Pointless rumor refutation for the day: Beyoncé was not lip synching the entire halftime show. Why we actually care about this is beyond me -- seriously, guys, the stage was a giant video screen, did you really think they were going to be production-free otherwise? -- but there were multiple points in the show where I can definitively say the lady's voice channel was in fact faded up.

She could have gotten away with lip synching the initial acapella bars, but when she starts into the proper vocals to "Crazy In Love" and when she's doing all the random yodeling with the guitarist, there are multiple points where the sound is cut off early or comes in too quiet, when she's moving her handheld mic around too much. It may be back to synched while they're dancing to "Till The End of Time" and "Baby Boy", but she's live for the segments of both where she's asking for shoutouts from the audience.

The vocals are also live for at least the initial segment of the Destiny's Child number and for her lead line on "Single Ladies". The mesh on the top of a handheld microphone is one version of what they call a "popper stopper", or a widget that sits between your mouth and the diaphragm of the mic to diffuse the burst of air, or "pop", that goes with plosive phonemes like P and B. The popper stopper on Beyoncé's mic and at least one of the other two girls is pretty fail -- it just can't stop the variability of a live singer who's also gasping from all the dancing and the New Orelans wind all at the same time.

Her channel is also completely live for "Halo". You can hear her breathing hard and although she doesn't actually miss anything, her extra-highs and the one extra low in the verse are pretty rough, and her voice breaks once on the first chorus. The soft thwp noises when she's clutching hands with the crowd is her hair thwacking into the popper stopper mesh and being picked up on-mic.


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