Rascal Flatts Admits to Lip Syncing at ACM Awards
Photo: Courtesy of Rascal Flatts/Lyric Street
Superstar country music group Rascal Flatts has confirmed that they indeed lip synced their performance Sunday night on the 49th Annual Academy of Country Music awards. The Big Machine Records trio lit up twitter when they took the stage, with observers wondering why the performance looked so wonky and wondered if lip syncing was the answer. Saving Country Music has been waiting since the performance for clear video evidence of the lip sync, but today the band spilled the beans and ended all suspicion by releasing a statement through Twitter.
After having performed several shows earlier in the week, Gary [LeVox] lost his voice. So, instead of cancelling our commitment to do the show, we made a last minute decision to lip-sync. We’ve never done it before, and we’re obviously not very good at it. We look forward to singling live again in the very near future!
Though lip syncing has always been suspected from many country music artists in multiple award show performances, this is the first one that has been openly admitted to on record. Apparently the group felt since it was so obvious, it was better to open up about the issue instead of continuing to perpetuate the lie to their fans. Ironically, the ACM presentation opened up with hosts Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan making a joke about Brittney Spears lip syncing, and how people would only see live music on the show. However backing tracks and other non-live sounds have also been used at country award shows, including in 1994 when Alan Jackson told his drummer to play with no sticks to tip off his fans the rhythm section wasn’t live.
Rascal Flatts is just the latest to get swept up in a lip sync controversy. In January, the Red Hot Chili Peppers admitted to not playing live during their Super Bowl performance.
April 7, 2014 @ 8:56 pm
If you can’t do it, don’t. They should have put Musgraves on as a replacement.
April 7, 2014 @ 9:05 pm
Good point. How much talent was in that room that could have delivered a live performance?
April 7, 2014 @ 11:21 pm
Many! Saving Country Music Album of the Year winner Kellie Pickler is one of the best live singers in the business. She got a standing ovation for her first awards show performance and used to perform on the ACMs, CMAs, and headline the CMA Fest main stage most every year so why did that stop? Because like most solo females, country radio unfairly stopped playing her best country songs that belong at #1 on radio so she can’t get nominated for more awards as they are mostly based on airplay. I’ll give Flatts a free pass this time since Gary lost his voice but like Carrie and Miranda, Kellie deserves to be nominated and perform every year she has the best new country music out, which is almost every year. Every year the ACMs and CMAs should dedicate an hour or at least 30 minutes to performances from the many COUNTRY solo females getting totally robbed at country radio (Kellie, Kacey, Ashley, Brandy, Maggie, etc.)! Everyone knows it happens and is getting worse.
ACM Preview: Where Are All the Country Women?
https://music.yahoo.com/blogs/our-country/acm-preview-where-country-women-215239720.html
2014 ACM Awards Performers Announced: Where Are All the Women?
http://forthecountryrecord.com/2014/04/02/2014-acm-awards-performers-announced-where-are-all-the-women/
April 8, 2014 @ 3:38 am
100 Percent agree. I loved Ashton Sheppard and Sunny Sweeny when they hit a few years ago, but neither of them got the attention they deserved.
April 7, 2014 @ 9:06 pm
Oh if only an entire industry of artists were in town who could fill in….
I’m sure Kacey Musgraves could have done a song.
April 7, 2014 @ 9:12 pm
Fake falsers with their false fakery! What do you expect??? THEY SUCK!
April 7, 2014 @ 9:29 pm
Probably a good thing they did lip sync. Every time I hear that poor guy on an awards show he is so painfully off he makes William Hung sound like Paul Rodgers. Still, if ya can’t do it love, tell the producers to get someone who can to replace you. Don’t be a greedy ass. My two cents.
April 8, 2014 @ 2:40 pm
That was my thought exactly. The other 1 or 2 times I have seen them live, they were TERRIBLE. Gary can’t carry a tune in a bucket live (lots of AutoTune I’m guessing in the studio). Reminds me of when Shania lip synced the duet with Billy Currington at an awards show some years back. I can always tell by the sound (lack of crowd noise, etc.) on the mic in addition to the vocals not matching up. It’s always painfully obvious to me when people are lip syncing. I knew as soon as RF started they were lip syncing and mentioned it during the performance. When I started looking it up online, others were asking about it too. Duh! Do they really think people don’t notice anymore?
April 7, 2014 @ 10:07 pm
I’m sure they realize their career is on the downward slide and the thought of giving up a primetime national TV appearance was too much to let go of. This may very well be the last time they get a performance slot at a major award show just based on the diminishing success of their recent singles.
April 7, 2014 @ 11:32 pm
No doubt they didn’t want to give up the slot but I don’t know about this being their last performance. Their current single Rewind is #6 and radio keeps most solo females out of the top 20 after they’ve released just one single even when they make the best, most critically acclaimed music (so far Kacey is the latest case in point) so there’s plenty of room for the men on awards shows.
April 8, 2014 @ 8:59 am
There are many acts that have hits that don’t get to perform on the awards shows and once you lose your place it’s damn near impossible to get it back.
April 9, 2014 @ 1:47 pm
Well they are a huge touring act with Big Machine so I suppose that helps. Why did they get a slot this year anyway when they weren’t nominated for anything?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/04/08/rascal-flatts-admits-yes-they-did-lip-sync-at-the-acm-awards-heres-why-people-are-so-mad-about-it/
April 8, 2014 @ 12:47 am
My theory is this.
Rascal Flatts have been amidst their first radio tour in earnest in a decade. They sensed, following the #20 peak of the title track to “Changed” and the staggering near-record decline of its predecessor “Come Wake Me Up” following a #4 chart peak…….that they were teetering on the verge of irrelevance. So, they decided to surround the promotion of their follow-up studio effort with a full-fledged radio tour with the hopes of achieving a late-career commercial renaissance.
Their current (and lead) single “Rewind” is doing quite well, all things considered. Still, their single sales are decent at best and still can’t quite rival the likes of Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, Brantley Gilbert and Thomas Rhett most notably. So, then, what to do to stimulate single sales further?
A highly-publicized live telecast performance, of course.
The trio were set to perform. Then LeVox blew his voice. Yet, in spite of that, they knew if they were to cancel that gig, they would lose a mighty opportunity to market their hit single to greater degrees. So, they decided on lip-synching as a last resort.
*
Is that selfish? Yes, it is. Even so, I find myself not getting riled up about this all the same.
April 8, 2014 @ 6:50 am
Next thing you know, we’ll find out his hair is not naturally blonde.
April 8, 2014 @ 9:38 am
It’s acid-washed! 😉
April 8, 2014 @ 5:24 pm
Also let’s not completely rule out that CBS and the ACM’s nudged them in this direction. As you can tell from the list of performers and the songs they performed, the producers wanted radio hits, and radio hits only. Why did Kip Moore perform a song that was released nearly 3 years ago? Because it was a hit. They didn’t want Kacey Musgraves or Kellie Pickler, or anyone performing unless it was a big hit song or a mega superstar. I could see Gary LeVox pointing at his throat and some CBS producer telling him, “Tuff. We got it loaded up on the iPod. Get your ass out there.”
April 8, 2014 @ 8:34 pm
I understand that side of this.
Still, by that logic, Toby Keith would have been snubbed from performing one of the biggest chart misfires of his career, “Shut Up & Hold On”, and Brantley Gilbert would have assuaged their demands for familiar hits by inviting him up to play his million-selling “Bottoms Up” (may we feel grateful we were spared from that bullet)
Hunter Hayes’ latest “Invisible” is also greatly struggling at radio (unsurprisingly). It isn’t finished yet, but it has been struggling for the greater part of this entire past month to gain spins and also is selling mediocre. As much as I loathe the track, Thomas Rhett’s “Get Me Some Of That” would have been better qualified to appease the hit single prerequisites.
April 8, 2014 @ 3:19 am
Ironically, this is the very thing that douchebag Blake Shelton said would not happen at the ACMs. “If you want lip syncing, then head down the street to see Britney Spears”.
April 8, 2014 @ 3:28 am
I’ll bet everything I own this wasn’t “the first time”. Just the first time they got caught.
April 8, 2014 @ 5:23 am
“So, instead of cancelling our commitment to do the show, we made a last minute decision to lip-sync.”
So the honorable thing to do is to fake it, apparently.
April 8, 2014 @ 5:42 am
No, just the proffitable thing to do.
April 8, 2014 @ 5:45 am
Exactly. So please don’t dress this up as something virtuous, fellas.
April 8, 2014 @ 7:06 am
They look like a late 90s boy band…o wait.
April 8, 2014 @ 7:17 am
Gary LeVox’s lips were off a time or two.
LeVox is not the most technically skilled ventriloquist.
That would be Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy. Charlie frequently twitted Bergen for moving his lips___but Bergen’s sense of comedic timing and wit were superb.
April 8, 2014 @ 7:17 am
Is anyone actually surprised by this?
April 8, 2014 @ 7:41 am
Didn’t Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan make a comment at the start of the show that went – If you wanna here lip sinking, Britney Spears is just down the street.
Not sure how they said it but they did. And look what Rascal Flats went and done.
Also Easton Corbin would have been a major upgrade from Flats.
April 8, 2014 @ 7:54 am
Maybe he should change his name to Gary NoVox.
April 8, 2014 @ 8:07 am
Thanks for the badass youtube clip. I learn something every day; this was it.
April 8, 2014 @ 9:01 am
If the guy lost his voice and he couldn’t sing live and they never lip sync then where did the lip sync track come from? The fact that they had the track ready to use seems curious. I doubt they just popped in the actual album cut from the CD and played along.
April 8, 2014 @ 9:32 pm
The Track was created the day of the performance in studio in Nashville…there is something called the internet these days….it’s not hard to create a mix and send it to vegas.
April 8, 2014 @ 9:03 am
Singers have been lip-syncing on TV since the 1950s. Not a big deal.
April 8, 2014 @ 10:00 am
Not a big deal if it were American Bandstand in 1964, and it’s about your only chance to ever see Herman’s Hermits ‘perform’.
It is a bigger deal in 2014 when there are hundreds of channels, plus the Internet, to choose from to see real music performed ‘live’, and you tuned in to this show expecting to see stars perform live music on a live awards show.
April 8, 2014 @ 5:27 pm
Yes, especially when hosts Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan went into a diatribe at the beginning of the show of how “live” the whole thing was going to be. As weird as it may seem, this kind of thing is very rare on award shows. Backing tracks may be common, but the singer is expected to sing.
April 8, 2014 @ 9:08 am
Great Video Trigger!
April 8, 2014 @ 10:26 am
Why didn’t someone tell Lee Brice to lip sync? Maybe it was just because it was acoustic and wasn’t the version i’m used to, but (imo) that was one of the worst performances since Rodney Atkins on one of the shows a few years ago.
April 8, 2014 @ 6:09 pm
Damned if they lip sync, damned if they don’t…
April 8, 2014 @ 10:29 am
john lydon lip synching on American bandstand 1980
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZLhqTzjpUM
April 8, 2014 @ 1:38 pm
I find this to be admirable for the most part, but like you said, Trigger, they’re probably only coming clean because it was so obvious. That said, it kind of stinks for Gary LeVox. Regardless of one’s opinion of Rascal Flatts’ music, the man can sing and has a very nice, Vince Gill-esque voice (even if the music sounds nothing like Vince Gill). Personally, I find most of their stuff to be harmless fun but I understand why many traditional fans hate their music.
April 8, 2014 @ 4:05 pm
What’s the deal with their hair?
They look like they are in training for Branson.
April 8, 2014 @ 6:32 pm
God Bless the Broken Toad (and his voice).
I guess you could say they thought honesty was the best policy, and didn’t want to be praying for daylight.
April 9, 2014 @ 7:59 am
If his lips hadn’t twitted in the wrong place, we may not have known about this at all.
If you’ve watched any previous awards show, his pitch is all over the place. He may have to phone it in all of the time. I don’t think he’s sick, I think the voice is overused and worn out.
The dust-up. Most of the spin masters couldn’t lie straight in bed.
April 9, 2014 @ 1:24 pm
Good video Trigger. At the time of the American Bandstand show, JJ Cale probably wasn’t as established as Rascal Flatts are today, but all things equal, that shouldn’t make a difference. Just imagine if Flatts told CBS that they wouldn’t lip-sync it (because they’ve never done that before)… That would be, dare I say “Outsider-ish”? Ohhh the irony there!
April 20, 2014 @ 7:15 pm
What a disappointment !!! Guys, you really let me down.