Remember the Superbowl half-time show? So here’s a question from SFGate: Is Shania Twain Human?

But then No Doubt and Sting came onstage, immediately after Shania’s perfect prerecorded fist-pumping lounge act and just after she tossed around her perfectly shellacked faux sexuality like dimestore confetti, and from the first note of the other acts, you saw it. You got it. And you understood.
They actually sang. They talked to the audience. They were genuinely into the music they wrote and their movements weren’t at all scripted and their voices weren’t perfect and they were breathing hard into the mics because they were running around the stage, and Gwen was moving and gyrating spontaneously like a love goddess on ecstasy and therein lies the biggest difference: They may still be pop confections, but at least they genuinely taste good.

Like most of MM’s little tidbits, this one slides haphazardly in and out of anti-Bush diatribes that don’t have much to do with the topic (any topic) at hand, but the observations about Twain, Gwen, and Sting are spot-on.

YES!

After several years of really bad lip syncing, I was shocked when, several seconds into the song, that I realized Sting and Gwen were live.

Now I am really upset that I missed the No Doubt/Garbage show last fall.

Point of Humor

Both ABC and Shania Twain deny that she was lip syncing. Both say that her mic was hot, but that the music and back up singers were "canned".

I couldn't agree more. When I saw Twain's "performance" I was really let down. There wasn't an ounce of humanity in there. No Doubt and Sting actually seemed to be alive, genuine, and having fun.

I liked Shania quite a bit -- don't expect much out of a 7 minute microperformance and she has quite the bod -- until the shocking contrast with Gwen and Sting. Damned straight she didn't dare get back on stage next to Stefani.

Poor little robot.