This is the only one on our list other than Audrey Hepburn for the movie, of course.
But she still acts, right?
These guys are performing and they're winning awards.
They're actually winning Grammys.
You know, they're winning awards for their performance on their albums, not for their music videos, necessarily.
I'm sure they won MTV Awards, too.
This is a lie that goes way too far.
But these poor guys were kind of – it was a whirlwind.
Now, they eventually owned up to it, of course.
And I think they tried giving their awards.
I think it was the Grammys or whatever.
They had a press conference where they actually – when they got caught, I think they won awards after they even got caught.
So what happened was it was a performance – I'll play it for you here, for our audience.
It was a live performance.
And speaking of CDs, the CD that they were dancing to, quote-unquote – well, they were performing to it, just dancing to it in front of a live audience, started skipping.
And they were on stage and the one guy just ran off stage like, I'm out of here.
And we'll hear his story about that right here.
I wanted to die.
It stopped.
Girl, you know, it's girl, you know, it's girl.
80,000 people.
Girl, you know, it's girl, you know.
You know, I couldn't repeat it 15 times.
It got obvious.
So I stopped.
I panicked.
I ran off stage.
Julie Brown, who used to work for MTV, ran after me.
I didn't want to go back to stage.
I had enough.
80,000 people waiting.
I said, I haven't left.
I'll quit.
So, unfortunately, the person we just heard talking there, I think it's –
The Rob.
Yeah, Rob Pilatus.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the whole –
Okay, now there's more.
Now, this is interesting.
You'll find this interesting, Jay.
Now, the surviving member, Fab Marvin, he actually went on and performed that hit live.
And you'll get to hear what he sounds like live, which is unfortunate because you hear him perform live.
He sounds pretty good.
You know, these are two good-looking kids who can dance and move.
I don't know why they didn't use their voices.
This – here's what it would have sounded like.
Sadly, they got duped.
Yes.
They got duped as well.
And they just had to go along with it.
And at the end of the day, it is an entertainment business.
So they're used to entertain people.
And they could probably justify it in their brains saying, we're entertaining people.
People are enjoying our – you know, air quotes – our music or the music, the performance, the whole production.
But yeah, I have seen this.
But yeah, let's play a clip.
Well, first, I want to quote.
So this is from –
It's Mark.
It says, after Frank released the album – that's the producer guy.
He told us that it was too late to stop now because this is the individual who committed suicide.
It's too late to stop now because the single was such a big success, he said.
Now you have to go through with it.
I'll cover you guys.
Nobody will find out.
He said, here, I'll give you $20,000 advance money.
We never had a hit before, so we went along with it.
We played with fire and now we know, but it's too late.
And they signed contracts, so they almost had to perform like circus animals.
Yeah, exactly.
So here we go.
Here's Rob.
And what it would sound like had they continued – had they actually just let them do it from the beginning.
It's not that bad.
Soft, sucky hand, all sweet and thin.
That's kind of like a fashion, but for a music game.
It lights up my day, and that's also true.
Together we're one, separated we're two.
To make it all mine, all mine's mind's eye.
Physical, ten, equality that I admire.
To put it plain and simple, to ruin my world.
So try to understand.
i'm in love girl i'm so in love girl i'm just in love girl and this is true girl you know it's true
i love you
well there was a couple flat notes there that's fine it's live that's him yeah and he's dancing
and he's dancing what would have been the problem of having him do that i don't understand and of
course in the studio it would have been cleaned up sure and then when they went live they would
have lip-synced it anyways but good for him for trying to redeem himself by proving yeah i'm not
sure how many years later this performance is right this is a long time afterwards right this is probably
10 to 15 years out i think he's just showing that i could have done it if they let me yeah at the end
of the day is the tragedy is the other guy couldn't handle the stress of it all and his life turned into
a suicide which is very sad so jay we've reached the end of our list let me just give the uh what
happened here again so we got audrey heppard not singing her lines or her vocals in the my fair
lady and other musicals like the king and i and west side story millie vanilli which we just talked
about ashley simpson lindsey lohan sarah harding rest in peace bernie spears beyonce at the inauguration of
president obama katie perry at that war show in france selena gomez in general and mariah carey's
new year's e-performance i mean if we go with the one it's just the worst overall tsunami effect of
everything it has to be millie vanilli my thoughts to the millie vanilli is i have almost too much empathy
for the circumstances they found themselves in they got caught up in a lie that they were just
kids when they signed their contract i mean a lot of these people are kids i mean single gomez is still a
kid and she was a kid when this all started for her as well i think the one that bothers me the most oh
the one that bothers you the most sure which one's that yeah i think that's the way i'm gonna go like the
one that actually like a lot of these i kind of get hmm i think i'm gonna go with britney spears oh why
because over the years she denies the fact that she lip-syncs it's a tough one between her and mariah
carries but that was a uh mariah carries is the funniest it's as equally cringy as it it's probably
outside of millie vanilli's tragic outcome i would say mariah carries is probably the worst performance of
the lip-syncing gone bad like if that makes sense like this is lip-syncing gone bad ashley simpson pretty
close with her jig that she doesn't you know buries her buries her band but the fact that like the way
she interacts with everybody tries to make something out of it and then with the actual track kicks in
she can't even sing along yeah this is this is tough i know millie vanilli is the easy one but i actually
kind of i kind of empathize with the circumstances that they're in and they weren't the first and i bet
they're not the last they're the data shot outcome i think yeah yeah the worst outcome and it was really
at that time when yeah exposure to this sort of stuff was newer and so it was more shocking like i
remember when we like what what what but now that we are seeing or recognizing that we're hoodwinked more
often than we like to believe that we are okay let's go i'm going with my kid i think that was the worst
it was the worst performance the worst cover-up and then ironically when the track unlike katie
perry you know started with lip-syncing but ended with singing here you have mariah carey doesn't even
have her back in track so she can't even try to sing when the actual studio track kicks in she can't even
sing along with it so that's definitely okay that's the worst i got yeah i think i think that marica brady
spears kind of just bugs me because she denies that she behaves that way that she doesn't that
the whole denial rather than going yeah sometimes i have a backing track because you know and then
explains why mariah carey is just flat out i encourage all of our listeners go out and search mariah carey
2016 mariah carey's awful performance on new year's eve it's hilarious it'll make you laugh trust me and
whoever did the captions the text over the video is kind of oh yeah yeah yeah okay all right there you
go remember in front of every silver lining there's a cloud and we're here to help you find it today was
mariah carey thanks for listening we'll see you in the next episode camigator productions
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