Classic Rant #889 (January 23, 2013): Scandal At the Inauguration

On Monday, right on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, our President was inaugurated for his second term.

There was the usual pomp and circumstance, and lots of people--including lots of celebrities--attended the festivities.

And singer Beyonce Knowles Carter, once of Destiny's Child and better known today as simply Beyonce (the first person I have ever known with that name, but with her success, you know there will be many others) was there too, and she was warbling one of our most precious songs, the National Anthem.

Or was she warbling the Anthem?

Speculation rose as early as Monday that she wasn't actually singing live, that she was lip syncing to a prerecorded track.

In fact, was her backing band for the event, the U.S. Marine Corps Band, also there but not playing live?

Lip syncing has become prevalent in pop music. Everyone from Madonna to Cher to Britney Spears has been accused of not singing live, or at least not singing live on all their songs, while in concert.

This has become such a controversial practice that I remember a few years back, Ronnie James Dio actually was one of the first pop stars to actually have printed on tickets to his concerts something to the effect that all the music and vocals at his concerts were done live.

Anyway, back to Beyonce.

Different stories have come out about this, so which one do you believe?

Some say that she did sing to a recorded track, simply because the weather conditions to sing outside, and sing perfectly, did not match. It was a cold day, and everything had to go perfectly, so she prerecorded her vocal track.

Others say she did sing live, but a vocal track was used over her own live vocals.

Some say that the instrumental track by the USMC band was also prerecorded.

Others say the whole thing, 100 percent, was done live.

Heck, we seem to have a Milli Vanilli situation here, maybe even a Monkees situation.

There is something going on.

Beyonce would have had little or no time to rehearse with the USMC band, and for such a high profile event, why would they have taken a chance with singing the song, and playing the song, live?

However, other songs were performed live at the ceremony, including songs by James Taylor and Kelly Clarkson.

Very, very strange, wouldn't you say?

It appears that yes, some technical tomfoolery was used.

I guess you can't trust the weather, and you can't trust what the weather can do to someone's vocal chords and someone's fingers playing instruments.

But why pull the wool over the public's eyes?

This is supposed to be about our President moving onto his next term in office, not about a ubiquitous pop star who didn't do what she was advertised to be doing.

I've read more about Beyonce in the past couple of days than I have about our President, and that is really, really sad.

And yes, this column of mine has added to that mess, and I apologize.

But heck, at least you know that I am actually writing this column.

No ghostwriters here.