Rumors of lipsynching -- the practice of cheating your live audience of your live vocal so you don't sound as bad as you really are -- have dogged artists for years. Some, such as pop duo Milli Vanilli not only owned up to lipsynching to backing tracks live but also admitted to fabricating their "singing" in the studio -- and it ended their career. Ashlee Simpson suffered the supreme embarrassment of being outed on Saturday Night Live when the track to the song she had just sung started again for her second song -- but she hipped and hopped along with it, got her nose done, and doesn't seem any the worse off. And there's little question that popster TMZ icon Britney Spears needs assistance to get through her live act, though she hasn't confirmed those claims.
But Eminem? Bad boy tough guy street urchin middle-of-the-road rarely edgy rapper darling of his suburban (read white) we wanna be angry too downloaders and ticket buyers is faking it? Rumors have hounded him since he made it big and put a huge stage set behind him, and apparently he didn't do himself any favors at his recent reintroduction to the U.K. concert world at Scotland's T in the Park Festival after a five-year hiatus.
Fans complained of poor miming (seriously, poor miming?) and said at one point he forgot to turn his mic back on after faking it through a song. Here's thinking that if he's going to cheat his fans he could at the very least be good at it. Or he could just sing the damn songs, warts and missed warbles and all. Or, if he really feels the need to take a breather or if he just can't remember all those rappin' and rhymin' and non-rhymin' words (though this doesn't seem to be a problem for Dylan, Jagger, Young, McCartney, Davies and a host of others who have been performing longer than he's been around) at least advertise that some parts of the show will be fake. It might put a dent in his streetwise man of the masses cutting-edge image (and live audience) but for folks to get what they pay for they should know what they're getting.
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