1.) As a TV producer myself, my first reaction while watching the Mariah medley real-time was “F! BAD EDIT!!!” It’s VERY simple to say so – it was widely announced a week prior that she’d do a PRE-TAPING of her Idol Performance on finale’s eve. FYI: Most, if not all, pre-taped productions make ALMOST-PERFECT outputs. If the producer making the final cut of this number was keen enough to notice in the editing computer that the AUDIO and VIDEO layers seem not synched, then there’s gotta be a BAD CALL from him/her to carelessly give it a go for airing. The most probable thing other than this technical dubbing issue is SABOTAGE. Who's not aware of the unspoken Mariah-Idol wrangle?
2.) The mere fact it’s PRE-TAPED means it’s editable/curable between the editing & airing times. Had the editor/producer, Mariah’s manager or Mariah herself double-checked through the playback monitor that something’s wrong (don’t tell us they didn’t notice ‘cause all the 14 million Idol viewers did!), they could’ve revised it or even requested Mariah to do the number again LIVE ON-AIR (“forget the logistical costs the pre-taping had incurred; it’s my a** on the line here daaahling!”) had she known there’s a huge embarrassment coming her way on national television. Such largely sets Mariah’s case apart from the alleged Milli Vanilli, Ashlee Simpson or BEYONCÉ lip-synching scandals; their performances were IRREVERSIBLY LIVE; Mariah’s was pre-taped.
3.) It’s no coincidence that minutes after/during the taping, fans in attendance at the pre-taping have taken to the social media that Mariah has done 3 TAKES, sung more fan-favorite songs in-between takes and was in tip-top vocal shape. Given Mariah is a perfectionist & granted she did MIME her performance, she could’ve done it a THOUSAND more times if theplayback kept showing her an UN-SYNCHED, “staged” live performance. The RAW AUDIO recording of the taping was even uploaded online by a crafty fan an hour after or two. Take that as reference to the TRUE LIVE performance and you can see a world of difference between what aired & the truth. Thanks to Trent for this proactive answer to future questioning: http://thelavalizard.com/2013/05/preview-mariah-carey-american-idol/
4.) Okay, granted she considers this lip-synching aid in some of her past performances (say, for more than a decade now), wouldn’t she have been a MASTER of this art by now? Again, had she purposefully planned to pull a lipped performance, she should have been keener in checking (in the monitor) if she did it perfectly or not. In fact, she herself could have told whether she missed a beat during the number itself and stopped mid-way to re-do the number.
5.) Coming from that “3 takes” theory, the material (that aired) certainly displayed a cobbled-up number, piecing together the best points off of each take. If this was a call from Mariah’s musical director or engineer, I’m pretty sure a more masterly attention would have been paid on the final cut. If this was a call from the producer, wow, how did you achieve that position with inferior capacity?
Clearly, somebody’s gotta take the blame for all this sh**.
PS: Don't ride this castigating bandwagon if you tolerate singers who lip-synch in a couple of local variety shows.
