Impossible to say for sure! However, lovably irascible music-industry curmudgeon Bob Lefsetz is at the forefront of the speculation that Her Madgesty wasn’t singing live during the star-studded telethon on Friday night (unlike her “4 Minutes†boytoy, Mr. Justin Timberlake). His evidence? “You can’t clap against a turned-on microphone like that without some kind of extra noise.†Well, even though we don’t have the same sort of experience with live mikes that someone like Barry the Roadie does, we have noticed on more than one (possibly drunken) karaoke adventure that hand-clapping while singing creates all sorts of weird audio feedback, and no such audio clues exist in the following clip. Granted, we are guessing that the telethon had access to better mikes than we do in East Village dive bars, but still, we have not been able to come to a definitive conclusion as to whether her vocals were indeed sung live. So why don’t you, the loyal Vulture reader, take a gander and let us know what you think?
Was Madonna Prerecorded? [Lefsetz Letter]