2014 ACM Awards: Rascal Flatts admits to lip-syncing, but is it a big deal?

Even though the 2014 ACM Awards aired two days ago, it’s apparently never too late for controversy to brew. This time around, we are talking about something that we’ve surely talked about hundreds of times before: Lip-syncing during an awards show, and whether or not it is a big deal.

Before we get too far into this story, let’s be honest: There’s a pretty big percentage of performers who have lip-synced in their lives. Everyone at the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving does it. The same goes for the majority of big-name pop stars. Even the show’s host Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan said before the show really got going was that their event as all “live music” … and proceeded to say that you can go see Britney Spears if you want to watch someone pretend to sing on stage.

Perhaps Blake and Luke should’ve checked with the rest of the acts before making that joke, no? Well in a post on Twitter, Rascal Flatts admitted that they decided to pretend to perform their new single “Rewind” on the show after band member Gary Levox lost their voice. They also said that they were looking forward to performing live in the near future.

Did the band handle this the right way? Maybe they were obligated to appear and perform on the show, and the choice was either do this, or give a performance was a disaster. Our preference, though, would have been seeing them cancel so that an up-and-coming country artist was given an opportunity to hit the stage and do something. It could’ve been a big break. As for Rascal Flatts, we have a feeling that they already have plenty of money.

What about you: Do you understand the criticism of the performance, or feel like we and some of the media’s being hard on them? Let us know either way below, and to get some TV updates worth singing about, sign up now for our CarterMatt Newsletter.

Photo: CBS