According to the ever reliable (or not) Wikipedia, artist is
defined as “person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of
activities related to creating art, practicing the arts, and/or demonstrating
an art”. The description is quite easy to understand, a PERSON who DOES ART.
Meaning, a SINGER who SINGS, an ACTOR who ACTS, a DANCER who DANCES, a PAINTER
who PAINTS, a SCULPTOR who SCULPTS, I could go on forever with this list but I
would rather focus on the first two artists I mentioned: SINGERS who SING and
ACTORS who ACT. This is of course, in the Philippine context.
A disclaimer, though. The definition of singers and actors
in this blog is MY definition (since, hello, this is MY blog), so never bother
contesting it. Like what I said on the previous paragraph, and I will repeat it
and sound redundant, singers are
those people who sing and actors are those people who act (of course, CAN being the operative word). Now, if you are the kind of person
who believes otherwise and has the tendency of bashing people whose beliefs are
different than yours, the return arrow in your browser is on your left-hand
side, click it now, au revior! Now…
Alright. Fine. I guess it is acceptable for non-singers to
have recording albums. It is their freedom and as long as there are producers
who would spend for the album, then fine, I guess I cannot challenge their
freedom. HOWEVER, I believe that
non-singers, who quite proudly claim that they are indeed non-singers, should
truly accept that they are non-singers. WHUT?! You might ask. What I simply
mean is that as PROUD non-singers, they should show their audiences that they
are indeed non-singers by singing live, which what singers, who proudly admit
that they are singers, do (though not all). I mean, what is the purpose of
doing a lip-sync singing when all of the audience members KNOW that you are a
non-singer?
Another issue for me is the auto-tune recording studios do
to the singing voices of non-singers. WHY ON EARTH DO THEY DO THAT WHEN THE
MASSES KNOW IN THEIR GUTS THAT NON-SINGERS ARE, DUH, NON-SINGERS?! Auto-tune
only makes people believe that non-singers can actually sing, when in reality,
they cannot. Of course, many people would raise the argument that no one cannot
not sing, which is of course a given fact. Everyone can sing Happy Birthday, but what I mean by
people who CAN sing are those who can
carry a tune (the RIGHT tune, I must emphasize), can go with the TRUE rhythm
of the music, and hit the CORRECT note.
By this, I am not stopping non-singers to have recording
albums. What I am just saying is that, as PROUD
non-singers, they must show that they are indeed
proud to be unable to sing as well as singers. Meaning to say, let these
non-singers have albums of them singing out of tune or out of tone, not because
I want them to be bashed for being non-singers, but because I want them to really show their
non-singer-ness (if there is such a word) since they claim to be such. A classic example is Anne Curtis. Nuff said.
Now, lip-sync singing. I see no point in this, for both
singers and non-singers. First, for non-singers, just like what I have said in
the previous paragraph, everybody knows that they cannot sing well, so why
should they make their fans believe that they can?
Actually, I even find it DISTURBING when non-singers (especially actors who are promoting
their new show) would lip-sync a song that they did not even record. It is very
much obvious because you would hear an actor speak and when s/he would sing,
his/her voice would be different. I mean, can’t they just verbally promote
their show? Do they REALLY HAVE to “sing”? There is actually a reason why a person
is called an actor and not a singer/actor.
Now, for singers. YO, PEOPLE, YOU CAN SING!!! WHY ARE YOU
DOING LIP-SYNCING?!?!!? Some would say that the singers were doing a lip-sync
because they are sick and could not sing live. In the first place, why did you agree to sing if you are sick? Okay, fine,
perhaps you were not sick yet when you agreed to sing, but you have to suffer
the consequences of being sick, much like what the contestants of Your Face
Sounds Familiar did when they were sick and they had performances. Another thing, say you were not sick
when you agreed to sing, THEN YOU MUST HAVE THE DECENCY OF TAKING CARE OF
YOURSELF AND PREVENTING YOURSELF FROM BEING SICK! SIMPLE!
Other people would say that lip-sync is a backup tool, in case there would be a technical
problem during the performance. REALLY?!?!?! Come on, I have watched a handful
of theater plays, some of them had technical problems such as lapel mics dying
out on the performers or lapel mics disconnecting from the tech booth. A real
performer would do his or her best to keep the show going even when his or her
mic died. I even witnessed once when the actor’s mic died, he really louden his
voice so that whatever he was saying would carry out to the audience. There was
even a time when an actor’s mic died during a song AND dance number. The actor
still sang with the help of his co-actors who offered him their lapel mic, of
course inconspicuously.
Most of the time, fast paced songs are performed in duets or
more. Say one singer’s mic died, the other singer should know how to catch the
other singer. And it is just easy, s/he could simply hand the other singer
his/her mic for the time being. Or the tech people could give a replacement mic
to the dancers, who are ever present in fast paced songs, and hand it to the
singer in distress. And for goodness sake, they are performing in an event,
people must anticipate such difficulties, prevent them from happening, and have
some backup plan, excluding the absurd lip-sync.
It is even much more impossible (yes, I deliberately
exaggerated because the tendency is just very slim) to have dying mics during a
mellow song. For one thing, the singer would not be dancing to the music
because the song is slow. Another thing, the mic is not a lapel during a mellow
number, that is why it is almost impossible for the mic to be disconnected.
And more importantly, isn’t there what we call a technical rehearsal? For those who are
unfamiliar with the term, technical rehearsal is when all the technical aspects
of a production are being rehearsed, like the lights, the music (minus one,
duh!), the mics, the set changes (if there is any), and all other stuff like
harness and others. During technical rehearsals, the mic carrier (usually the
singer, or if the singer is unavailable, anyone could do this) would walk all
over the stage and see whether wherever s/he goes, the mic would sound clearly.
SO THERE IS NO CREDIBLE REASON WHY LIP-SYNC SHOULD BE DONE!
Even Mariah Carey risked being out
of tune when she did a concert in an open field during the winter. If THE Mariah Carey could do that,
everyone must have the decency to do live singing as well.
