For those speculating if Sheryl Lee Ralph was lip-syncing her Super Bowl performance, she wants you to know it “doesn’t matter.”
The “Abbott Elementary” star sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — a hymn also known as the “Black national anthem” — during the Super Bowl pre-game show on Sunday night, per The Hollywood Reporter.
“It is no coincidence that I will be singing the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing at the Super Bowl on the same date it was first publicly performed 123 years ago (February 12, 1900),” Ralph wrote in an Instagram post. “Happy Black History Month!”
Despite loads of fan praise for Ralph’s performance, some questioned whether she was singing live or lip-syncing. When asked by The Hollywood Reporter about it, Ralph responded: “Does it matter? Does it matter? No. Thank you.”
Ralph was not the only Super Bowl star accused of lip-syncing. Radio personality Howard Stern criticized Rihanna for lip-syncing during her performance last night. “You know, I don’t even know why she bothered showing up,” Stern said on his Sirius XM show on Monday, per New York Post. “I could be wrong, but I — in my opinion, 85 percent of that performance was lip sync.”
Lip-syncing is common practice for Super Bowl performers
Haters can say what they will, but in Rihanna’s (and Sheryl Lee Ralph’s) defense, it’s not uncommon for Super Bowl performers to lip-sync. Shania Twain did it. So did Katy Perry. Even Whitney Houston did, per Yahoo News.
Houston’s 1991 rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl was pre-recorded because producer Ricky Minor advised the singer to lip-sync into a dead mic during the real performance. With the unpredictability of live events, the jet flyover, loud crowds and echo of large stadiums, “there’s too much at stake” Minor explained, per Yahoo News.
Super Bowl performers have also been caught faking it with their instruments. During the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2014 Super Bowl performance, fans noticed something was off — none of the band’s instruments were plugged in. Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist, explained why.
“When we were asked by the NFL ... to play our song Give It Away at the Super Bowl, it was made clear to us that the vocals would be live, but the bass, drums, and guitar would be pre-recorded. I understand the NFL’s stance on this, given they only have a few minutes to set up the stage, there a zillion things that could go wrong and ruin the sound for the folks watching in the stadium and the TV viewers,” Flea explained, per Billboard.
Vocals are always pre-recorded just in case
Lead vocals are typically done live, but background vocals are always prerecorded and bands are mostly prerecorded, Patrick Baltzell, sound engineer for the Super Bowl, told The Verge in 2018.
But no matter who is performing, the Super Bowl always records a “protection track” for the halftime lead singer and national anthem singer, explained Baltzell.