On Ghost Singers, Lip-Syncing and Hip-Syncing

Regarding “Read Their Lips” (by Chuck Philips, June 10): Lip-syncing wouldn’t be so bad if the artists were mouthing to their own voices, but many of them are miming to tracks of unknown and poorly compensated studio singers who are paid to sound “like the artist, only good.”

And yes, it’s the studio singers you’re hearing on the records; of course, the real artist is in there too--but well covered by the studio singer.

This practice has gone on for a long time, but at least before there was use of tapes for live performances, the real singers were pretty well paid, because they had to be there for the concerts, sometimes singing from offstage, sometimes onstage pretending to play an instrument.

I was offered $10,000 per week to be the live-concert voice of a major teen star a few years ago. Now that tapes are being used, the studio singer gets a one-time recording fee of a few hundred dollars and that’s it.

Believe it or not, most of these stars do not know that someone else is doing their singing--even in “the old days” when it was done live, the artist’s voice was fed to him or her through the stage monitors, while the “ghost singer’s” voice went out to the audience over the PA system.

Even on the records, the artists are unaware that they are being covered by someone else, since that someone else sounds “like the artist, only good.”

Even if this were general knowledge, I’m not sure the typical fan would feel he was being cheated, since the type of artist who must be covered by another voice is usually selling image or personality over the voice anyway.

I’m not even particularly criticizing the practice (lots of sex symbols have silicone implants and most action-adventure actors use stunt men); besides, when the face, hair and body very often aren’t even their own, why should the voice be? At least they do their own dancing. For now.

MARIE CAIN

Los Angeles