No matter how accomplished a singer is, backing tapes are an essential part of most live, nationally televised musical performances – including those at the Super Bowl last Sunday.

    That’s what music-business veterans say in the wake of Jennifer Hudson’s dramatic performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” before the National Football League’s marquee event, which drew 98.7 million viewers. Afterward, the pre-game show’s producer, Rickey Minor, said Hudson used a backing track, as did singer Faith Hill, who performed “America the Beautiful.”

    Hudson’s publicist, Jessica Kolstad, said Tuesday that the 27-year-old Chicago native “was singing live to a backing track. Her microphone was on, and she was singing live to the backing track at the request of the producers.”

    The Super Bowl has routinely required performers to tape their performances in advance of the broadcast. The performers have the option to sing live, but are encouraged to use the backing track to avoid technical glitches.

    “The Super Bowl performances are all on tape,” said Hank Neuberger, a Grammy winning producer who is supervisor of the broadcast audio for the Grammy Awards telecast. Minor is music director of the Grammys in addition to his duties as producer of the pre-game entertainment at the Super Bowl.

    Neuberger said not only Hudson and Hill recorded their performances in advance, but so did halftime performers Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Only Springsteen’s vocals were live, he said.

    “There is no way you can set up a full band in five minutes with microphones, get all the settings right, and expect to get quality sound,” Neuberger said. “The Super Bowl has been doing that for years with virtually all the bands.”

    Subpar singers or dance-oriented pop acts often resort to lip-synching to carry live performances; in recent years artists such as Ashlee Simpson, Madonna and Britney Spears have all dealt with controversies about their use of backing tracks in live performances.

        But Hudson is a masterful vocalist with a multi-octave range. Her Super Bowl performance was newsworthy in part because of tragic recent events; her mother, brother and nephew were killed Oct. 24 in their Englewood home, and Sunday marked her first public appearance since then. She gave a poised, emotionally charged performance that was widely praised by viewers, though Internet blogs and message boards lit up with surprised and disappointed reactions when Minor revealed afterward that she was singing to a backing track.

    “It’s not fraudulent, it’s the opposite of fraud,” Neuberger said. “It’s not like Milli Vanilli,” referring to the pop duo who won a best-new-artist Grammy that was later rescinded after it was revealed that they didn’t actually sing on their debut album. “This was a case where Jennifer Hudson is the singer, and it was a case of the artist giving the audience her best under adverse conditions.”

    Neuberger said a similar strategy was employed by the classical quartet including violinist Itzhak Perlman and cellist Yo-Yo Ma that played to a recorded track at the presidential inauguration last month.

     “There were too many variables keeping the instruments in tune while playing outside in cold weather,” he said. “You can’t control the environment, so the smart decision is to record the performance and play along with it. With Jennifer Hudson, if she goes out there, they set up the microphones, the music starts, and something goes wrong --- she can’t hear herself, the microphone doesn’t work --- she’s in trouble. The performance is going to suffer. You only have a certain amount of time. It’s too big of an event to risk something going wrong.”

    Still, what about alerting viewers that portions of a broadcast have been pre-recorded if backing tapes are being used? Live sound mixers say the practice is so commonplace that such disclaimers aren’t necessary.

    “C’mon, it’s a given,” Neuberger said. “Television and music are not always a happy marriage. It’s hard to present music of the highest quality on television, and you want the audience to hear an artist at their best. It’s not like anybody paid to see Milli Vanilli sing, and found out later they aren’t even on the recording, let along singing on stage.”

    Neuberger says the exception to the rule is the Grammy telecast, where all the vocals and most of the backing instrumentation is live. Hudson is scheduled to sing Sunday at the national televised awards ceremony, and Neuberger says she will perform without a backing track.

         “We have more time to set up and make sure everything is right,” he said. “We commit more resources to doing this live than any other show. By comparison the Super Bowl has limited resources to deal with adverse conditions, so using a backing tape is the right call.”

    greg@gregkot.com

Jennifer Hudson used a backing track for her dramatic version of ''The Star Spangled Banner'' Sunday at the Super Bowl, the pre-game show’s producer says.

Rickey Minor, the producer, told the Associated Press after the performance that he insisted that Hudson use the vocal track she submitted to the NFL a week before the game instead of singing live.

“That’s the right way to do it,” Minor said. “There … [are] too many variables to go live. I would never recommend any artist go live because the slightest glitch would devastate the performance.”

Representatives for Hudson and the NFL did not respond to email and voice-mail messages requesting comment. But it is typical of performers at big stadium events to use backing tracks. Artists from U2 to Madonna make extensive use of pre-recorded music at their concerts. And most Super Bowl renditions of the national anthem, as well as numerous halftime performances, have been lip-synched.

What’s unclear is if Hudson sang along with the backing track, or simply lip-synched. Her breathing patterns, including a couple of audible sighs, indicate that she may have been singing, but it’s difficult to prove.

Minor also told the Associated Press that Faith Hill, who preceded Hudson with a performance of “America the Beautiful,” used a backing track.

Should the NFL have come clean with viewers about whether they were seeing a live performance before the singers put microphones to their lips?

greg@gregkot.com

Bruce Springsteen knew what he was competing against as he took the instant stage set up Sunday at halftime of the Super Bowl.

“Step away from the guacamole dip,” he commanded the national television audience. Not the finest line in Springsteen lore. And then came a mix of Springsteen at his best -- and worst.

Super Bowl halftime entertainers, once an afterthought, are now part of the NFL sales team. Springsteen, who once wouldn’t have been caught dead performing an event sponsored by a multinational tire manufacturer while being squeezed between television ads, was in an affable, we’re-here-to-entertain mood with his E Street Band.  

“Is there anybody alive out there?” he shouted, then tried to squeeze three hours of a typical high-energy Springsteen concert into 12 minutes.

Springsteen’s music has taken on a political dimension over the years, but that aspect of his art was muted in favor of a more celebratory performance. Springsteen said as much in pre-game comments when he described the game as a “big party,” and he came to please.

He began silhouetted standing back-to-back with saxophonist Clarence Clemons, an evocation of his 1975 “Born to Run” album cover, and then dove into two songs from that iconic recording: “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” with a horn section, and the still-stunning title song. The performances bristled with energy, even if Springsteen was a bit breathless and clearly not up to nailing the high notes.

Then came a truncated “Working on a Dream” with a gospel choir, an advertisement for his latest album. He closed with “Glory Days,” the singer camping it up as he worked a bunch of football references into the song about a washed-up baseball player. The set bottomed out when a performer popped on-stage wearing a football referee’s uniform and signaled “penalties” while the singer and Steve Van Zandt shared vocals. Do they hand out 15-yard penalties for shameless jive?

It was an example of Springsteen’s humor at its cheesiest; perhaps entertaining to an audience who would just as soon be dipping into the guacamole, but a letdown for fans who expected a more convincing musical statement from one of the greatest live performers of the last three decades. This was Springsteen as song-and-dance man, an accomplished artist reduced to pandering.

    greg@gregkot.com

Jennifer Hudson doesn’t always get the material her prodigious voice deserves.

But that wasn’t the case Sunday to open the Super Bowl as she took on the National Anthem, a demanding warhorse that requires superior vocal chops to successfully navigate.

It was the 27-year-old Chicago native’s first public performance since the slaying of her mother, brother and nephew in their Englewood home on Oct. 24.

Teetering on high heels with a sober expression, she began and ended the performance with an audible sigh. In between, she was focused and in terrific voice. She began deliberately, then swung low to bring a chilling resonance to the word “gleaming.” Though she stretched a few notes, she didn’t oversell the song or her voice. She reveled in its power. The final “home of the brave” was a howitzer into the heavens.

Hudson announced she was back in dramatic fashion. Her heart has surely been broken by recent events, but her voice remains a rare instrument. And if anything, the tragedies in her life gave this performance an emotional lift that couldn’t be denied.

greg@gregkot.com

    We can guess what Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will likely play at halftime of the 2009 Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla  Chances are we’ll hear “Born to Run,” and you can bet the ranch on “Dancing in the Dark” or some other hit off “Born in the U.S.A.,” his most popular album. But what songs should he play?

    Springsteen and the E Streeters were booked Monday for the gig, which is expected to attract 140-plus million viewers, following in the footsteps of previous halftime headliners Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Prince and U2.

    Springsteen will be able to perform only a handful of songs in his allotted 12 minutes, so he needs to choose carefully. Cross out any song with political implications because it’ll immediately get censored by uptight network and NFL officials, which likely means the title track from “Born in the U.S.A.” is a no-no. Given those parameters, here are a few he should consider dusting off:

    The Type-A personalities in charge of the NFL and its precious image don’t like surprises, and they picked a fail-safe performer for their Super Bowl halftime show Sunday.

    Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers are rock-‘n’-roll lifers who have consistently delivered solid songs and shipshape performances for 30 years. The only hint of glitz came at the outset: an aerial shot that showed a giant, neon-lit replica of a Flying V guitar piercing the heart-shaped stage. That was one of those so-cheesy-it’s-cool moments left over from ‘70s arena concerts, an acknowledgment that rock shows on TV are frankly pretty boring. So why not go for a little spectacle?

    But Petty and the Heartbreakers don’t do spectacle. They’re a bar band – and a very good one. With his Southern drawl and sleepy-eyed expression, the bearded Petty never gave the impression that this was anything but another gig. He put the focus squarely on the songs.