Super Bowl pre-game show producer Rickey Minor admits that Jennifer Hudson and Faith Hill Lip-Synched:
Minor explained that he insisted that both Hudson and Faith Hill, who performed “America the Beautiful” before Hudson, sing to the prerecorded tracks the NFL requires them to submit a week before the game.
“That’s the right way to do it,” Minor said. “There’s too many variables to go live. I would never recommend any artist go live, because the slightest glitch would devastate the performance.”
What a crock of shit. Why even bother trotting the singers out there then? Wouldn’t a nice video montage of soldiers and nurses and cops and teachers make for even better television?
The Associated Press has more.
“…because the slightest glitch would devastate the performance.”
It wasn’t a performance, then, was it?
BOOM! Jude nails it.
What can you say about the people who were more interested in Faith and Jennifer’s performance than Springsteen’s? They are the kind of people who think this debate is uninteresting and a waste of time. Therefore do they really deserve a live performance…or even our time in discusing it?
I have no problem with lip-synching. All I ask is that the performer hold up a 18″ by 48″ sign saying in block letters “ENJOY MY TAPE”.
I am an independent promoter/producer here in Minnesota and I can tell you Rickey Minor is full of it. He is obviously afraid of success and incompetent. If you have expert sound technicians, they make anything sound great in any situation. Furthermore all of these performers are professionals and can handle tricky situations. Most of us in the business would just call this this lazy and safe. So dear Rickey, please step aside and let some of us real producer have a crack at producing the ultimate performance for the ultimate game.
Music insiders explain why backing tapes are a must for Hudson, Springsteen at Super Bowl:
“You can’t control the environment, so the smart decision is to record the performance and play along with it. With Jennifer Hudson, if she goes out there, they set up the microphones, the music starts, and something goes wrong — she can’t hear herself, the microphone doesn’t work — she’s in trouble. The performance is going to suffer. You only have a certain amount of time. It’s too big of an event to risk something going wrong.”
Again, it’s not much of a performance then. I guess I don’t care so much but it just strikes me as silly all around. I’d like it better of the star simply stood there while their music blared over the PA. Imagine that: no singing, no dancing, nothing…