Did Taylor Swift Lip-Synch On “Saturday Night Live” Last Night?

taylorswiftsnl2017

I heard you! I heard you, the one in the back who hissed “who cares?” Well, someone obviously does! She sold 700,000 copies of her new record “Reputation” in the U.S. on the first day of its release, according to Billboard. If this sales pace keeps up, she will hit a million in sales in the first week alone. And furthermore, industry sources say that she’s probably going to have the largest sales week of her carefully coordinated career. No matter how irritating some of us find her (you can put your hands down), Swifty can sell.

She’s already the only act to have three different albums sell a million copies in a week, since Nielsen Music began tracking data in 1991. Her last three studio albums all launched with more than 1 million sold in their first weeks: 1989 (1.29 million), Red (2012, 1.21 million) and Speak Now (2010, 1.05 million).

This brings us to last night’s SNL performances. Taylor did “…Ready For It?” (she uses ellipses worse than I do) and “Call It What You Want.” And many a Katycat immediately padded over to Twitter to accuse Taylor of vocal trickery.

Taylor Swift always brags about how she doesn't lip sync but she's doing a pretty obvious lip sync on SNL right now. @taylorswift13

— Blues Away (@SpeechlessMJJ16) November 12, 2017

Taylor Swift is killing this lipsync battle on #SNL tonight!

— Slyd (@Slyd) November 12, 2017

@nbcsnl Please make a pledge to never have lip syncing musical guests perform ever again. Irony the Taylor Swift song is from her album titled Reputation. #SNL #LipSync #FakeMusic #TaylorSwift #Reputation

— Gordon Bonenfant (@ABDRT2OIL) November 12, 2017

And my favorite one:

Taylor Swift trying to work this snake imagine like we thinks she’s a literal reptile and not a conniving bitch, sis no matter how many snake mics you lip sync into nobody is forgetting that. pic.twitter.com/uJk7yNI9S0

— ⋈ (@softcuIture) November 12, 2017

Oh, yeah – she kept the reptile imagery a’slitherin’ by using a snake-shaped microphone during the first song.

Alex Robert Ross of Noisey is pretty emphatic that Taylor wasn’t lip-synching last night.

There was an audible backing track on “…Ready for It,” which is hardly unusual, but Swift was hooked up on top of that: the loudness lines up with the distance that Swift holds the mic from her face, her vocals aren’t shaky but they’re not flawless either,

Taylor returned to her roots (I’m a pretty girl on a barstool with a gee-tar singing about love) for “Call It What You Want.”

Ever since Ashlee Simpson did her hoe-down on SNL, I’ve assumed everyone uses a backing track. What I was more concerned about during the first song was Tay Tay trying to act all sexy but then accompanying it with the occasional warm smile to people in the audience. It was very uh thrust uh thrust tousle my hair like I’m getting railed oh hi Jenn! You can’t sing a song about trying to get a guy to visit the private island in your pants complete with arrhythmic pelvic workouts while simultaenously greeting audience members like they just arrived to your wine tasting. It’s jarring.