The Art of the Lip Sync

By now, we should all be familiar with the lip sync.  In fact, a lot of today's music "artists" make a living off of it.  Which is why I have strong feelings about how I think Milli Vanilli was unfairly judged.  They became the scapegoat.  Sure, they never appeared on the albums they released before getting caught, but that doesn't mean they didn't try to do it for real afterwards.  Either way, I still blame their producer for putting them in that position.  It was his idea after all.  Why nobody else that did this never got a slap on the hand still baffles me.

Anyway, my introduction to the concept of the lip sync came out of the late 80's or early 90's.  It could've been earlier, but as a small child, I didn't know any better.  I probably assumed that the music videos I watched on "RTR Countdown" each week were performed with a hidden microphone or something.  This would change as I entered my teen years when I watched a short documentary about Roxette, called "The Making of Joyride".

A few years before this was when I actually learned about what lip sync actually is, and it wasn't just because of Milli Vanilli.  It came in the form of 4 young Pacific Islanders from my class at the time, when they decided to do a lip sync performance for the camping trip we all went on.  It was around 1992 and we all went to Hanmer Springs Forest Camp for a week.  Keeping with the school camp tradition (which was known to me from 1990 onward), the final evening (Thursday) would have what was called a "Camp Concert".  Those who wanted to could perform an act of their choice for the rest of the kids.  In the case of these 4 boys, they chose to do a lip sync of the R&B group, Color Me Badd.  They did so well, they actually had encore performances (yes, plural).  In the end, they performed the first 4 songs of the band's debut album - "I Wanna Sex You Up" (a bit controversial for a lip sync performance from 11-12 year olds), "All 4 Love", "Heartbreaker" and "I Adore Mi Amore".

Sadly, the 1993 camp I went on didn't feature a lip sync in the Camp Concert.  But as I went into my high school years, more lip sync performances would appear in the form of a competition dedicated to the art form.  One of my friends, Tali Feterika (pretty sure he was in the previously mentioned group) made an appearance on the high school stage in a lip sync group called Taro Overdose.  I can't remember what song they did, but it took me back to our primary school years when Tali would often take part in this sort of thing.  If not the same year, later on during high school, a few others performed as the Backstreet Boys.  There were quite a few notable performances in the lip sync competitions, right up to the time I left school.  As you'd expect, by the late 90's came our own version of the Spice Girls.

There was one group that actually came in from another school to perform between the final act and the announcement of the winner.  They performed as B*Witched with the song "C'est La Vie".  This performance is notable not just because they were outsiders, but also because of the blooper that took place right at the beginning.  As the song goes, it opens with the line, "Uh oh!"  This ended up being quite symbolic, because right at that moment before the "Uh oh", the tape stopped - leaving the audience looking at 4 girls with their mouths wide open.  Cue hysterical, childish laughter.  Turns out the tape got caught in the machine, so the organisers had to use another for the girls to finish their performance.  Thankfully they had one, otherwise...we would've just had this instead. 😮😮😮😮

One more high school era lip sync story that I will mention comes from my final school year.  I can't remember the guy's name, but I'm still surprised he got away with what he did.  Short version - he performed a striptease to Joe Cocker's "You Can Leave Your Hat On".  You read it correctly.  A striptease - right down to a novelty thong - at a high school.  Something I didn't need to see, but here we are. 😨

Anyone who went to school with me and knows about my love for music, and the fact that I was playing in a band at one point, must be wondering...how come I never actually performed in any of the lip sync competitions OR the Camp Concerts?  The answer is simple, really.  I just never really had the right people to accompany me on stage for it.  There would've been a time where I'd have been open to doing a lip sync as Roxette with a group of friends, and there was even a time where I pondered the idea of doing a lip sync with my band using one of our recordings.  This didn't happen because of the quality of the recordings we had available, which is a story I've told before on the Supertrip website before.  It's a shame, really.  I wanted to get into it.  There were just too many setbacks.  Even with the primary school's Camp Concerts.  I was getting into acting and comedy around this time, especially Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean (as well as his live stage shows), so I would've been more than happy to have done a reenactment or similar...if I wasn't so shy back then.

I will close this blog entry with a question, and please feel free to leave a comment with an answer.  Lip sync competitions and Camp Concerts...are they still a thing in 2024?  I'm interested in knowing if they're still going or did the fad disappear into the abyss that is the world we live in today?  If there isn't, then maybe someone should look into a revival of some kind.  Perhaps I could play a role in it somehow.  Let me know! 😁