American Idol Group Performance Lip Sync! Part 3

This week, American Idol finally admitted what we knew for weeks.  “Due to extensive choreography and to balance their voices with open mics against a screaming audience, the Idols do sing along to their own prerecorded vocal track during the group performances only” a rep for the show told reporters.  “They’re not going Milli Vanilli on us, they are singing to their own voices.”  It’s the same thing that has been done at major sporting events for years during the singing of the National Anthem–the performers sing (or lip sync) into a dead mic while their prerecorded rendition is played over the loudspeakers.

I am glad they fessed up to the duping, but I am a little surprised it took so long for them to do so.  I guess they wanted to get away with it as long as possible, then come clean before their ratings started slipping because of the controversy.  The good news is that they only lip sync for the group performance on results night.  The individual performances on theme night are all live. More good news is that Milli Vanilli lip did their lip sync to someone elses voices while the Idols lip sync to their own voices.

Tonight’s Motown Group Medley was prerecorded.  I could see that the judges chairs were empty in a 360 degree camera pan, and there were no shots that showed anyone in the audience.  The band was missing from upstairs, too.  Their instruments were present, but there was no one playing them. The medley was obviously spliced together. It was most evident when Adam went from singing in formation, to doing a solo holding the mic stand, to going back into formation, then back holding the mic stand–all in an instant.  To the Idol’s credit (and the video mixer’s credit, too) the lip syncing was barely evident.  The performance looked like a pretty well done music video.

Scott McIntyre, Michael Sarver, and Matt Giraud were the bottom three vote getters after the nationwide call-in.  The judges were surprised to see Matt near the bottom.  Scott was the best of the worst and gets to sing again next week. Michael ended up singing for a second chance.  All during the song, the judges barely spoke to each other, leading me to believe that they had already decided his fate.  Michael is out of the competition.

I am glad they went to making a music video for the group medley performance.  It was professionally done and well received.  It beats the heck out of the lip syncing that had been going on in previous weeks.  We sat on the couch at the Munro House and thoroughly enjoyed tonight’s program.