I am about as excited following pop culture as I am trying to lose twenty-five pounds…but I am hearing a lot of yammering about Beyonce lip-synching the National Anthem. I watched the inauguration and I thought she did fine; it never occurred to me that her lips were moving to pre-recorded music. I am so easily fooled. With that being said, let me share my observations on this matter.
My first thought when this hit the media spotlight was: So what. And my last thought? So what. Here’s the deal. A presidential inauguration is a big event. BIG! A celebrity wants to deliver his/her best performance on this momentous occasion, and if this can be delivered with the help of technology, I say go for it. And good for them for wanting to do their absolute best. How many times has the singing of our national anthem been painful to listen to? I have one such memory: Roseanne. I digress. There were three other musicians performing at our nation’s capitol; if Kelly, James and the Boston Tabernacle Choir didn’t mind if Beyonce was bouncing along to a pre-recorded track, then what does it matter? Are they being tight-lipped about the whole affair? Barack, Michelle, and the girls didn’t seem to mind. And I know this is a minor point…and while that poem by Richard Blanco was awesome, I actually wanted to hear the what the president had to say. Silly me.
Here’s the other side of this pressing issue. We want the real deal. Authenticity still matters. It’s like this: when I would bring a coin, fossil, autograph, document, lunar soil sample, etc., into my classroom, the question I was asked over and over again was: “Is it real?” Nobody wants to be fooled. If we are going to ‘ooh and aah’ we don’t want to hear, “Nanny nanny boo boo” or “Sucka!” It interferes with our entire system of trust and sense of wonder. When we are led to believe that it will be, well, believable, we scorn the artificial. For me it comes down to choosing my battles. I don’t want a faulty or fake medical diagnosis or home inspection; however, if a singer uses her/his own voice on ‘live coverage’ via a pre-recording I don’t much care. It wasn’t like Beyonce was claiming to be Stevie Wonder. Hey….wonder if Stevie would ever consider singing at the next inauguration!
I will sleep quite well tonight not knowing if Beyonce sang or synched. Had someone held up a sock puppet with Beyonce’s voice, I still would have said it was a good job.
But now…that Boston Tabernacle Choir? I am pretty sure they were faking all that spirituality; yeah, they were just swaying ’cause they were cold. Oh…and James Taylor? I don’t think those were really his hands playing that guitar. Naw. And Kelly Clarkson? I heard she stomped off when she found out Simon Scowl wasn’t there. But what do I know. I just tuned in to the whole affair because of some historical event having to do with my country’s future.
Oh…say can you see? This blog was lip-synched by me.
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