Was it okay in the 70s and before that to lip sync on TV performances? Did some of these artists lip sync in concerts? At what point were people expected to SING live in concert and on TV?

I've heard Billy Joel talk about the 1989 Grammy Awards and how everyone except Milli Vanilli (seriously) urged to be allowed to perform live. Was Milli Vanilli really the turning point?

I mean I'd love to know like what artists, or time periods raised the bar. I mean when you watch performances by artists like Michael Jackson on Motown 25, or even other pop acts, it seemed to be standard practice to lip sync. So was that the way it was in the 70s also? If so, how on earth was that congruent with the things going on like Woodstock? I can't imagine someone lip syncing there.

I'd love to be schooled on what was the "norm" for performances before the 80s, by some orgers older than me, and when (if you had to guess) did the bar get raised to be...PERFORM LIVE ON TV AND OFF TV.

Thanks in advance.

Vanilli said:

MJ only lip synced Billie Jean because it wasn't even a Motown song. He snuck that in cause that was the only way he'd perform with his brothers.

Soul Train was like 90% lip synced back in the day. I've on;y seen a select few live on soul train like JB, Al Gree, Marvin, ect.

weren't american bandstand and ed sullivan show performances lipsynched? I don't know about everyone else, but the j5 ones appeared to be that way.

It's never been normal to lip synch in concert. TV is another thing. On certain TV shows like Soul Train and American Bandstand (where the program makers found it too complicated to set up equipment) artists would mime. Then there were other TV shows where they would sing live. It all depended on the policy of the program.

But what you have to realize is those mimed performances made up only about 5% of the performances an artist would do. Only thing is, that 5% makes up about 50% of what you'll find on Youtube, so perhaps that's why you have such a distorted impression.

The bar has not been raised, it's been lowered. Back in the day, you could not get a record deal if you couldn't sing live. Remember, back then the technology didn't exist to disguise bad singing so if you couldn't sing you wouldn't have a deal in the first place. Lip synching in concert was unheard of until MJ started doing it on the Bad Tour. After that, you had Madonna, Britney, Janet and others following suit, but it's still the case that 99% of live concerts have no lip synching.
[Edited 6/28/08 6:54am]

midnightmover said:

EHHHHH .....no.... the record industry always had these dirty tricks up their sleeves. its just that we've just gotten hip to it within the last 20-25 years. They always had some singers who'd they manipulate their voices on records and it was viturally (sic) impossible to do live. some novelty acts as well.
The only other case i ehard concerning live concert lip synchin, i read donny osmonds autobiography (....dont ask me why...please) nad he said during the 70 he and his family would lip sync entire cocnerts, or soemthing to that effect. why? i can't remember. maybe one of his fans can clarify.


but these practices have been around for decades, only now we know about it

Nvncible1 said:

Time for a history lesson. First of all, the technology to overdub vocal parts only came around at the start of the seventies. Listen to any song recorded before then and what you are hearing is a live vocal performance. The most they could do to improve it was to add echo to it. Therefore you never had a shock when you heard singers live, because what was on the records was live.

Then in in the late '70s/ early '80s the technology advanced further, so you could correct the pitch of a singer, and also strengthen the sound of a weak voice without it being obvious. That meant the doors were opened for people who could not have had careers in the past.

As for lip synching in concerts, it's extremely rare even now, and virtually unheard of back then. It's possible some manufactured bands like The Bay City Rollers may have lip-synched in the '70s, but since I know nothing about those groups I can't say..... Your Osmonds story is too vague. You've admitted you can hardly remember what the story was. Get the details and then we'll talk..... The Osmonds spent years doing live shows before they had their first hits. They are still performing now and their concerts are completely live.

midnightmover said:

And also an important note, those shows like Bandstand, Soul Train, TOTP etc..have to pay more for LIVE singing, it is true. Thats why u tend to see it happen in alot of "lower" budget award shows now, though its a combo of the artist not being able to do it live and the show not wanting to pay for Live equipment, sound people, etc.. Concerts are live, though when released on dvd or cd, they are often overdubbed, depending on the artist. Some Live shows do feature, pre-recorded music. BUT i will say that once Milli Vanilli happend everyone jumped on the boat of watching to see who is lypsynching a tv show or event, no one gave a shit about that before
[Edited 6/28/08 9:54am]

lastdecember said:

Yeah, there are some shows that feature pre-recorded music, but very few that feature pre-recorded vocals. I'm unaware of any live concerts before MJ's Bad Tour where the singer actually mimed. I don't think Milli Vanilli ever did a concert tour. Even Madonna's first two tours in '85 and '87 were completely live.

midnightmover said:

overdubs were available since the early 60s....hence most vocals from that period were double tracked to give stronger sounding vocals.
the manipulations i was talking about was simple things like raising the pitch of a singers voice to make them sound younger/ commercial. that has been done since the late 50s.

back to my original arguement : The industry has always been dirty. its nothing NEW

Nvncible1 said:

It's becoming clear that you're either inventing arguments as you go along or you just don't understand half of what you read. Let me say this clearly. The way vocals are recorded nowadays is to cut and paste various takes together to get one overall good take, and if a singer is having trouble with specific bits, they can go over it 30 times until they get it right. That will then be spliced into the overall performance and it will all sound like one flawless take. Back in the '50s and '60s you simply couldn't do that. There was also no such thing as Auto-Tune. It simply didn't exist. It was just much, much harder to cheat back then.

Think of the shock you often have nowadays when you hear certain artists singing live. You're shocked because it sounds nowhere near as good as the record. Well, up until the '70s that never happened for the reasons I've just explained. Listen to any artist from the '50s or the '60s (or even the early '70s) singing live and you'll hear it sounds JUST AS GOOD as it does on record. There's a reason for that.

So, coming back to the original point, artists from that era had no fear of live singing. They only ever mimed to make life easier for TV producers. lastdecember made the real point. It cost more for TV shows to hire sound people. It was cheaper and easier to just play the record and have the singer mime to it.

In concert, it's still only a TINY number of people who mime. MJ, Janet Wack-son, Britney, The Spice Girls. That's about it. All these people are artists who benefitted from the advances in recording technology I outlined above.

midnightmover said:

I read several music books and they all back up my claims,lol

relax, we can both be right its ok

Nvncible1 said:

Funny how you can't produce no quotes.

Don't have to. just listen to the music back then. alot of these technologies were available. particularly overdub and double tracking. the only arguement we have is that im saying it was available in the 60s. The beatles had double tracking and overdubs as early as 1964. Alot of the teenage idols of the 50s manipulated the tracks to make them sound more appealing in the 50s. whats the big deal?



do you really have to be a ass about it?
its ok!

I've seen lots of clips from Soul Train, American Bandstand and Top Of The Pops that are lip synced. I think it was abut the same ratio as you get on TV now. The only thing that's changed is since the late 80s people have been miming in concert, which is inexcusable.

Nvncible1 said:

We're not talking about tracks. We're talking about vocal performances. If you listen to the Beatles singing live, their vocals sounded just as good (or bad) as they did on the records. You can't say that about Janet, Britney, Madonna, etc. Try to name an equivalent to those three from before the 1980s. You won't be able to. Even a non singer like Marianne Faithful sounded the same live as she did on record. Why do you think that is?

Ellie said:

I think after the Milli Vanilli scandal there was a movement for more live singing on TV. I remember TOTP making a big deal about changing the rules in the early '90s. Up until then almost all their shows were mimed. But as you've said, in concert, we only started to see lip synching in the late '80s, starting with MJ, although I have to stress it's still only a minority thing. Pretty much every star today sings live. The younger generation are actually superior in that way to the '80s bunch.

Acts usually lip-synched on "Soul Train" and "American Bandstand" because it was easier. On "Ed Sullivan" and other prime-time variety shows, it was a bunch of different possibilities : artists either performed completely live (vocals and instruments- like The Beatles or Elvis), often they sang live to a pre-recorded backing track (check out some of the later Stones appearences on Sullivan, or the Mamas and Papas), or ocasionally it was all mimed.

I don't recall ever hearing about artists lip-synching in concert until the late 80's, with Milli Vanilli. Then I belive Madonna did some on her "Blonde Ambition" tour during some of the more elaborate dance numbers. I remember seeing Janet Jackson on an HBO special about 7 or 8 years ago, and I realized that she did not sing ONE note as far as I could tell, the whole thing seemed to be lip-synched. And I recall a Spice Girls performance on "SNL" where in the song the solo vocals were live, but the harmony parts were on tape (maybe to "spice" up the performance ??)
[Edited 6/30/08 8:33am]

Yeah, I think it was Janet on the Rhythm Nation tour that I've seen lots of clips from and not a single song is live. Madonna and MJ did it (which I still hate), but it was only a select couple of songs, maybe 3 or 4 tops. Janet did it for about two thirds of her shows.

At the same time as Milli Vanilli, New Kids on The Block did it a lot but only for that first tour. By 1990 they were singing all live in concert, but badly!
[Edited 6/30/08 8:36am]

yeah its a need now because there are faker more desposable singer now and they have to prove they can doit. I really turned the clock when Milli Vanilli came through..then they started saying EVERYONE was being fake.

midnightmover said:

I was talking about TRACKS as well as LIVE. I was talking about the music industry in general.

and im done, damn ure exhausting!