It's not the sort of thing I talk about with you guys, but for the last three seasons, I have watched American Idol. This week was "Rock Week," but we can talk about "Whole Lotta Love" another time. What I'll talk about now is Paula Abdul's turn on the stage during tonight's elimiation show, performing a song called, "I'm Only Here for the Music." If you can YouTube it—well—I still couldn't really recommend it, but what you will see is a fairly intense dance number coupled with barely half-hearted lip-syncing. It's bad enough to make you wonder why she bothered moving her lips at all, when it was clear that the dancing, not the singing, was the focal point of the show. I got to wondering just that.
Why do artists lip-sync? Let's break lip-syncing down into it's two, even simpler components. Lip-syncing consists of: (1) not singing, but (2) appearing to sing.
There are perfectly good reasons why an artist might choose not to sing at his "live" performances. He might be sick. He might not actually be a very good singer. The choreography that the show demands might overtax his respiration, precluding vocalization. If you were a fan of a certain kind of music, and of the stage show that most often accompanies it, this last justification would be particularly forceful. Think about Britney Spears and her "Circus Tour" stage show.
But what purpose is served by appearing to sing? To the pop music concertgoer, is your enjoyment of the dance numbers augmented by the fact that the artist's lips are moving? To the afficionado of musical authenticity, would your opinion of Milli Vanilli be diminished if, instead of dancing and pretending to sing, they had just danced?
After Abdul's performance, No Doubt performed "Just a Girl," and Gwen Stefani was awkwardly as frenetic as she was in 1996: leaping, writhing like a tsunami was running up her spine, maybe almost actually throwing elbows at the audience as she made her way back up on stage after jumping down among them. Her painfully live vocals were not at all spot-on, but I can't help but feel like a part of her energy was inspired by the impossible-to-the-point-of absurdity "vocal" performance that Abdul had just given. It was a fuck-you. She was saying, "Here's what it really sounds like when you dance while singing."
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
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Paula did the worst lip sync performance of the season; oh the irony...
ReplyDeletePersonally, I wouldn't go to a performance of dancing over a recorded vocal track. I want to hear the artists actually perform music. Assuming other people share my opinion, wouldn't it be better to fake it rather than not? If you can fool some people, you win.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if I'm not going to be bothered by someone not singing at all, I'm not sure if I care whether they lip-sync or not. If they lip-sync well enough, perhaps I can allow myself to suspend my disbelief and enjoy the performance anyway.
Maybe the calculation IS that if you fool some people then you come out ahead, but it seems to me that no calculation is being performed at all. Rather, it seems like lip-syncing is just being done, and nobody is asking why. I don't think anybody really asks anymore if the audience is fooled. If they did, I think they would conclude that people are not quite so gullible.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that some people are fooled, but that wasn't my point. My point was rather that if you don't mind them just dancing and not singing, why would you mind them pretending to sing as well? It could be looked at as just another part of the routine.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason lip-syncing is more annoying than a person just dancing and not singing, is that the person dancing and not singing isn't trying (and usually failing) to fool me.
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