EPIC {{arts & entertainment}}

Time out. I thought I was watching a video of Millionaires on Warped Tour not Milli Vanilli. Alright, alright. I guess I can’t go so far as to say that considering they have vaginas, weaves, more makeup than Sephora and are at least kind of doing something with their vocals. Maybe. Sort of. Regardless, I’m still a little bit confused: lip syncing? warped tour? The last time I thought I saw someone lip sync at Warped Tour it was 2004(ish) and Kris Roe’s ever receding hairline impeded my ability to see due to the reflection off of his giant forehead. I could have been seeing things. But if you do a little fast forwarding here (let’s say— start at 2:00 in and go to 2:40 or so) there’s some wonky Ashlee Simpson type shit going down with the backing track and yet none of the ho(e)-down moves.

Let me be the first to admit that occasionally I like to groove to Millionaires even if I feel a little slutty for even mouthing the lyrics. But who doesn’t love to feel a little slutty sometimes? I just don’t know how they do it all of the time. Anyway. Millionaires is amazing filler— kind of like junk food, except with less of the satisfaction. Don’t expect it to fill you up. Despite this, I’m still left questioning the integrity of their backing track system. Backing tracks. Cool. We’ve seen it before— more common to some genres than others— and taking in to considering they do not have a live band the backing track seems the perfect solution. But when did the backing track become the main form of entertainment? Aren’t the vocal levels supposed to be higher than the backing track itself? Aren’t the microphones supposed to generally, you know, be on?

It’s hardly surprising, then, that other bands are taking to their various forms of interwebz connections, however limited they might be, and ranting about the bands (yes! bands! because apparently one lip syncing band to take down whatever last shreds of cred Warped Tour was trying to pretend to possess wasn’t enough) who take the stage every single day and bullshit their way through.

“The most surprising thing about this tour is the amount of bands that are faking it. Straight up lip-syncing nonsense! To begin with Millionaires don’t sing at all, and the one dude from brokeNCYDE is up there just pretending.” —Alexisonfire

None of their mics were even ON but i was at the side of the stage and one of them turned to the other and goes “ewww this is sooo anoyyying” like one of the bitchy girls on MTVs Sweet 16.” —Madina Lake