Kid Rock is responding to social media claims that he was lip-syncing during a recent performance. The musician performed at the Turning Point USA “All-American Halftime Show” on Super Bowl Sunday. This event was promoted as an alternative to the official NFL halftime show featuring Bad Bunny. Online, many viewers posted clips where his mouth movements did not seem to match the lyrics. Kid Rock has now posted online to explain what happened.
He stated his performance was “pre recorded but performed live” and that he did not lip-sync. He explained that the broadcast had a technical problem where the sound and video were not properly synced together. This made it look like he was not singing live. The show was streamed live on the Turning Point USA YouTube channel, but the performance was recorded earlier.
What Happened During The Turning Point USA Performance
The Turning Point USA (TPUSA) “All-American Halftime Show” was created as a conservative alternative to the main Super Bowl event. The official NFL halftime show this year featured the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, a choice that was criticized by some conservative groups. In response, TPUSA organized its own show. It was headlined by Kid Rock and also featured country artists Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett.
The performance in question was of Kid Rock’s 1998 hit song “Bawitdaba.” During the broadcast, viewers noticed moments where the audio of the song kept playing while Kid Rock’s microphone was away from his mouth. Other times, his lip movements were visibly out of sync with the words being heard. These moments were quickly clipped and shared on social media, leading to widespread jokes and accusations of lip-syncing.
“My halftime performance was pre recorded but performed live,” Kid Rock wrote on the social media platform X. “No lipsycing like the haters and fake news are trying to report.”
Kid Rock’s Full Explanation and Video Response
To address the growing criticism, Kid Rock gave an interview on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” and posted a follow-up video on his social media. He said the performance was pre-taped. When he saw an early edit, he told the production team the sync was off. He blamed the final broadcast issues on the difficulty of syncing the video of his energetic performance with the live audio track.
“I even told them when I saw the rough cut, I was like, ‘You guys gotta work on that sync. It’s off,’” Rock said on Fox News. “So it was just a syncing issue that they had, and I know they tried to get it right. It was very difficult.”
He argued that “Bawitdaba” would be a very difficult song to lip-sync because of its fast, chaotic nature. He also explained that his DJ contributes vocals on parts of the song, which might explain why lyrics were heard when he was not singing. To prove his point, he later posted a video from his home in Nashville showing him and his DJ performing parts of the song together.
In his responses, Kid Rock also criticized the media coverage and took aim at Bad Bunny’s official Super Bowl show. He said he did not understand the Spanish-language performance, calling it “not my cup of tea”. He added that he did not blame Bad Bunny but faulted the NFL for choosing him, which led to the need for an alternative show.
Reactions From Viewers and Other Entertainers
The public reaction to the performance was largely negative and full of humor on social media. Many users mocked the apparent lip-syncing, with one joking Kid Rock was showing off “mad ventriloquist skills”. Another called it a “complete and utter embarrassment”.
The show also drew criticism from late-night television hosts. Jimmy Kimmel dedicated part of his monologue to the event. He said the TPUSA show “was a disaster” and mocked Kid Rock’s performance.
“Kid Rock’s lip-synch was screwed up,” Kimmel said. “And that’s the other thing. Almost all the complaints about Bad Bunny were you can’t understand what he’s saying. So who do they go to? Kid Rock, an artist whose most popular song is literally gibberish.”
Comedian Jon Stewart also joked about the performance. He sarcastically praised TPUSA for celebrating the “King’s English” before playing a clip of the hard-to-understand lyrics of “Bawitdaba”.
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The Scale and Context of the Competing Halftime Shows
The two halftime shows had very different viewership. The TPUSA alternative show had a peak of about 6.1 million concurrent viewers during its YouTube livestream. The archived video gained tens of millions of views in the days after the event.
In contrast, the official Super Bowl on television, which includes Bad Bunny’s halftime show, regularly draws over 120 million viewers in the United States alone. The official halftime show’s video on YouTube also accumulated tens of millions of views quickly.
Despite the smaller audience, the TPUSA show received support from prominent conservative figures. The White House social media account reposted a video from the event. Former President Donald Trump called the official Bad Bunny halftime show “absolutely terrible” on Truth Social.
The “All-American Halftime Show” was a pre-recorded program. It was filmed at an undisclosed location in Atlanta, Georgia, and streamed as a live broadcast on Super Bowl Sunday. The show was promoted as a celebration of American patriotism and an option for viewers who wanted an alternative to the NFL’s main event.
Also Read: Super Bowl 60 Halftime Shows Compared: Bad Bunny and Kid Rock Battle for Audience Approval
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