At least we know...

While argument and counter argument rages over the veracity of Beyonce's performance at the inauguration...



... at least we can be sure Kimberley Walsh wasn't lip-synching at the National Television Awards.

Beyonce open and closed her mouth perfectly

Everyone agreed - and by "everyone" I mean "people I follow on Twitter who expressed an opinion" - that Beyonce nailed it at the Obama inauguration.

Now it turns out she got some help being note-perfect when you've actually already done the song and were just miming.

Does it matter? Not really, in the sense that Obama was only miming the inauguration anyway - the actual swearing had been done the day before, and if Barack was just opening and closing his mouth for a performance he'd done earlier.

On the other hand: what was all that 'pulling the earpiece out' business? If she'd been singing live, that would have been a brilliant moment - "Beyonce doesn't need the monitors".

Instead, it turns out to have been a bit of empty theatre.

So Beyonce didn't nail it. She was just very good at using a shortcut. She No More Nailed it.

The illustrated Friends: Bryan Ferry

An obvious choice for art school kid turned popstar, here. But if we're going to do Bryan Ferry, we're bloody going to have Kevin Eldon lip-synching to him:



[Buy: Big Train]
[Part of The illustrated Friends]

Michael Buble thinks people who believe he mimes are idiots

Michael Buble was on The X Factor at the weekend - who knew that George Osborne's spending review wouldn't be the most miserable event on TV last week - and some people believe he was miming.

This has made Michael Buble very very very angry indeed. Because Michael is an artist. He fumed all over Scott Mills:

"People, whoever you are, if you're writing on these blogs or whatever, if you think that I'm miming, you're an idiot," he said.

"You're so used to being fed crap and you're so used to seeing people jam microphones in their faces because they're lip synching, that when you see somebody using actual mic tehcnique and move a microphone away... it's crazy."

The singer continued: "I'm shocked. Did they not listen to me? I was flat! I sang flat! And I was out of breath. If I was going to lip synch, wouldn't I just do it to my recording?"

Oh God, of course not, Michael - I mean, have you heard your recordings? Who'd want to have to trump around stage listening to one of those?

It's wonderful that he's appealing to people who watch the X Factor to judge the quality of his performance. They don't really have the best track record on these matters, do they?

In other news, Covent Garden act Mime And Mimer have angrily hit out at suggestions they have been pretending to be Michael Buble.

Mika's no need for a mic-ah

Bob Lefzetz went to see Mika play Hollywood yesterday. I say 'play'; his review makes it clear any actual playing had taken place at another time and place:

Mika would move his head away from the mic, but his vocal would remain perfect. But when he spoke, there was distortion, a distinct lack of clarity. That’s what live sounds like. Most of the time tonight, it was Memorex.

I’ve been to so many shows, and I’ve never heard sound like this. So perfect, it doesn’t sound like the record, it IS the record!

I’m not saying everybody’s mic was turned off, that no one was plugged in. But I don’t think Jeff Pevar could get that acoustic guitar sound live. And, who are all these Mikas doing the backup vocals if he’s singing the lead?

Lefsetz does concede that there wasn't much need for Mika to bother singing, as his audience weren't really interested in music anyway - they had a good time.

And, indeed, provides a measure of exactly who the audience were:

People were lining up to pay for balloon hats.

If you're shoveling over cash for a balloon hat, who would be bothered what's happening on stage?

The inauguration borrowed a trick from the Beijing Olympics

Ah, what could be better than to gather a million or so people in one place to listen to tapes? Okay, admittedly, the music at the inauguration wasn't the main focus, but it's still a little cheesy that Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Gabriella Montero and Anthony McGill were sort-of miming.

Not quite miming, as they played along with the tape, but their instruments weren't amplified. Which makes the official explanation - fears that the cold weather would damage the instruments - seem a little confusing.

Violinist Itzhak Perlman said "it would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way".

"This occasion's got to be perfect. You can't have any slip-ups," he told the New York Times.

Ah, yes. Perfect. Except in the actually playing sense of the word, then.

As it turns out, they might have been better off letting the musicians play live and pre-recording the words of the oath of office.

New levels in onstage fakery

A couple of years back, Victoria Beckham's attempts to build herself a serious career as a singer were left in tatters when close inspection of her performances revealed that she was just opening and closing her mouth in time with the words.

We say close inspection. Admittedly, you could peer out the International Space Station and see what was going on.

Now, though, Beckham's performance is starting to look as Kosher as a rabbi-blessed tub of gefilte fish on the Sabbath, when compared with Miley Cyrus. Not only is Miley touring in the guise of someone else, Disney's fictional Hannah Montana, but she also manages to pull off the task of playing parts of the show live while being off-stage:

"To help speed the transition from Hannah to Miley, there is a production element during the performance of 'We Got the Party' incorporating a body double for Miley," PMK said in the statement.

"After Hannah has completed the featured verse on the duet with the Jonas Brothers, a body double appears approximately one to two minutes prior to the end of the song in order to allow Miley to remove the Hannah wig and costume and transform into Miley for her solo set," the statement continued. "Other than during this very brief transitional moment in the show, Miley performs live during the entirety of both the Hannah and Miley segments of the concert."

In other words, Miley Cyrus has become the first person in history to get somebody else to do her lip-synching for her.

Fiddy sticks

Memo to Fifty Cent: If you're going to go to a major, televised event - like, say, this week's BET Awards - and intend to lipsynch, you might want to ensure you at least explain to the guy playing the tunes in for you that you don't want him to play the instrumental version.

50 didn't quite have an Ashlee Simpson, but he didn't know what to do, so pranced about the stage looking lost while one of his crew yelled rude words until the proper track was cued.

It's so much less bother to, you know, sing a bit.