Lip sync

Artists also sometimes move their lips at a faster speed than the recorded track, to create videos with a slow-motion effect in the final clip, which is widely considered to be complex to achieve.

Notable exceptions to this trend include Bruce Springsteen's hit "Streets of Philadelphia", which only uses the instruments as a backing track while the vocals were recorded with a microphone attached on the singer, giving a different feel to it.

[2] Chris Nelson of The New York Times reported: "Artists like Madonna and Janet Jackson set new standards for showmanship, with concerts that included not only elaborate costumes and precision-timed pyrotechnics but also highly athletic dancing.

"[1] Edna Gundersen of USA Today comments that the complexity of modern stage show has forced "singing and musicianship into minor roles", citing as example artists such as New Kids on the Block, Milli Vanilli, George Michael, Cher, Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson.

So if Britney Spears, Janet Jackson or Madonna sounds shrill and flat without a backing track, fans won't pay up to $300 for a concert ticket.

"[4] Some singers habitually lip sync during live performances, both concert and televised, over pre-recorded music and mimed backing vocals; this is known as singing over playback.

[5] Arts journalist Chuck Taylor says that it is considered "an egregious offense", but he points out that when singers are dancing and doing complex stage shows, it is hard to sing live.

"[5] There are "very few artists who [...] completely lip-sync" while a backing track is playing with "full lead vocals", a practice done due to "weather conditions, technical issues, or sickness.

[8] Iron Maiden and Muse both mocked demands by two music television programs to give mimed performances, by having their band members deliberately swap instruments.

[8][15] Mobile apps such as Dubsmash and TikTok (which acquired and shut down Musical.ly in 2017), which allow users to record their own lip sync videos to pre-existing audio and song clips for sharing on social networking services or an internal platform, have also been popular.

A hashtag associated with the special received 41 million posts within 24 hours on Twitter, beating a global record previously set during Brazil and Germany's semi-final match at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

The article also claims that "British band Depeche Mode, ...adds vocals and a few keyboard lines to [a] taped backup [track when they perform] onstage".

Chris Nelson of The New York Times reported that by the 1990s, "[a]rtists like Madonna and Janet Jackson set new standards for showmanship, with concerts that included not only elaborate costumes and precision-timed pyrotechnics but also highly athletic dancing.

"[1] Edna Gundersen of USA Today reported: "The most obvious example is Madonna's Blond Ambition World Tour, a visually preoccupied and heavily choreographed spectacle.

"[3] Similarly, in reviewing Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation World Tour, Michael MacCambridge of the Austin American-Statesman commented "[i]t seemed unlikely that anyone—even a prized member of the First Family of Soul Music—could dance like she did for 90 minutes and still provide the sort of powerful vocals that the '90s super concerts are expected to achieve.

"[27] The music video for Electrasy's 1998 single "Morning Afterglow" featured lead singer Alisdair McKinnell lip syncing the entire song backwards.

During the incident, vocal parts from a previously performed song began to sound while the singer was "holding her microphone at her waist"; she made "some exaggerated hopping dance moves, then walked off the stage".

[28] In 2009, US pop singer Britney Spears was "'extremely upset' over the savaging she has received after lip-synching at her Australian shows", where ABC News Australia reported that "[d]isappointed fans ...stormed out of Perth's Burswood Dome after only a few songs".

[30] Rolling Stone magazine stated that "Though some reports indicate Spears did some live singing [in her 2009 concerts], the L.A. Times Ann Powers notes that the show was dominated by backing tracks (which granted, is not the same thing as miming)".

The producers issued a statement indicating that it was planned for Perry to sing live, except that a "technical problem" caused staff to play a "bad soundtrack".

[44] In January 1998, singer-songwriter Jewel was criticised for lip syncing the American national anthem at the opening of the Super Bowl XXXII to a digitally-recorded track of her own voice.

Pavarotti's manager, Terri Robson, said that the tenor had turned the Winter Olympic Committee's invitation down several times because it would have been impossible to sing late at night in the sub-zero conditions of Turin in February.

When Public Image Limited singer John Lydon performed on American Bandstand, "instead he sat on the floor of the studio, threw himself into the assembled audience, and stuck his nose into the camera while recordings over his own voice played".

[53] When appearing on a TV program in Detroit in 1966, Frank Zappa and his band similarly gathered on a "stage" with items from the station's props department, and asked his band members to perform "a repeatable physical action, not necessarily in sync with (or even related to) the lyrics, and do it over and over until our spot on the show was concluded", leading to a performance Zappa described as "Detroit's first whiff of homemade prime-time Dada.

"[54] Morrissey protested a similar policy on the BBC music programme Top of the Pops by singing "This Charming Man" with a fern plant as a "microphone".

[60] Marni Nixon sang for Deborah Kerr in The King and I and for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, Annette Warren for Ava Gardner in Show Boat, Robert McFerrin for Sidney Poitier in Porgy and Bess, Betty Wand for Leslie Caron in Gigi, Lisa Kirk for Rosalind Russell in Gypsy, and Bill Lee for Christopher Plummer in The Sound of Music.

Lip syncing is almost always used in modern musical films (The Rocky Horror Picture Show being an exception) and in biopics such as Ray and La Vie en Rose, where the original recording adds authenticity.

The technique continues to this day, with animated films and television shows such as Shrek, Lilo & Stitch, and The Simpsons using lip syncing to make their artificial characters talk.

RPGs for hand-held systems are still largely based on text, with the rare use of lip sync and voice files being reserved for full motion video cutscenes.

Since then, games like Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault and Half-Life 2 have made use of coding that dynamically simulates mouth movements to produce sounds as if they were spoken by a live person, resulting in astoundingly lifelike characters.