Did Shania Lip Synch her Superbowl Half-Time show?

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[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

Did Shania Twain Lip-Sync Her Super Bowl Halftime Songs?
By Julia Turner
Posted Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 2:48 PM PT

Shania Twain: Live or Memorex?

ABC producers promised that the pop stars they recruited for this year's Super Bowl halftime show would do their singing live—no lip-syncing allowed. But what about country star Shania Twain, who seemed to hop around the stage without missing a note?

Paul Liszewski, who produced the sound for the show, says Shania's mic was hot and her vocals were live. (Other audio engineers who watched the broadcast agreed.) Twain's accompaniment, however, was what's called a "band in a box," which means the back-up vocals and instrumentals we heard were prerecorded. So while the diva was belting out show-stoppers like "Man, I Feel Like a Woman," her onstage drummer was thrashing away merely for effect.

Other bands use a different mix of taped and live elements, depending on the nature of the show. At a dance-heavy concert where the lead singer does exhausting choreography, we might hear a tape of the lead vocal track. At an event like the Super Bowl, where sound engineers have five minutes—rather than the usual six or eight hours—to set up, bands are more likely to rely on tape. During No Doubt and Sting's halftime sets, we were also hearing live vocals and canned instrumentals. Last year, when U2 played, we heard both Bono's voice and the Edge's guitar live, though the rhythm section was prerecorded.

For big events, even totally "live" bands have tapes standing by in case of emergency. If, say, Bono's microphone had suddenly failed last year, an engineer in a broadcast truck equipped with an audio mixer would have quickly brought up the sound on a prerecorded version of Bono's vocal track. If the person doing the blend did the job right, the audience would never even notice the glitch. (That explains the moment when Shania ran back to the stage after mingling with the crowd and didn't appear to be singing, even though her vocals came through loud and clear. When Twain took too long getting back to the stage, the mixing engineer likely brought up the prerecorded vocal track, and then took it back down it as Shania started to sing.)

How do performers keep time when they're faking it? Musicians are almost always listening to a recording of the song on a monitor as they perform. (Most often, that recording is a mix of all the song's tracks, but drummers sometimes prefer to hear a "click track," which just goes tick-tick-tick like a metronome.) Traditionally, the monitors were speakers placed on stage. But that meant that the performers couldn't move around freely and that their microphones might pick up the tape track. These days, many musicians opt for a wireless in-ear monitor, which allows them to strut through a song without losing the beat or tripping on a wire. Each one is custom-molded to the ear canal, looks a little bit like a hearing aid, and can run somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,100.

[mdittmar]

Didn't notice,but,then again,I wasn't focused on her lips.

[clintonh8r]

She has lips?

[Hot Tabasco]

Did Shania Twain Lip-Sync Her Super Bowl Halftime Songs?

Given the clarity of the words, the music and lack of background interference and the fact that when she was in the audience laughing and not actually mouthing words, there is no doubt that she was lip-syncing......

[TD911]

The NFL forces them to lip-synch.

Very tight on time along with complete control of content.

It's not just halftime, but the National Anthem as well.

[sonofatpatcher2]

Heck, I could care less if she was Lip-Sync or not! I just like looking at her.

Man, she looks like a woman!

[mountaineer]

I read elsewhere that Shania lip-synched but Gwen Stefani didn't.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

As if any man alive cared....

[JZoback]

I saw her stopping to talk to someone when she went down that walkway singing.

I didn't realize she could throw her voice that far!!!

[Hot Tabasco]

That explains the moment when Shania ran back to the stage after mingling with the crowd and didn't appear to be singing,

That also answers your question.....

[SamAdams76]

I saw the halftime show and I always thought Shania Twain was a country singer. When did she switch to pop-rock?

[amused]

I read elsewhere that Shania lip-synched but Gwen Stefani didn't.

If Stefanis performance was a recording, she should sue the studio!

[TheRedSoxWinThePennant]

who cares?

[Petronski]

She might have been singing into a hot mic, but the home viewers never heard a note of what that mic picked up.

[classmuse500]

She was syncin', and bigtime. Stefani's honest attempt at being hot-mic'd was immediately obvious. It's physically impossible to have the amount of tonal constistency that Twain had while running around, even walking around. The tone of her voice at some points approached the digitally mastered, especially as she was walking down the narrow catwalk amongst the her fans, who were 1-2 feet from her. Wonder why we didn't hear any of those screaming fans coming through on the mic?

[copycat]

Shania was lip-synching, Sting was not.

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

She faked it.

[Petronski]

No Doubt was live too.

[dpa5923]

She never facted it for me!





Yeah, I wish.

[mountaineer]

Shania Twain: Live or Memorex?

More like, Live or Spandex?