The DECADES channel, a MeTV affiliate, airs 30-minute clips from the Ed Sullivan Show Monday-Friday. Every single appearance by The Mamas and the Papas is clearly lip synced.
I hate it when singers do this. Why pretend to be giving a live performance when you are not doing so? Just play a record and wave to the audience.
Some of the singers on Ed Sullivan are singing live.
I thoroughly enjoy The Mamas and the Papas on TESS, lip syncing or not.
I find their performance of Dedicated To The One I Love funny, though, because there are two lip syncing blunders that I can see. The first is by Cass immediately after Michelle’s opening solo. She mouths “while” instead of “each”.
The second one is towards the end of the song. Only John and Denny are in the shot and we hear Denny’s voice sing “this is dedicated” but he doesn’t mouth the words. Neither does John for that matter.
I don't think it was their choice. It was likely a reaction to Doors refusing to change lyrics to their songs a few weeks before
The mamas and the papas were going out of their way to make it obvious. Take this performance for example where Michelle Phillips starts to eat a banana in middle of the song, and then uses it instead of microphone for the rest of the song. There is also some obvious conversation going on as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNlwimUxUME
Nice post. They were absolutely annoyed at being forces to lip synch and many people do not remember this performance where they showed how annoyed they were. Good job finding it
shareI just saw that episode about a week ago on MeTV and I was wondering why she was eating a banana. She looked like she was just lounging around during the performance.
shareI just watched their first appearance on TESS (December 1966) where they performed Words Of Love and California Dreamin’. Strangely, Words Of Love was not lip synced but California Dreamin’ was. I wonder why?
shareI'm kind of surprised to even see this discussion. It was standard to lip sync in 1960s tv shows. It was an exception if it was sung live. Pop singers were put on shows because they had a hit single. It was all business.
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