> Critics gloss over Hudson’s lip-synch

> By David Usborne in New York
> Monday, 2 February 2009

> She had not been seen since the murder of her mother, brother and
> nephew in Chicago last October, so when Jennifer Hudson strode into
> the Tampa stadium on Sunday night to sing the national anthem before
> the Super Bowl, the fans were with her. And so they were when she was
> done. A Howitzer to the Heavens, one critic raved.

> No one would doubt the courage of Ms Hudson, who first captured hearts
> as a competitor on American Idol and before long found herself
> accepting an Oscar for her role in Dreamgirls.

> So when word got around that Ms Hudson had lip-synched her
> performance, America wasn’t sure how to react. The producer of the
> pre-game musical acts, Ricky Minor, had told the Associated Press as
> soon as the game was over that on his insistence she had mouthed her
> way through a recordingshe had made a week earlier.

> Yet most reports of her appearance made no reference to the
> technological trickery, presumably because editors felt Ms Hudson
> deserved a break from criticism so soon after her multiple
> bereavements.

> Or it may be because duping audiences at live events seems almost to
> have become the norm.

> Twoweeks ago the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Itzhak Perlman
> string-synched their way through a musical prelude to the swearing-in
> of Barack Obama. Their excuse was the cold. Faith Hill, who sang
> “America the Beautiful” before Ms Hudson, also relied on a recording.

> MrMinor said Tampa was Ms Hudson’s first outing since the murders, for
> which her estranged former brother-in-law has been charged.