Wings of Pegasus exposes a miming Taylor Swift

No. It’s all legit … Urban Dictionary: Mimmed
:slight_smile:

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@judi
So many things to remark upon.
Catching Freddie’s flower! Oh my goodness.
No - not a euphemism haha.
Being so smitten with Brian you remember his (no doubt dapper) attire.
Seeing the Stones and knowing they were a bit so-so.
Keeping up with Billy Bragg and supporting his latest tour.

ps
Billy Bragg made a post from somewhere between gigs in the Pacific North West about visiting a tourist attraction called The Oregon Vortex. I looked it up … curious and fascinating.

True. Those graphics are not always an exact match. The audio analysed comes from smartphone recordings (not the soundboard) w/ all the ambient noise, reverberation and all, and Fil uses a software to isolate the sounds (which can alter the sounds a bit), and we’ve gotta presume that the graphics shown are not modified.

By “miming” or “lip-syncing,” I understand that the audio heard is pre-recorded (pitch corrected or not), and that her microphone is turned off or is turned on at such a low volume that any live singing is barely heard. If lipping, I don’t think that Taylor just moves her lips without making any sound as that would look too fake; it’d cause miming errors, and it’d cause a certain “fatigue.”

If actually singing over the backing track and the live vocals are well heard enough, I would not classify it as “miming” or “lip-syncing,” but according to Fil, doing so would create additional data point that show that she’s singing live.

@sclay It is important to keep in mind that the show is over three hours and fifteen minutes long, which is impressive and unprecedented. About 45 songs are performed, so just because one song was mimed doesn’t mean all the other 44 songs were mimed as well. Fil should analyse more songs from the tour before painting a narrative that the bulk of the songs are mimed.

I honestly doubt all 45 songs are fully lipped at 100%, whether or not live vocal tuning is used. I don’t care about some live vocal tuning or backing tracks used in order to help the band or the vocalist. Fully miming the entire concert, a performance people paid to attend, is too much, I agree, but I haven’t seen evidence that that is the case.

This clip, apparently shot a few weeks ago, shows Taylor Swift having an in-ear monitor malfunction. She made a gesture so her dancers help her out w/ her mic pack, and she said an audible: “Thanks!” She could still have been lipping, but this suggests she could not properly hear herself or the music.

Also, it is not uncommon for concerts to have some mimed numbers without being fully mimed. For instance, Madonna’s first tours (The Virgin Tour and Who’s That Girl) were fully vocally live. Starting from the third tour (Blond Ambition), a few to several numbers per show relied on backing tracks or were mimed, but the vast majority of the songs were fully vocally live regardless. Madonna, who never fully lipped one of her own paid headlining concerts, never deserved that lip-syncing reputation.

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@Richard_close2u I agree, and I’m not sure I like this ongoing witch hunt against lip-syncing, backing tracks and pitch correction (whether live or in the studio).

Sure, miming an entire paid concert is pushing it too far. As Lady Gaga once said: “I don’t think it’s cool to lip sync. I’m not judging if people do because it’s everybody’s own style of what they decided to be, the type of artist they will be, but I think if you pay money for a ticket to see a show, the artist should f**king have some pipes and sing their records for you.”

But if it’s only parts of the concert, if there’s a whole lot of dancing, actual choreographies, or if the concert is super duper long like Taylor’s, I can understand some miming here or there—not the whole thing.

But then again, if the whole thing is mimed and fans don’t care and have a great time… I guess that’s what matters. Britney Spears denied fully miming her concert in 2017, stating: “A lot of people think that I don’t sing live. Because I’m dancing so much, I do have a little bit of playback, but there’s a mixture of my voice and the playback. It really pisses me off because I am busting my ass out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever really gives me credit for it.”

(The problem in Spears’ case is that most of the audio sound exactly like the CD to her fans and the general public. Her soundmen should have put her live voice louder in the mix so it popped. Backing tracks are only a problem when they overshadow the live voice too much for too long during a concert.)

As for live vocal tuning and pitch correction in the studio, I really don’t care at all, and I usually don’t even notice it unless the effect is very pronounced, and when it is, it’s usually intentional. Some rappers still want the warbled Auto-Tune effect, even if they can actually rap and sing.

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You are making assumptions here; both of what I said and what Fil said. No narrative is painted by either. Just presenting facts. What others draw from presented facts is their business.

Cheers, Shane

Honestly, Fil is not just “presenting facts.” No need to be a psychologist or linguist to understand certain things.

His vlog entry is entitled: “Taylor Swift’s $2 Billion tour revenue… for miming?” Right there! The very title of the vlog entry asks if Taylor Swift’s $2 billion tour revenue is due to miming. And the subsequent analysis of only one song (out of 45) concludes that that one song is lip-synced, thus positively answering the question asked in the title of the video…

It is undeniable. Fil is asserting that Taylor Swift’s $2 Billion tour revenue is mostly or solely due to miming. If not, he should have titled his exposé differently. I like him alright, but he can’t be that innocent… He knows damn well how such titles and thumbnails can be perceived, and that’s his exact wording.

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You seem to have some sort of axe to grind here mate. Given you joined this community 5hrs ago, I suggest you go the Community Hub section of the forum and introduce yourself.

Briefly, the thumbnail is a typical YT standard format. It creates a sense of ambiguity and interest, to encourage the viewer to click on it. Its called marketing.
The substance of the video is what matters, as in all Fil’s analyses.
That’s the end of the matter.

Shane

This is your assumption. I am just as honest as Fil claims to be.

Done.

Or rather… Clickbait. I get that, but my point remains… The title and the analysis combined assert that Taylor Swift’s tour is generating $2 billion in revenue mostly or solely on the back of miming. Any English professor would agree.

What I honestly have a problem with is the implication that all or most of the concert is mimed just based on that one song analysis. Or he would have titled his video something like: “Did Taylor Swift Mime ‘Style’ on Her Eras Tour?” That I would not have a problem with.

The current title of his exposé doesn’t target one song but the entire concert.

Critics like Fil are entitled to offer criticism and analyses, but reasonable countercritism is to be expected. Once again, I like him alright, but he’s not that innocent in the sense he knows very well the kind of backlash against the artist that may ensue.

Ken Tamplin has gone through Hell lately, and Fil knew very well that that’s what would happen.

Edit: I’m now reading a lot of comments saying or implying that the entire concert is mimed, that Taylor Swift is a fraud, that Taylor Swift is a studio/computer-generated no talent hack, etc. I even read one comment by somebody doubting that she truly writes her songs.

Here’s what vocal queen Céline Dion herself has to say about lip-syncing:

The clip also features Taylor Swift on the same subject…

It’s a different thing in my opinion. And all the backlash towards Ken is justified.

Back in physics classes one of the recurring mantras of our teacher was that a phenomenon should be examined at least 3 times (preferably more) in order to find a statistically meaningful result / trend.

In this particular case, I think that at least a complete concert or the same song(s) played at various concerts should be analysed and compared by multiple experts, and then their results and conclusions should be checked.

The title of the video, in my opinion, is clickbait. I don’t like clickbait, but in these times we have to live with them. The titles of other videos of the same channel that appear to the right of my screen suggest to me some sort of truth-telling / myth debunking mission by the uploader:

“DOUBTERS - You HAVE to watch THIS video.”
“Can you trust ANYONE??? People are lying. HERE is the…” (rest of the title not displayed)
“Just so YOU know, THIS constitutes ‘Live’ in 2024”
“If YOU want to know the TRUTH of Celine’s vocal, watch this. If…” (rest of the title not displayed)
“NOW THIS is the biggest musical fraud I’VE EVER SEEN.”
“HOW and WHY were Queen SO good at Live Aid in 1985?”
“THIS is why you’ll NEVER hear a voice like Judy’s again.” (Judy Garland, that is)

I’m all for the scientific method, repeating an experiment in the same conditions and seeing if the results are really the same, researchers challenging each other’s findings, etc. However, I don’t like it when the scientific method is used to mask one’s bias(es) (e.g. music was better and performers were more talented x decades ago than today) and if anyone purports to know THE ONE TRUTH that some other people are hiding from everybody.

So in case anyone in Taylor Swift’s or any other entertainer’s audience decides to sue for lip-synching or unexpected key changes, I hope more than one expert witness will be heard before the judge gives the sentence.

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Yes, Billy talked a lot about his last trip through Oregon - he had been excited to visit the Vortex, only to find it was closed the day (Monday) they were passing by. They were traveling on Monday again this time, but it’s now open 7 days. It was quite refreshing to hear how intrigued he is by local color. The only challenge his show presented for me: Johnny Marr was playing in Portland the same night. They did catch up with one another earlier on the journey - Vancouver, I think. :slight_smile:

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I agree that 3h 15min is impressive, but it’s not unprecedented. As for the lip-syncing thing and the video that was posted:

  • I don’t like the clickbait title.
  • Personally, I would be disappointed to learn an artist was lip syncing at a concert I attended. But that’s my personal opinion and may be related to the kind of music/artist I prefer. Obviously, Swift’s fans are happy with her performance, so fine by me.
  • I haven’t watched the video, but I do agree there is a difference between lip syncing 100% and say 25% of a show. Even though I wouldn’t like any of them, I would prefer the 25 over the 100.
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This Wings of Pegasus dude takes potshots at people with far more talent and accomplishment than he will ever muster in his lifetime. He’s a click-baiting troll, who cares what he thinks about anything?

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NPR Tiny Desk has a good concert with her.

Sorry but you’re wrong Fil is anything but; he’s a guy with an interest and passion for live music; his foray into this subject was inspired by others not himself. He learned how to use and interpret the software he uses, none of his reviews are biased, they just state the facts that his equipment shows up.
I asked him for help about something that was worrying me a while ago, he answered me honestly and concisely, it was concerning my use of AI singers on my music, it wasn’t really what I wanted to hear but it was backing up my concerns. AI singers are always correctly pitched, which is what I suspected.

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You are saying that he is more talented and successful than the artists that he critiques? Highly talented people don’t do what he does, they are too busy being creative and moving the needle with their art.

Did I say anything about talent?

That’s the statement I was referring to, plenty of people cares about his work, and he isn’t a Clickbait troll, he just does what people ask him to do.

You didn’t specify any part of my statement, so I took it to mean that you objected to it completely. The bottom line is that I wasted about 30 minutes parsing through his videos. Just because Internet randos ask a marginal talent to critique artists that are moving the bar doesn’t help the case. This is my last comment on the topic. Huge waste of time x2. LOL

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Fil has now uploaded two more entries on this topic.

He’s now admitting that most of the concert is sung LIVE; it’s mostly a live vocal, albeit auto-tuned. Not quite a mostly lip-synced show as first implied.