Was she or wasn”t she? Mariah Carey has found herself in a bit of a Beyonce-like scandal following her medley of her hits on Thursday night”s “American Idol” finale.
[More after the jump…]
Mimi, in a white, feathered mermaid gown better suited for attending the Academy Awards than performing on “Idol,” emoted her way through a jumbled mix of songs, including “Hero,” “Make It Happen,” “Vision of Love,” and new single “#Beautiful,” as a perfectly-positioned fan blew her hair just right.
But before the “American Idol” judge could finish her 5-minute, in-the-roun, spectacular, surrounded by fans holding signs about how beautiful she is, the Twitterverse and Facebook were going crazy with posts that she was lip syncing.
Among the comments: “Mariah Carey needs to practice her lip syncing. She on [cq] American Idol right now making a fool of herself”
“Good Lord Mariah Carey lip syncing too. And not well. This is just sad.”
She also had her defenders, as someone also tweeted: “What”s wrong with the world? When Mariah Carey finally can sing perfectly, then you guys accuse her of lip syncing.”
Her representative told Entertainment Tonight that Carey was indeed singing live, and that she even sang to the audience between commercials.
She may very well have been singing live, and she certainly has the chops to do so, but it”s also clear that she was singing along to pre-recorded vocals at least in parts. If you go to the 2:50 mark, she asks the crowd to sing along with her as she talks over her own background vocal in the introduction, she then catches up perfectly with the repeated vocal on the next round. There are a few other moments where her lips and the vocals don’t quite seem to match. Conversely, there are other times, such as at the end, when she definitely seems to be singing live.
I don”t feel sorry for Carey, the person I feel sorry for is winner Candice Glover, who is getting her moment in the sun usurped by this uproar. Carey has her first hit in quite some time with “#Beautiful” and all this is doing is getting her name all over the news as the song goes up the chart. She”ll be just fine.
Anyone else besides me wondering why Nicki Minaj didn”t perform since the rest of the judges did?
What do you think of Carey”s performance?