11 Times it Was Painfully Obvious That Famous Singers Were Lip-Syncing

To the music community, lip-syncing is kind of like picking your nose; no one wants to admit it and they definitely don't want to get caught doing it in public, but at some point, almost everyone has. It's not uncommon for musicians to rely on pre-recorded tracks for their live performances, but one of the skills of being a great entertainer is not letting the audience know you're doing this. Yet sometimes an artist is distracted and misses their cue, or a track starts too early and they're not ready—or maybe they're just really bad at pretending like they're actually singing—whatever the reason, there have been many moments in music where it's painfully obvious an artist is lip-syncing. Here are just some of these moments.

Mariah Carey isn't a stranger to lip-syncing scandals. Frequently throughout her career (most recently at the BET Awards), Carey has been accused of using a pre-recorded track for her live performances. However, one of the most obvious displays of this was during her 2008 appearance on Good Morning America when she performed her single "Touch My Body." Carey totally misses the beginning of the song, making it apparent that she wasn't ready for the track to start. She starts to make up for it as the song goes on until around the three minute mark, when she turns to her back-up dancer and sings "Stop singing my part now baby!" Only Mariah.

This may have gone unnoticed to viewers if not for a couple of things:

1. The pre-recorded track started prematurely playing before Shakira even stepped on stage.

2. This very helpful video points out the lip-syncing debacle throughout the performance with notes like, "OMG SHE CAN'T EVEN GET HER LIPS WITH THE MUSIC."

Oh well, most people were probably too busy watching Shakira bend her entire body over backwards to see that she wasn't singing. Also, you really expect someone to sing while bending over backwards? Let's take what we can get.

After an especially rough year, Britney Spears' 2007 VMA performance was poised as the singer's comeback performance; one that would mark her return to the spotlight after her very public breakdown. What we got instead was a vacant, half-assed attempt at the type of show Spears used to put on that was clearly lip-synced. It was a bizarre and disheartening rendition that even confused a lot of the famous audience members; and honestly when you loose 50 Cent with your performance, it's over- just call it a day.

During a 1989 performance in Bristol, CT, Milli Vanilli was performing "Girl You Know It's True" when the record started to skip. Over, and over, and over, and over. The guys couldn't keep dancing and singing "girl you know it's, girl you know it's, girl you know it's" so they did what any sane Grammy-winning artist would do and ran off stage.

Oh Lindsay. Before she was the gossip magazine's favorite cover star, the actress was trying to launch a serious singing career. She released her debut album in December of 2004 and in the same month, appeared on Good Morning America in support of the record. Lohan performed her single "Rumors" and for the first half of the song you watch her like "damn Lindsay, you're rocking this!" Then it hits the 2 minute mark, and you notice she's clearly stopped singing but the song is still playing and you're like "damn Lindsay, you're lip-syncing this!" The performance goes downhill after that for the last minute or so, and after you kind of just feel bad for her - she was so close! Then you sadly shake your head and turn on Mean Girls.

It's a little unsettling to think of someone like Beyoncé lip-syncing a live performance. After all, she is Beyoncé. But earlier this year the singer admitted to doing just that when she sang the National Anthem at President Obama's Inauguration. Beyoncé stated she used a pre-recorded track because she missed rehearsals and, as a "perfectionist," didn't feel comfortable singing live without practicing beforehand. Regardless, people still went nuts upon hearing this and naturally starting questioning other universal truths we previously relied on like "is the sky really blue?" and "is the grass actually green?" and "IS this character from Ice Age really Drake?" Nobody knows now.

One easy way to spot lip-syncing: the singer is no longer even attempting to use the microphone. The crazy thing is that The God Freddie Mercury can pull off a damn good performance even when making no attempt to make it appear as if he's really singing.

Do you think Chris Brown wakes up everyday and says to himself, "Hey Chris, how are we gonna make people hate us today?" Then he maybe gets dressed, sends a few chain emails, takes forever to order his coffee while casually chatting on his phone oblivious to the long line behind him and probably posts pictures of his food on Instagram (because these people are the worst right?). This was most likely the case the morning of the 2012 Billboard Music Awards, but after his usual routine, he was like, "still don't feel like people hate me enough today- maybe I'll lip-sync my performance tonight. Yea, that'll get 'em riled up!" And it did. It was so obvious that Brown was lip-syncing, many musicians took to Twitter to bash his performance. He didn't care though. He probably went home and wrote in his diary, "Dear Diary, It's me Chris. Well, we did it!"

If you're a new band and upset when someone asks you to—for whatever reason—fake your way through a live performance, take comfort in knowing that you're not alone. Shit, even The Beatles did it. Back in the '60s it was standard procedure for some shows. When The Beatles took to Thank Your Lucky Stars it was clear that the band was neither singing or playing their instruments. The fact that their electric guitars weren't plugged in was the first sign.

When you can do what Michael Jackson did when you're on stage, nobody gives a fuck if you're actually singing or not. The proof is in this video of Michael performing "Billie Jean" at Motown's 25th anniversary in 1983. You see that standing ovation at the end? Yeah. R.I.P. MJ.