From the invention of television, there has been that eager tension to put on the best performance. Through variety TV shows like The Ed Sullivan Show, there was no question that it could make or break a career. Somewhere down the line, someone decided that the best way to have an artist portray themselves was to pretend to sing. Even further down that dotted line, another idea was that you could take beautiful people and dub them over with different ugly people. Image was key. Now in today's world, you don't need talent, just as long as you have a pitch corrector.
The first time I had my audio innocence shattered was when I learned a band from Los Angeles named the Monkees didn't play their own instruments. Well, this is a half truth. Yes, they were hired as actors and although they did not contribute anything but vocals until 1967, they were fully functioning musicians. Problem was, at the conception of the show, no one played drums. The producers decided Davy Jones would be the frontman, Michael Nesmith on guitar, Peter Tork on bass and the unlucky Micky Dolenz on drums. For their first two albums, session musicians filled in for the boys and they had no creative input for the music. Though, the guys did tour without the use of trickery. Their show matched the oddball humour of A Hard Day's Night, and the public were eating it up. The band fought for their need to express themselves after many behind the scene arguments with the show's producers wrote and record an album called Headquarters, which reached #1 for one week in 1967. Unfortunately, that's when, instead of fighting with the producers, they started fighting amongst themselves about direction. The show was ultimately cancelled in 1968, though the band continued to release music. The problem with this is it's still happening with people like Miley Cyrus or whatever Disney and Nickalodeon is pushing down our kid's throats. The end result is always the same: The artist tries to redefine themselves by being the polar opposite of the sugar coated image that made them popular, usually through sexually explicit lyrics and imagery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScXXaBu1Ing
When we were not all singing and dancing with our tambourines, there was also a focus on pure image in the punk scene. In 1975, the UK brought us The Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten on vocals, Steve Jones on guitar, Paul Cook on drums and Glen Matlock on bass. Matlock eventually left the band due to a mutual agreement, but the myth was he was kicked out for liking The Beatles. That's when Rotten spotted Sid Vicious. Although he had very little musical talent, he had the look and the edge Johnny was looking for. They put him on bass, but he was, indeed, terrible. He only played on one track on Nevermind the Bullocks for the song "Bodies" and even that was overdubbed. Matlock was brought back in behind the scenes. I even heard stories that someone would play bass behind a curtain during their shows. Issues arose when Sid got all strung out on Heroin and would attack fans. Rotten has said that Vicious had a thirst for fame. In the end, he murdered his girlfriend and then later committed suicide, but there will always be controversy that he would have been too high at the time to kill Nancy Spungen. This would be a case of having the bad boy image blow up in one's face. Yet we love it, don't we? We love when Bert McCracken of The Used excessively drops the f-bomb on live television or Mike Patton of Faith No More exposes himself. We want these people to shock us. Controversy can only fuel album sales. Just don't speak out against god, war or the president.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgWDYlGvyZk
Milli Vanilli was a pop duo formed in Germany in 1988. It was fronted by Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, but they didn't actually sing at all like our past two stories. In 1990, their grammy for 2 X 2 was revoked when it was discovered their records were not the voices of Morvan or Pilatus. No, these two guys were model/dancers Frank Farian [The Mastermind] found in a Munich club. The duo had several hits, but even during their tours, they used pre-recorded vocals. It bit them in the ass in 1989 when during a performance for MTV, the vocals began to skip. The duo tried to play it off, but the damage was done. They were nothing but puppets on a string. Milli Vanilli tried to redeem themselves, like The Monkees, by releasing albums with their own voices but without much success. Rob Pilatus died of a drug overdose on April 2, 1998 right before their Back and in the Attack promotional tour. It makes me think, these guys are living the high life. All they do is get on stage and pretend to sing, while the real talent that has backed them since the beginning don't get the credit they deserve. Would you take anyone seriously if someone boasted they wrote for Milli Vanilli? No, the connotation will always be that they were fake and talentless. Here is their crowning glory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udS5qBrBFqE
It's still good to know a public display of lip-sync fail can ruin a career. Need I say more about Ashlee Simpson? Yes, I'm sure it must be very hard to follow in the shadow of your more talented sister. In October 2004, she was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. Her first song went without problems, but when they started the second song, the vocals for the first song played instead. The band did there best to cover it up and after some amazing redneck jiggery, Simpson exited the stage. At the end of the show, she had the lady balls to say that her band started playing the wrong song! Then it was her drummer pressed the wrong button. Poor Ashlee had acid reflux and "was not advised to sing". So, basically, it was any fault but her own. Though, even after this display, she did put out another album. I guess the lucky thing was that even though she was helped through the writing process, there weren't any grammies to take away from her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rt318_cEsw
Yet, for some odd reason, we've embraced lip syncing during concerts. It's one thing to screw up on live TV, but when you have big name artists touring to a vocal track, that's gotta be the biggest farce of it all. What are we paying for? Don't give me no shit that the show is so elaborate that an artist can't sing and dance at the same time. Why dance at all? Musicians is a term for people that produce music. Daily we are losing that term to sham entertainers who provide nothing but skimpy outfits and gyrations not uncommon in your local strip club. The show's focus is never about the music in the pop world. It resembles more of a Broadway extravaganza or Cirque de Soleil. My personal favourite offender is Britney Spears. It's hard to pick an exact moment that is her worst lip-syncing disaster, but unlike Simpsons, it hasn't seemed to have affected Spears at all. We should all remember a horrid moment at the MTV Video Music Awards where she "performed" Gimme More. The best parts were the shots of the various celebrities in the audience all with shocked facial expressions. Yet, even after a performance so mind numbingly bad [which, I think she blamed on cold medication], her album still rose to the top in Canada and #2 in the US. Even during her concerts, there are instances that she is NOT singing. Does the audience boo? Does the audience get up and ask for a refund? No, we just seemingly sit there and ignore it. Are we that fucking dense? Watch as a fan wanders up on stage and she yells at him to sit down. She must be speaking in tongues!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqfwYo1K1g8
Alas, the finale moment. Where you do nothing to hide the fact you can't sing and you openly use something called "auto-tune". It's right there in the title folks. T-Pain uses auto-tune. Kanye uses auto-tune. There is so much modulation on Ke$ha's voice she sounds like an alien, but don't worry, they can get away with it because auto-tune is totally trendy right now, like OMG. What message are we sending young inspiring musicians? You don't need to be talented. You just need the look. You just need the attitude. It's all backed up by the studios and music television nor radio do little to change that. Ever since the invention of Pro-Tools, it's not about playing the song until you get it right. Hell, you can stumble through a take and that can be that. Leave it in the hands of the producers to cut it up, correct the pitch and shine it up for release. Sorry, Lil Wayne is not a singer, and he will never be the new Jimi Hendrix. There's a lot of people that state rap is dead or that it's a fragment of its old self. That's true, but that doesn't mean Timbaland has to start swooning us in a duet with Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. I wish there was some way we could gather all the auto-tune devices and just have a massive fire, like the way they used to burn Beatles albums. We've accepted lip syncing and we've accepted voice modulation. The kind of stuff that would ruin your career back in the 60's if someone felt you weren't genuine. To prove anyone can use auto-tune, here's Antoine Dodson live on the BET awards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke_ft98rDN8&feature=related
What can we do? Well, we need to support the artists out there that are writing and performing their own material without cheating. This accounts for CD/MP3 and vinyl sales. This accounts for concerts. Why is it so many great artists get dropped from their labels due to lack of album sales, when the mongoloids reach the top of the castle? It's all in the hands of the consumer. I like to think Victoria has pretty good taste. I hope you have enjoyed this little article. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Other than that, I'll see you at show soon!
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