Its taken less than 24 hours (22nd January 2013) for news to break that Beyoncé’s striking live performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the inaugural ceremonies for President Barack Obama on Monday was a lip-synced run-through of a track she recorded earlier.
“We don’t know why Beyoncé decided to use prerecorded music,” a spokesperson for the Marine Corps Band said in a statement.The Grammy-winning superstar was slated to perform ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at the presidential inauguration but she used prerecorded music, while members of the Marine Corps Band, which was set to back her instrumentally, played live, The Hollywood Reporter said.
“All music is prerecorded as a matter of course, and that’s something we’ve done for years and years. The Marine Band did perform live throughout the ceremony, but we received last-minute word that Beyoncé wanted to use the recording.”
Over the weekend, Beyoncé even tweeted out photos of her in the recording studio practicing for the performance.
The news is a shocker, considering the R&B queen is no stranger to big stages and annihilating them in real time. It’s important to note that she did sing the National Anthem at the 2004 Superbowl live (at least, we think she did).
Nevertheless, the response to today’s news has been swift and harsh. Fans that lauded her performance, right down to when she yanked the earpiece out of her left lobe, feel like they’ve been lied to. Like yesterday, Beyonce is currently a trending Twitter topic, but this time for all the wrong reasons.
The question to ask here is if whether Beyoncé lip-syncing is really such a big deal.
On one hand, no, it’s not. This isn’t a Milli Vanilli situation here and should not be treated as such. If Beyoncé did lip-sync, she was not mouthing over another woman’s voice. It was her… just maybe not her at that moment. She recorded herself singing the best version of what, presumably, she didn’t think she could do come show time. Was it the cold weather? Was it nerves? Only Queen B knows for sure.
Should she have wrecked an amazing ceremony because of an off key showing, for the selfish fact that singing live would earn her more respect than the possibility of people finding out that it was pre-recorded? Years from now, when critics and pundits look back at the best National Anthem efforts at inaugurations, Beyoncé will be likely be mentioned. She won’t be banned from The Hall of Awesome Inaugural Performances. Either way, it was her voice. She sold the hell out of it. And that’s alright.
But on the other hand…
It’s a big deal. In a musical feats of strength contest, the National Anthem is arguably one of the heaviest weights to lift. Artists ranging from the likes of Christina Aguilera to Steven Tyler to Roseanne Barr can vouch for that. It’s understandable that any artist who doesn’t think they could do it justice pre-record their performance.
Source – Billboard/Indian Express
