Another awards show in the books, another lip syncing controversy.
Except this time, maybe it wasn’t.
If you remember back to the 2017 CMA Awards, Garth Brooks admitted to lip-syncing during his performance of “Ask Me How I Know.” Garth blamed it on being sick and losing his voice from being in the middle of 12 shows in 10 days. But fans weren’t having it – and neither was Eric Church.
“So the winner of the biggest category of the night lip-synced in the biggest moment on the show? Fuck that! And I didn’t like his excuse at all.”
For some artists, like Church, lip-syncing is a line in the sand that they’re just never going to cross.
“It is and always will be a red line. It’s fabricated. I don’t want young artists thinking it’s OK, because it’s not.”
Well at last nights ACM Awards, another artist was accused of crossing that red line and lip-syncing during the show.
During Dan + Shay‘s performance of “Glad You Exist” from the Bluebird Cafe, fans noticed that the audio wasn’t quite syncing up with the video, and wondered aloud on Twitter whether the duo was faking it.
I suspect Dan and Shay might have been lip syncing on the ACMs. That or possibly the producers from Milli Vanilli were left in charge of filming the segment. @BillCodyWSM @MeganAlexander pic.twitter.com/oVZTXswhLt
— Steve Pietras (@Steve_Pietras) April 19, 2021
Either Dan and Shay really suck at lip synching OR the ACM awards needs to find a new audio guy. My guess is the audio was messed up. #ACMAwards
— Leslie (@lmv16) April 19, 2021
So much for live music on the ACM’s. Dan and Shay were 5 to 7 seconds behind the “live shot” seemed like a nice lip sync. #TheHighway SiriusXM
— John Armstrong (@JARMS41) April 19, 2021
the bluebird cafe performance of Dan and shay is embarrassing….
obvious a lip sync since the music ended before the last woo-hoo was sung….very disappointing to say the least!— tee coker (@sydreno401) April 19, 2021
And there were hundreds more tweets just like that.
Even the Oak Ridge Boys called out the delay.
Years ago on @ACMawards we were singing Leavin’ Louisiana and the audience was clapping along and we couldn’t hear the band which was in the back of auditorium for some dumb reason and we went way off on Live TV .. well wait until @DanAndShay see this playback #acm #danandshay
— The Oak Ridge Boys (@oakridgeboys) April 19, 2021
Well unlike Garth, Dan + Shay claim that they were NOT in fact lip-syncing during the performance, instead it was delay on the audio/video of the broadcast.
apparently there was an audio/video sync issue on the television broadcast. we’re bummed about it, but it happens, especially when performances are happening in multiple locations. kudos to the @ACMawards for pulling off a great show. ❤️ https://t.co/gO4GcJZqNm
— Dan + Shay (@DanAndShay) April 19, 2021
A publicist for the ACMs also denied the duo were lip-syncing in a statement made to USA Today.
And Dan + Shay’s own publicist also threw cold water on the speculation.
“They were 100 percent not lip-synching. They would never even accept lip-synching. That’s not even a possibility.”
So there you have it. Dan + Shay DID record their performance from the Bluebird Cafe on Saturday, so it wasn’t performed live during the actual broadcast. They apparently were not lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track.
Honestly though, even if they were lip-syncing, that still wouldn’t be my biggest problem with the night.
Winning Duo of the Year over Brooks and Dunn or Brothers Osborne? Get the hell outta here.
Brooks and Dunn losing to Dan + Shay perfectly sums up the state of country music.#ACMAwards
— Whiskey Riff (@WhiskeyRiff) April 19, 2021
Here’s the full performance.
