I just re-watched "Truth or Dare" on Trio tonight, and was shocked to see that Madonna is obviously lip-synching (miming along to a pre-recorded tape) in the concert scenes. I saw this film in the theatre when it was originally released, and the concert segments looked live to me then. But now, sitting close-up to the TV, there are several moments onstage where she's kissing a dancer or something similar, and her vocal goes on, completely uninterrupted.
shareYea, she lip synched on that tour and on her Girlie Show. Now I don't think she does because shes obviously matured as a performer, but you know. She wasn't as bad as Britney spears, who lip synches awhole concert.
Baby, you're the finest, the finest I've seen. Baby, you're the finest dream.
Actually, check my link out. AURAL PROOF that she sang live during the Girlie Show. Of course, using a guide vocal track that she always uses to sing over LIVE. http://youtu.be/LzVphXvIdeU
Da da da da da da...I am your singing telegram~
(red)*GUNSHOT BLAST*(/red)
i just watched it last night, at which point is she lipsynching? i didnt see it. i have a copy of the whole concert filmed in barcelona too, and there are clear differences in her voice when she is singing and speaking when compared to the truth or dare film, leading me to think it was all live (well apart from the song "following you" which isn't in the film anyway). fill me in at which points.
shareFirst Let Me say this! Madonna did not lip sing during any performances on truth or dare. they put her vocals from the actual album version over express yourself and vogue because she was not happy with the results of her live performance. but she actually did sing live!
during teh actual concert she told people "lets lip sing" and she did it to two songs (now i'm following you part 1 and 2)
also she did lip sing during the girlie show...during erotica, parts of vogue, parts of justify my love and that was it!
suring her 1st two tours...virgin and whos that girl...she sisnt lip sing at all!!!
Drowned world tour in 2001 she didnt lip sing either.
and her most current 2004 reinvention tour she did NOT lip sing, I was there 4 times! the only reason people think that is because during 3 songs her vocals are computerized and making it sound as if there is no mistakes at all during the performance!
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Lip Syncing is a common practice in the entertainment industry today. It is used when an act in a concert is too high energy or theatric for a live vocal. LIKE DUH. I personally dont care if an artist is Lip Syncing or not because they are putting on a show. You are suppose to be entertained. You are seeing the artist LIVE. who cares if they arent singing live or not. You know it's there voice anyways. Now if Madonna had another woman singing her vocals...thats a different story (Milli Vanilli) Its her voice all the way through. Deal with it.
Re-invention was amazing. I saw two shows in Toronto. She definetely lip synced VOGUE, Die Another Day, and Nobody Knows Me. SHE HAD To. Look at the moves she did. If she sung live for those 3 songsit would sound like complete *beep* and I wouldnt pay money to see her struggling to sing live while doing extreme yoga poses and intricate dance moves. no thanks.
-- Carpe Diem --
<I personally dont care if an artist is Lip Syncing or not because they are putting on a show. You are suppose to be entertained. You are seeing the artist LIVE. who cares if they arent singing live or not.>
This has got to be the stupidest comment ever written! You're a MORON! When you see an artist LIVE you expect to see them PERFORM LIVE! And that means they are singing LIVE! It means they are not singing to pre-recorded tapes! Artists that CAN perform LIVE do so and don't need pre-recorded tapes to do so and if the artists is talented enough they will sing LIVE without the pre-recorded tapes.
Madonna had the worst voice when she first started out in the business. She finally MATURED and her voice did too and for the past ten years her voice has deepened and it sounds better (though not great and very limited range). The fact is Madonna never had a great voice and I don't think she'd ever deny that. But the point of watching Madonna is not to hear her sing but watch her dance along with the rest of her dancers.
Madonna had the worst voice when she first started out in the business. She finally MATURED and her voice did too and for the past ten years her voice has deepened and it sounds better (though not great and very limited range).
I'm afraid she DID lip sync in the film... and she didn't. I have a copy of the film with stuff that didn't make the final cut, including the original soundtrack to Express Yourself - where she says, "Awright Paris, France!" at the beginning. She sang live vocals but she sang them over a backing track - yes, she sang over herself singing!
During the Blond Ambition tour, the show started in Japan with more lip syncing than she finished with in France. The recorded show from Yokohama reveals wonderful vocals on the physically demanding Express Yourself, followed by horrendous ones on the next song, a relatively sedate Open Your Heart. Where's the Party was lip synced everywhere, although from London onwards, like Express Yourself, she sang live over a backing track.
As for the ReInvention Tour, I'm afraid she ALSO lip synced in that as well, most notably in Vogue (compare her vocals from different shows in different countries and you'll see it's exactly the same). On MOST of the songs she DIDN'T lip sync, but there WERE songs where she did.
And her last tour (so far), the Confessions Tour, again she lip synced, but again only on a few songs.
With the ReInvention Tour and Confessions Tour, she's been a little bit clever by re-recording the vocals to the songs - that's why Vogue (in the RI tour) sounds different to the album version.
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I wonder why she lyp-sinched those songs... The dance ain't so hard on these songs (at least when she's singing) and why did she tuned "Vogue" down (the original song is in A flat and in RIT it is in G flat) if she was going to lyp-synch it anyway? Differently from BAT and GST when she sang along with the play back, in RIT she doesn't seem to be singing at all... why's that?
One may point out that maybe it's because she wanted to avoid vocal exhaustion, what's OK. By doing this she could keep her voice fine althrough the tour (what didn't happened on her BAT, in which we can clearly notice that her voice was damaged in the last shows).
We must also remember that Madonna only lyp-synchs for good reasons. On GST she only lyp-synched very low tones and spoken parts of songs, what does not mean she is a bad singer. On BAT she sang along with the play back when the dance was too tough (Express Yourself, Where's The Party, Into The Groove chorus, Vogue...). Madonna has never lyp-synched because she is a bad singer or because she couldn't sing her own songs at all like most pop singers do nowadays, specially Britney Spears.
Of course Madonna will always be trashed by people who are envious of her success and strength. We all know she's the best and will never be topped though.
yea I agree, some singers have no choice but to lip-sync to a certain song if the dance routine for it is a lot, because naturally if she sang live she would be slightly puffed out.
I can hear some of the tracks she lip-syncs too during Blonde Ambition, but u def know ones she really is singing because she changes the vocal-sounds a bit, what you wouldnt get on album.
I want to all men!
So Madonna lipsynchs some of her songs on the concerts, who cares? Britney Spears is known for lipsynching some of her WHOLE shows!! Even so-called "world famous vocalist" Mariah Carey lipsynchs from time to time.
Here are the songs she lipsynchs on BAT tour (you can clearly tell which are lipsynched because she had some serious vocal problems during the tour and her vocals are quite harsh sometimes):
Express Yourself <-- lipsynched
Open Your Heart, <-- LIVE
Causing A Commotion, <-- LIVE
Where's The Party, <-- lipsynched
Like A Virgin, <-- LIVE
Like A Prayer, <-- LIVE
Live To Tell, <-- LIVE
Oh Father, <-- LIVE
Papa Don't Preach, <-- LIVE
Sooner or Later, <-- LIVE
Hanky Panky, Now <-- LIVE
I'm Following You, (dancing sequence, isn't even wearing microphone)
Material Girl, <-- LIVE
Cherish, <-- LIVE
Into the Groove, <-- LIVE
Vogue <-- lipsynched
Holiday <-- LIVE
Keep it Together <-- LIVE
I don't know about BAT, but in RIT she definitely lip-synched Nobody Knows Me and Vogue. I don't know about Die Another Day because I've never seen a concert from RIT in its entirety, I've just seen the footage used on the documentary ("I'm Going To Tell You A Secret").
To the people who said she didn't lip sync during DWT... yes she did. She lip-synched Sky Fits Heaven. That number has an extremely intricate choreography, with martial arts and "flying". If she had sung it live, it would've sounded absolutely TERRIBLE, so I'm glad she lip-synched.
She did not lip-synched "Sky fits heaven" at all... all the "intricate choreography" happens after the singing. She sings, then she dances. There's no singing during that (only by donna delory and nikki harris) and when she picks up the microphone to start singing again, it's a good time after, when she's fine to sing again.
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Although it is not un-common to lip sync, nor is there anything wrong with it, there are complicated reasons for what you are calling lip syncing. The film was in post when a release date was accepted and the best way to promote the film was to create music videos. If you notice in the film, the music shots (in color) are like music videos. Although, this was the plan, they were put together with alternate tracks, that sometimes didn't quite match the actual footage. There was no time or budget for re-recording as in Bette Midler's Divine Madness in which the singer went back and actually looped entire songs due to illness during filming. Most of these songs were suppose to be for promotional release and were not fully processed yet due to deadlines. The actual concerts were filmed under two titles Madonna: Blonde Ambition World Tour (An HBO Special) & Madonna: Blonde Ambition Live from Japan. These two titles are a more conventional 3-5 camera setup and really show off how well the show was put together. Nothing on these concerts were lip synced except for a song called "I'm following you" which was remixed and impossible to re-create. During the concert, she hands a vinyl record to a DJ (Donna DeLory) and does a dance skit with Gabriel Trupin (Express Yourself Video) as Dick Tracy. After Blond Ambition, Madonna now makes every effort to be in the best possible shape in order to be able to sing and dance (at the same time) in her live shows. In "Girlie Show" all dancers, Nicki & Donna were all required to participate in Endurance training. Many acts do the same thing now. Someone mentioned that she lip synced on the re-invention tour. She was interviewed many times over this same exact situation and she explains how much she had to work out to accomplish it. Although, she doesn't lip sync, she gets an incredible amount of processed vocal support not to mention cover from Nicki & Donna (who have been present at every concert since the 80's) weather credited or not. Processed meaning, Madonna sings a note and a sequencer grabs it and holds it longer or the voice can be filtered to reduce temors or smooth out pick ups and cut offs. Cover means, when no one is suppose to be watching, backup singers sing lead in order to cover for a lead singer that may not be in the right situation to sing (heavy dancing). No matter what, it was a break though show.
shareShe actually might be singing "Nobody Knows Me" and Vogue" live. You can digitally enhance vocals live like that. But, the vocals in the rehearsal recordings for the RIT version of "Nobody Knows Me" sounds strikingly similar to the vocals that ended up in "I'm Going To Tell You A Secret". But, they could have just used studio-recorded vocals for the movie, and she really sang it live.
shareMAdonna unfortunately strained her voice while record her very first album since she wasn't trained how to sing. That is why she sings all her songs octaves lower than she did on her orignal debut album. She also doesn't totally lip sings in concert but she does use a back track because she does a lot of dancing in her acts and she doesn't have the most strong vocals out there. Same thing goes for most pop female artist.
shareWrong.
Her voice was higher on some of the songs on the first two albums because WB made her producers alter her pitch to make her sound more girly. It was part of their intended marketing.
She didn't "strain" anything while recording her debut album. How in the hell do you think she recorded Evita? If she had strained her voice that bad on her first album she wouldn't have been able to sing half the songs on that soundtrack.
While I'm pretty sure that "Vogue" was always lip-synched, after watching and listening to different shows from Yokohama, Houston, Dallas, Barcelona, and Nice, I'm pretty sure that she sings "Express Yourself" and "Where's the Party" over pre-recorded tracks. There are certain parts of both songs, depending on the locale, where you can definitely hear the harsher, live vocals and can definitely hear the album recordings.
Also, "Holiday" was definitely lip-synched in Yokohama - sometime during the second half of the song, you can clearly see her microphone down by her waist while her voice can be heard singing the word "holiday".
To outofthesky89: I always thought Vogue was totally lip synched but get a copy of the Wembley CD of this concert. Her microphone malfunctions and you can hear her singing Vogue & she sounds terrible. I think she sang over the pre-recorded track but the technical folks kept the volume on her vocals down way low. And the very end of the song (ooooo you've got to just let your body.......") you can hear her own voice clearly singing over the pre-recorded track. I think that's why she was so smarmy back then about the whole lip synching issue that was swirling at the time. Except for Now I'm Following You (which she states she's going to lip synch to), she doesn't really, fully lip synch because she is singing over tracks on certain songs that she can't devote her voice fully to. The Wembley show I have is on 2 CDs & is called Sexual Exposure---has a great booklet w/lots of concert pix too. Express Yourself sounds strange on this too. Like it was slowed down or something & you can really hear her vocals on Vogue.
sharelots of lip synching during this tour (there are plenty of recordings & bootleg cd's that confirm this - some of them like the wembly cd feature no lipsynching at all while others clearly show vogue & express yourself to be lipsynched) All that aside, the reason the performances in the film look lipsynched is because of the massive overdubs that were done in postproduction. Apparently madonna was not happy with her vocals to the point that she re-recorded some & may have even used the vocal tracks from the studio versions of some songs. It quite doesn't work, because the performance looks out of synch & the vocals sound out of place at times.
shareBlond Ambition Tour is my favorite Madonna tour and I have many different performances from America & abroad on audio CD and video. I am very familiar with this show and someone else on this thread pointed out exactly what songs were sung & what were not.....and it was mostly accurate. What I heard in the various versions of shows from this tour is that she sings over the pre-recorded tracks on Express Yourself, Where's The Party, part of Into The Groove and Vogue. In a UK show in Wembley, her mic malfunctions or something and you can clearly hear her singing Vogue..........and she sounds horrible!! And many of the early shows have more of Madonna's real voice, but later shows were lip synched because of the damage to her vocal chords during her throat problems. As for the Truth Or Dare sequences, they're all tweaked because it's a movie. Express Yourself was performed in Paris (as were all the songs used in the movie) & Madonna never performed in curly hair in America but she yells "Alright America!" at the song's opening. The same thing was done with The Confessions Tour which was recently broadcast on TV. I saw that live and she sounded great & all but the TV versions she sounded too flawless. The only performances that aren't tweaked are the ones aired live, like on HBO. The Nice, France show is a good example of that. And I personally liked that she re-recorded Vogue for the Re-Invention Tour. How silly would it have been to use the original track? That is what irritates me about lip synching the most.......if you're going to mime a song, at least re-record it so it doesn't sound exactly like the record! Very few artists, no matter how talented, can duplicate a studio recording exactly when they perform live. Finally, a Madonna show is so much more than just the singing. It's a total performance filled with visuals, messages, and truly entertaining numbers. So I'd rather she lip synched a song that would sound terrible otherwise. She puts on a great show!
shareIf you watch the "Express Yourself" segment of "Truth or Dare" closely, you'll notice the the on-stage shots (all the shots during which the stadium audience is not visible) were shot separately from the off-stage footage with the audience visible. You'll notice that at the start of the song, when she's descending the stairs, we get a low angle shot from the bottom of the stairs. That shot is intercut directly with a long-shot from the audience's perspective. But the funny thing is that, in the long shot, there should be a camera at the bottom right of the stairs (from the audience's POV). But there isn't. So how did we get that low-angle shot? (In fact, judging from the number of different angles the scene exploits, there should be cameras all over the stage, but from the audience's P.O.V. there are none visible.)
There are three possible answers. 1.) The footage was shot over two different live performances, once from the audience's perspective, and once from the stage, and then brilliantly intercut to give the impression of one performance.
Or:
2.) The on-stage shots (which usually concern the finer details of Madonna's choreography) were pre-recorded and then intercut with footage from the live performance.
Or:
3.) The footage was shot over two live performances, and edited together along with some pre-recorded footage. So that would essentially make it three performances, two live and one 'fake', edited into one.
To noilie: You know, I always kind of wondered if the concert footage was not really in front of an audience but I never noticed the whole camera issue thing you brought up. I heard that for Confessions, a couple of shows were filmed & footage is probably used from both nights. I bet your #3 possiblity is correct. A bit of all three situations seems highly likely. Especially since this is the first song and all, she would have had tight curly hair and not have to worry much about matching it in otherwise taped segments. Like in Vogue, her hair is all floppy so it would have been harder to match that look if they shot segments of that especially for the movie (I guess they could do it but I don't think they'd bother).
shareMadonna has never made any excuses about "lip synching" at her live perfs. In latter years she has made an apparent attempt to sing live, however she still relies on "Backing vocals" for certain songs.(And I don't mean her backup singers.) She once said in an interview that she never saw the big deal about lip-synching since it aids performers in delivering the audience exactly what the see and hear on tv and in records.
I agree. I mean, try jogging around the block and singing "Express Yourself" and see how "in tune" and "non-winded" you are.
She pre-records the vocals for some songs during tour rehearsal and when performing sings "over" them. When she is out of breath, can't quite sustain, or is dancing heavily, then she relies on the backing vocals. It's sort of a mike/sound mixer trick. Her mike is programmed on certain songs so that if her voice cuts out, the backing track can be heard.
FYI, if you watch the recent "Confessions" tour DVD, you will see behind the scenes footage of her rehearsing vocals with the band without dancing. She is sitting, and instructing her back-ups on the sound she wants. That was not just a rehearsal... they were recording the backing vocals for the actual "live" show.
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