Britney Spears on Lip-Sync Accusations
“I am busting my ass out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever really gives me credit for it,” singer says
Britney Spears shot down accusations that she lip-syncs at her concerts during an interview with an Israeli television station prior to a July 3rd concert in Tel Aviv.
“A lot of people think that I don’t sing live,” Spears said. “Because I’m dancing so much I do have a little bit of playback, but there’s a mixture of my voice and the playback. It really pisses me off because I am busting my ass out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever really gives me credit for it.”
Accusations that Spears lip-syncs live flared at the beginning of June when video from a Tokyo concert surfaced showing the singer accidentally getting her microphone caught in her hair. While she tried to untangle the mic, her vocals remained audible.
But as Spears claimed in her interview, she does use a playback track to keep things seamless during her physically taxing performances. The mix of live vocals and playback has been a staple of her concerts dating back at least to the beginning of her Las Vegas residency in 2014. In a profile about Spears’ Piece of Me show on Medium’s Matter, a member of the pop star’s management team, Adam Leber, said, “To put on the show that she puts on, it’s virtually impossible to sing the entire time and do what she does. She’s singing on every song, basically, when she has the ability to sing. There’s no way you can dance for 90 minutes straight and sing the entire time.”
Along with her forthcoming Tel Aviv gig, Spears has international concerts scheduled in Hong Kong and Singapore before she kicks off the final run of her Vegas residency August 9th at the Axis at Planet Hollywood. Spears released her most recent album, Glory, in 2016.
