Read my lips: please, enough already with the lip-syncing, Celebrity America.
Thanks to cheap laugh-getter Jimmy Fallon, the unfortunate trend of lip-syncing that resumed on his Tonight Show has found an audience. In his version, megastars "battle" one another by mimicking the lyrics of popular songs. The practice has found enough of an audience to cause Spike TV, purveyor of fine programs like MANswers and Stripperella, to spawn its own half-hour show. The it-is-what-it-is-now-consume-it title of the show, Lip Sync Battle, proves they're not even trying to polish this turd for you, America.
Yes, there are more important matters in the world to rail against and sure, this is just killjoy criticism of something that should only be seen as a fun diversion from all those other important matters to rail against. But there's music involved here. And, more to the point, the decision about which music makes the cut and which doesn't simply irks me as a music listener.
I watched the first episode, although the numerous Tonight Show bits have already grown tired. If you ask me, once Paul Rudd mimed Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now," it was game over. But, of course, we must all get a turn pummeling the horse before we decide it's dead and needs to be buried, only to come galloping back 15 or 20 years later. So, enjoy Lip Sync Battle while you can, horse-beaters.
The show began with host LL Cool J introducing the concept to a rather large live audience by saying "You know what it is, you've seen it..." Yes, we've seen it before, a couple of decades ago when it was called Putting On the Hits and at least gave ordinary, non-famous folks the spotlight for a moment. In that variant, a hairdresser from Hoboken or a cake decorator from Houston might have the chance to be a TV star for a few minutes.
Not so in 2015. Fittingly, the first "battle" featured Fallon against lifelong fake-battler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. There's plenty to dislike about the show beginning with the premise alone, so that'll be the focus here, rather than LL Cool J's continued career spiral into cheesing for any TV camera or Chrissy Teigen talking about her breasts (yep, didn't even have to wait until Episode 2 for that). But even Teigen talking about her moneymakers is less obscene than the show's position on music.
But isn't this a comedy show, you might say. At its heart, this is a music show. Without music, there's no show. No one is going to tune in to Lip Sync Battle if The Rock is wearing a tattered sweater and a curly perm while miming along to Kurt Vonnegut's read-by-the-author audio version of Cat's Cradle (okay, I admit, I would watch that).
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