Ongoing History Day: The history of lip-syncing (part 2)

Last time we spoke of lip-syncing, the act of miming along to a pre-recorded backing track. Being caught lip-syncing was once considered a public evil, especially after Milli Vanilli was exposed as a fraud after winning a Grammy Award. Since then, we’ve seen technical embarrassments by Ashley Simpson, Mariah Carey and a host of other people who rely on programmed bits.

But others just don’t care. Cher admits she does it. If you’ve seen Justin Bieber live, you’ll know that he often seems to keep singing even when the mic is nowhere near his face. And now, many pop audiences don’t seem to care if the vocals are live or not. They’ve come to see a show with lots of dancing, costume changes, and theatrics. But when it comes to rock audiences, lip-syncing is still considered to be inauthentic, fake and evil.

I wonder of the attitude of pop fans will filter down to rock fans? We’ll see.