This should be a fun one for someone. I'm looking for someone to help
me find research that would provide a defence of lip-sync'ing. Are
there any examples where lip sync'ing has HELPED the music industry,
or an artist, or musical art in general. I'd ideally love three
examples -- even if they're just well-formed thoughts from your own
mind.

Mili-Vanilli won a grammy and made millions lip syncing..the end
wasn't so nice, though

The singers in the musical "A Chorus Line" lip syned. Apparently, the
director didn't want to sacrafice voice quality for dancing...You can
either support one or the other with your diaphragm...not both! So,
you could argue that lip syncing gives audiences both the best voice
and the best dancing/physical performance.

Kriswrite

I'm there with kriswrite-ga.

In spite of Elton John's protestations to the contrary, I personally
feel that an artist such as Madonna has to lip-synch in a 'live'
concert, in order to provide the audience with the audio experience
that they expect to accompany the visual experience happening on the
stage. Unlike Sir Elton, whose music is primarily acoustical,
Madonna's is the product of several layers of electronic tweaking.
When she's dancing and cavorting around on stage to satisfy the
audience's desire for a visual display worthy of the Madonna name,
it's technically and physically difficult to simultaneously sing at a
studio-level performance without being affected by all of the noise
and motion in the concert hall. Sir Elton, on the other hand,
typically performs while sitting in one spot (ie. in front of his
piano), where it is possible to better filter out the background
noise. There's a lot less pyrotechnics at his concerts, after all. :)

If many of today's 'modern artists' were to NOT use lip-syncing at
appropriate points of their concerts, their fans' expectations would
not be met. True, often an acoustic performance of an otherwise
overproduced piece can be a reward to the concert-goer; the trend for
many of the modern artists, though, is to provide an audio-visual
spectacular that is so much more than just the musical lyrics
themselves.

By the way... one example where lip-syncing would most definitely come
in handy... the singing of national anthems at sports venues when a
'celebrity guest' takes the mic. Rarely does that ever NOT make it
onto the evening sports 'low-lights' segment! (Does anyone else
remember Roseanne Barr's trashing of the American national anthem?)

While I think you could argue that lip syncing is a "good thing," I do
not believe it. Broadway performers sing, dance, and act every
performance live ("A Chorus Line" was an exception). If the performer
is well trained and disciplined, it can be done :)

Kriswrite

play back singer would fall into same category or not????? If yes then
whole of South Asia( Pakistan, india, bangladesh etc) film industry (
way much bigger then Hollywood) is geting benefit out of it. Where
actors dance and some play back singer sing for them and they just lip
sync.
regards
lahoria