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But before we absolve Ashlee and the others, we might recall the Milli Vanilli incident. These lip-synchers not only lip-synched, but lip-synched to someone else's singing. They have since tried to restart their careers with their own voices. The truth eventually came out, but dare we wonder if there are any other instances of someone publicly 'performing' what was actually done by someone else?

Remember the claim that an actor actually delivered Winston Churchill's famous 'Blood, toils, tears and sweat' radio speech during World War 2? I don't know if it has been debunked, but it is plausible. How often during the radio age did this happen? It certainly happened in the movie era.

The most laughable case of lip-synching (or not, actually) is the 'ventriloquist' Edgar Bergen, who, since he started on radio didn't have to master the non-movement of his lips while his side-kick, Charlie McCarthy, spoke. Needless to say he was outed in the television world, though I recall appearances where the camera discretely, but continuously shifted to the puppet's face to avoid revealing the secret.

What we have in all these cases is the putting into somebody else's mouth what they cannot or are not saying at a particular time. Ashlee did indeed sing the song -- in the studio. But she was lip-synching during the broadcast. The same is true of music videos -- those singers did indeed sing the song, just not while filming.

The overdubs of actors' voices is a little different. Here we have someone else taking the place of a person's voice and giving their own. The Canadian composer R Murray Schafer called this sort of acoustic disorienting 'schizophonia', where technology allows sounds to be exchanged in ways that are confusing or problematic.

I'm sure we have all seen TV comedy segments where famous people are 'interviewed' and their answers are actually overdubs of some funny or satiric content. There's much to laugh at in such maneuvers.

In these cases we can see the imposture. But what when we can't?

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