It’s hard out there for a Beyoncé Truther: as we enter day three of the great National Anthem Lip-Synching Scandal, there is still no comment from Bey herself; meanwhile, an actual Inauguration official has weighed in to confirm that “she did not sing live.” But if you still believe, there are of course several arguments floating around in Queen Bey’s defense. The first, and most compelling, comes from a sound engineer who believes that Beyoncé did sing live, but that a prerecorded backing was also played (pretty much as that Wall Street Journal video indicated). This is a crucial bit:
“There are several different versions of the video available, all with slightly different sound – how can this be ? Why are there two voices audible on some versions, and not on others ?
The answer is that it’s standard practise at an event like this for all the audio to be made available to broadcasters, so that each of them can do their own mix – their own blend of presenters, music and ambient crowd noise.
All of which makes it very difficult to know exactly what we’re hearing! And some people are even claiming that Beyonce’s mic wasn’t switched on at all.
But he then notes that you can hear the wind in the original WSJ clip, which proves that Beyoncé’s mike was live.
Meanwhile, here’s a Slate defense arguing that lip-synching is super hard. It also analyzes her mike-positioning: “A singer with a big voice learns to pull the mic slightly further from her mouth on big notes, because it gets louder, and she doesn’t want to kill people. Rewind that video, and note the words ‘twilight’ and ‘ramparts.’ They vary slightly in volume—the low notes are louder than the high notes.”
Do you believe now?
