Sheryl Lee Ralph Is Not Here for Your Super Bowl Lip-Syncing Controversy: ‘Does It Matter?’
The stage and screen legend performed "Lift Every Voice and Sing" before the big game, and people had questions that she didn't feel like answering.
CelebritiesDirt Bag
Regarding the other stirring Super Bowl LVII performance all dressed in red, Abbot Elementary’s Sheryl Lee Ralph flat-out refused to say whether she lip synced or not during hers. The legend of stage and screen (and singer of cult post-disco club classic “In the Evening”) performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (the 100+-years-old so-called “Black national anthem”) at the State Farm Arena in Glendale, Arizona on Sunday before the big game. Her rousing showing was backed by a choir and preceded Chris Stapleton’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
There were moments in which Ralph’s mouth, though, didn’t seem to exactly match what was supposedly coming out of it (like around the 0:35 mark in the video above, there’s imprecision at “liberty”). When asked about this by The Hollywood Reporter following the performance, though, Ralph deflected. “Does it matter? Does it matter? No. Thank you,” she told the outlet.
She’s right, of course: In the grand scheme of things, whether or not she lip synced doesn’t matter. You’ll recall that perhaps the most beloved Super Bowl performance of all time, Whitney Houston’s 1991 rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” was also lipped—a fact that did nothing to diminish its power and has done nothing to diminish its legacy. Still, it mattered in the nothing-matters realm of, I don’t know, general daily existence not to mention celebrity reporting, and it stands to reason that if Ralph hadn’t lip synced, she probably would have just said, “No, I didn’t. I sang that live. What are you even talking about?”
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