And Now We Present,...Kind of.

So, it's Sunday morning, and we've had a bit of a sleep-in. We go down to the living room and watch of all things, an encore presentation of the MTV Music Awards. Then it strikes me, something that annoyed me when I watched the AMA's, and really ticks me off when I watch a talk show where musical guests perform. Or do they really?

Why on earth, as singers, do people feel it's more important to dance and flit around the stage, then it is to do the one thing that made them famous?

Onto the stage, to great applause, struts Beyonce, a beautiful woman, and ultra-talented singer. She sings a few bars of one of her ballads, then as the background music switches to a bouncy song about putting a ring on a likable choice, she dances a rigorous routine, all the while singing perfectly in tune and with great strength, without raising the microphone to her lips once. Huh? Would it have interrupted her choreography?

The most amazing aspect of the performance, was that she was received with a standing ovation. Did not one of the thousands of people present see that it wasn't her singing, it was a recording?

Later in the show, Pink, another ultra-talented singer managed a very good rendition of her song , "Sober", while also managing a very credible circus-style trapeze performance, 30 feet above the stage. She barely missed a note, and she also didn't plunge to her doom, so surely it is possible to sing while doing something else. I'm not sure that the circus act related all that well to her song, but it sure as heck was a cool performance, all the while doing something that only Pink could do, sing a Pink song.

Did Beyonce do something that only one person in all the world could do, sing like Beyonce? No, she did something that millions of people around the world could do, dance to a Beyonce song. That she did it well, and looked nice doing it are irrelevant, there are starving dancers and exotic performers anywhere that could have done it just as well, and, in some cases, for only a 20 dollar bill.

One more performance on an awards show has a burr placed squarely under my saddle, J-Lo on the AMA's. In the middle of throwing on her Louis Vuittons, she mimed a poor imitation of a boxer getting ready for a bout, ascended a stairway of her dancer's backs (don't even get me started on the reverse-sexist connotations of that act), fell flat on her ass, bounced up and gyrated like she was suffering a grande mal seizure, and strutted off the stage, without once uttering a single note. To great applause. In noting that she fell on her ass, the media lauded her courageousness and strength of character to get back up and continue on, never missing a beat. It is pretty easy not to miss a beat singing, when one isn't singing, isn't it?

There was a night-time talk show in the late 80's, early 90's (I think), The Arsenio Hall Show, where the host had one credo he applied to all musical guests: If you are going to sing on my show, then you ARE going to sing. No lip-syncing. Arsenio was offended way back then, that singers would try and foist a fake performance on their audiences. Why are we so different now, that not only do we accept it, we love it?

In a recent Ellen Degenerous Show interview, the host marvelled that her guest Lady Gaga actually sang at her shows. The singer is famous for onstage acts that not only baffle minds, but take quite a bit of physical effort. In answer, Lady Gaga laughed, and replied "I thought that is what we were supposed to do, sing...". Is she wrong, or have we just really lowered our standards as consumers?

What can we do to change this? I am not really an activist, or revolutionary, so I realize that there is very little to be done. I just hope that someday our stars and heroes tune into the fact that we love them recorded, and the sameness of our favorite songs when we hear them on our radios and CD's. But when they're live, we love the differentness that makes each performance special.

In closing, it begs the question, Would Woodstock be so memorable all these generations later, if they had bounced along to perfect recordings of their famous songs? Probably not. And that's probably why nobody's life has been changed by a Beyonce or J-Lo show.