Hudson's Super Bowl Lip-Sync No Surprise to Insiders
Ashlee Simpson, the pop-punk younger sister of Jessica Simpson, learned that after her headline-making October 2004 blunder on "Saturday Night Live."
Attempting to perform "Autobiography," her second song of the night, Simpson found herself singing along to the music and lead vocals of her first song "Pieces of Me."
She held the microphone at her side as her canned voice boomed across the studio, danced an awkward jig and then ran off the stage as the vocal recording was shut off and NBC cut away to a commercial.
At the end of the show, "SNL" host of the night Jude Law quipped, "What can I say? Live TV." Simpson, standing next to him, blamed the mishap on her musicians. "My band started playing the wrong song," she said. "I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd do a hoedown."
A statement issued by Geffen Records, Simpson's label, claimed there was "a computer glitch," while a representative for the show said that the song that came up was a backing track.
The following Monday, Simpson called into MTV's "Total Request Live" and explained that because of complications arising from "severe" acid reflux she had lost her voice and that her doctor had advised her not to sing.
But the incident tarnished Simpson's rep for months. In January 2005, Simpson performed "La La" during the halftime show for the Orange Bowl in Miami and got boos from the crowd of more than 70,000 spectators.
Simpson attempted to build credibility in '05 with a U.S.-Canada tour that she described to reporters as "stripped down," without effects like pyrotechnics, just "me and my band getting out there and having fun."
Milli Vanilli
Then there are the lip-sync scandals that taint an act for life. In 1989, the dreadlocked duo from Deutschland were performing their hit "Girl You Know It's True" during an MTV-recorded show in Bristol, Conn., when their vocal track began to skip. While fans at the concert didn't seem to care, critics took note and began questioning the merits of Milli Vanilli members Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan.
Lip-Syncing No Longer Shocking
A year later, in November 1990, media scrutiny led the group's manager to reveal that Milli Vanilli didn't actually sing on their Grammy and American Music Award-winning records.
Four days later, the band's 1990 best new artist Grammy was withdrawn. Arista Records dropped the duo from its roster and deleted their album from their catalog, taking "Girl You Know It's True" out of print.
Despite subsequent albums and attempts at a comeback, Milli Vanilli never shed its status as one of pop music's most legendary cautionary tales, an example never to be repeated by reputable artists.
But nearly two decades after the Milli Vanilli debacle, Levine said, lip-syncing is still going strong.
"Years ago, when it was revealed that Milli Vanilli was lip-syncing, it was practically a scandal. People were honest to God shocked," he said. "These days, anyone who's the least bit surprised by this is really naive."
