The simple fact that someone would lip-synch “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a presidential inauguration — as a Marine Corps Band spokeswoman said pop star Beyonce did Monday — isn’t all that scandalous. An outdoor performance in the winter can be punishing to the voice and other instruments; that’s why cellist Yo-Yo Ma played along to a prerecorded track at the 2009 inaugural. (“It was wicked cold,” Ma told The New York Times back then.) And it’s not as though Beyonce had never sung her version of the national anthem; she knew her own phrasing well enough to match it impressively when the time came.
What has opened the singer to outsize fury — beside the fact that Kelly Clarkson apparently managed to sing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” live — was the dramatic mid-song moment when Beyonce tore off her earpiece, and seemed to be singing without being able to hear the backing music. As of Tuesday evening, she hadn’t explained the gesture. At the time, it looked to some viewers like showboating but to many Beyonce fans as proof of her superior talent. Once the artifice was reported, though, the move seemed the ultimate in self-aggrandizing fakery. And it called attention to a moment that, frankly, wasn’t supposed to be about Beyonce.
Comments
Wait one minute... our jumbo-tron feed to the cheap seats of the inauguration was so messed up that we couldn't hear Beyonce's performance through the poorly set up and undermanaged gear. End result? Clicks, pops, mutes, and pitch shifted chunks of random program sent to the festival audience, from 11:30AM on - a total buzz kill. I'm not sure what Beyonce heard, but if her in-ear monitors were anything like our feed, every performer I know of who has used "ears" would rip them out and go open loop, and actually sing the way that they know how to.
To state that she had faked her a-capella performance with "tracks" _because_ she ripped out her useless in-ear monitors is ridiculous, and very insulting. Shame on the mysteriously uncredited author of this editorial. From what I heard and saw at the mall in D.C., she did not have backup tracks, but actually sang the thing without any monitors at all, in front of a million people, and delivered it well. Given the quality of the jumbo-tron feed and the subsequent audio glitches at the evening ball, I can't imagine how that audio crew could even get a performer's tracks to function, even if they were asked to do so.
Nothing more than Kabuki theater -- once again from another pop star
Who cares. If this is all people have to worry about, it's a wonderful world.
The Globe has sunk to the low-level of Fox News. Fox negatively interpreted a camera shot showing Michelle Obama quickly rolling her eyes (and while sitting next to) John Boehner at lunchtime. Boehner and the president were laughing together at that moment. So what's wrong if Beyonce did a lip-synch? And by the way, she did not tear off her ear piece. She removed it. Probably because it screeched in her ear. If she did a lip-synch, I'm sure it was to optimize her performance on a bitterly cold day (or maybe she had a cold). I hope the writer of this tabloid style editorial doesn't also report the news! He/she should be nicknamed "Scoop".
People the story was told by a sergeant in the Marine Band who stated that she did not sing the Anthem, period! All the hype about her doing it, she should have made the effort or at least explained why she didn't and called it a day. Your fans are the reason you are where you are honey, don't ever get it twisted and when you insult your public, things change rather quickly. Some people are offended, it will pass. I am not a fan, but I am a huge fan of my President and I would expect nothing but respect for him and the office that he holds.
Aretha sang, Kelly Clarkson sang, James Taylor _ Beyonce lip-synched.
Only the media like the Globe would compare Beyonce's lip-synching with Yo Yo Ma - too funny.
GET REAL _ she thought she could pull off an embarrassing hoax: The Emperor has no clothes!
Who gives a bleep.There are alot more newsworthy things happening than this.