14 DAY TRIAL // With any live show that also involves a complicated, physically demanding choreography, audiences know to expect artists to rely on backing tracks, which would continue to play even if, say, they ran out of breath, and thus help them save face.
Taylor Swift was one of the performers on Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards, when she debuted her brand new single, “Shake It Off.” The video below is what fans at home and in the audience saw: it does sound like she’s singing live, and doing a pretty decent job at it as well.
However, the sound coming from her microphone wasn’t what was heard all over the world. Indeed, Taylor’s performance wasn’t entirely live, in the sense that she relied heavily on a backing track, and when she did sing live, she sounded horrible.
Deadspin has obtained audio with Taylor’s isolated vocals and posted it online. In that video, you can hear exactly what was coming out of her microphone, and everything else is toned down. Many times out of tune and even more times out of breath, Taylor sounded during “Shake It Off” as if she was running in a marathon, with the song being the runner before her and her failing to catch up to it.
The e-zine concludes that she would have been better off if she lip-synched the performance from start to finish, and chalks off her decision of not doing so under her attempt to be taken seriously as an artist. The isolated vocals track is also confirmation that she really can’t sing live, says the same media outlet.
To all those saying that any other artist would sound just out of breath during certain dance routines and rely on backing tracks in those moments, Deadspin responds with another video, this time Beyonce’s isolated vocals. Bey was honored with the Michael Jackson Vanguard Award and performed a 16+-minute set at the closing of the VMAs.
She literally killed it on stage, and guess what? Her vocals were flawless just like the performance. She too had a complicated choreography, which, though it did not imply her running up and down the stage, included a lot of moves – and her voice never faltered, not for one second.
This isn’t meant to pitch the two performers against each other in a way that would say that one is better than the other, but only to say that not all you see on stage as “live” performing is actually that. As for Taylor, it certainly looks like there is some ground to those saying she can’t sing live.
Check out the two links included in this article to listen to the isolated vocals of these two performers.