A lot of performers lip synch.
Far more than most people think.
But we don’t want to know for certain when they do so.
Whenever it becomes obvious that a performer is lip synching a performance, it becomes an instant scandal.
We just love watching famous people fail.
That’s why I’ve compiled this list of the worst lip sync disasters caught on camera. Every one of these incidents ended up going viral.
6 Worst Lip Sync Disasters Caught On Camera That Went Viral Overnight
I know lip synching is not unusual, but I also know people expect the lip synching to be unnoticeable. In most of the following 6 cases, it became quite noticeable. In others it was not, but the performer admitted to it later.
Beyonce – The National Anthem At Presidential Inauguration Ceremony 2013
The worst types of lip-syncing disasters are the ones that aren’t immediately apparent. Let’s open the list with Beyonce singing The Star-Spangled Banner at the second Inauguration of President Obama.
The entire performance was flawless. Beyonce gave zero hints about whether the singing was real or fake, and since she was singing alone (to an orchestra), all we could do was watch and enjoy her gorgeous voice.
This would never pass as a disaster of any scale if Beyonce didn’t publicly admit she lip-synced at the event shortly after.
She held a press conference with the Associated Press and explained that the poor weather conditions and the lack of time to prepare, as well as her nature as a “perfectionist” ultimately led to the decision to lip-sync the National Anthem.
Over 15 million people across the globe saw the official clip, so if you’re one of them, you might feel a bit cheated.
Katy Perry – Roar At NRJ Music Awards
The ability to view this video on other sites has been disabled by the owner, so you’ll have to head to Youtube to check it out.
Lip-syncing disasters tend to scale with the size of the performer, and in Katy Perry’s case, even a tiny slight can be huge. She’s been ranked among the top 100 pop performers by numerous sites, so most fans expect her to never lip-sync.
Katy had quite a show at the NRJ Music Awards ceremony in Cannes, France in 2013. She was performing her iconic Roar in front of thousands of people, and the overall atmosphere was superb for a time.
I’d argue most people wouldn’t even catch the fact that she was lip-syncing the song. nor the hints that keen eyes could find, such as steady singing from the speakers when her lips weren’t moving if her performance wasn’t interrupted.
Namely, one of the event’s hosts came up to Katy mid-song, flagged the production team to instantly pause all music, and asked Katy to start the song again. This time around, Katy’s voice sounded considerably different, and most people in the audience, and online, saw what was going on.
Selena Gomez – Come And Get It At Jingle Ball
Although Selena has been more focused on acting in recent years, she rapidly soared to fame as a music artist throughout the 2010s.
Selena Gomez performed at a range of high-profile events where everything went without a hitch, and yet most of her fans will remember the fiasco at the Jingle Ball in New York in 2013.
During the first few minutes of the track “Come and Get It”, some fans could already speculate Selena was lip-syncing, because her face was moving toward and away from the microphone while the volume was consistent.
But the disaster occurred in the middle of the song, when she momentarily stopped singing, but her “singing” didn’t.
It was very clear that the production layered her actual voice with a backing track to counter possible issues, which only caused more problems.
This clip reached millions of views while the original upload in full HD alone garnered over 1.3 million.
Cheryl Cole – Call My Name At Stand Up To Cancer
Technical problems can be a nightmare for any big star performing at a big event. One of the most memorable lip-syncing disasters (and there were a few) in Cheryl Cole’s career struck when she was singing Call My Name at the Stand Up To Cancer event in the UK.
Cheryl and her team chose an extremely dynamic and physically demanding dance routine for this gig. If you were standing in the audience, you’d be wondering if Cole was lip-syncing purely based on how clear she sounded while jumping without a second of respite.
All doubts fell aside when her microphone stopped working. The sad part is that she could still be heard “singing” for over a minute.
As a professional, Cheryl didn’t stop performing and saw the track to the end, but I can only imagine the magnitude of embarrassment she experienced.
The clip didn’t go viral instantly, but it accumulated over 1.3 million views almost overnight a few years after the event.
Kiss – The Farewell Tour
So far, we’ve covered isolated cases of singers and performers who were caught lip-syncing a song or two. This isn’t too new in pop and electronic music, since fans expect a certain degree of quality that’s virtually impossible to emulate without backing tracks and voices.
One of the genres where lip-syncing is a huge taboo is rock. Even though countless bands were accused of lip-syncing, few performers made headlines with disasters of the caliber as Kiss did a few years back when they lip-synced one of their “final” farewell tours.
We have to give Paul Stanley a bit of credit, though. He turned 70 at that time, and the fact that he had the strength to perform with such ferocity is commendable in its own right.
Still, Kiss is considered among the biggest names in the rock and roll industry. They have millions of fans across all compass points, and many believe that a band with such huge platform set the wrong example by lip-syncing.
Justin Bieber – Sorry At Coachella
Arguably one of the fastest-growing names in the pop industry, Justin Bieber took the market by storm as a teen. He continued to dominate the charts and remains a huge idol even today, but his performances are not as polished as they were in his prime days.
He performed Sorry with another legend, Ariana Grande, at Coachella in 2019, and if you’re looking at YouTube comments, you won’t find a single accusation of lip-syncing on either side.
However, if you pay close attention to Justin rapidly moving the microphone to his lips while his voice goes ahead at around the 1:40 minute mark, you’ll notice that he’s clearly not singing – it’s the backing track with a pre-recorded voice doing the work for him.
The clip got over 470,000+ views in a few short years, and even though it will hardly pass as the “worst” lip-syncing disaster of all time, I believe it’s an honorable mention considering the irony in the song’s name.
Worst Lip Sync Disasters: Final Thoughts
Despite how common lip synching is, especially in the genre of pop music, it is always somewhat of a scandal when a performer gets caught lip synching.
And that is exactly what happened to the six performers listed above. All were either caught lip synching, or they admitted to it and went viral anyway.
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