Read My Lips

By Sean McVeigh

It’s December. The holiday season is here. And I’m a little worried this take might be too hot for this time of year. Lesser columnists would shrink away from the fear of public backlash. But I am not one of those columnists.

I’m not much of a parade guy. I like the Rockaway St. Patrick’s Day Parade, but that’s because I live in Rockaway. I wouldn’t expect someone in Sheboygan, Wisconsin to tune into the RSPD Parade any more than I yearn to watch the Sheboygan Independence Day Parade — which, by the way, steps off each Fourth of July on North Eighth Street and Center Avenue, heads to Michigan Avenue, and finishes at Broughton Drive. I’m sure they go SheBonkers for the festivities, and I imagine it’s a wonderful, cheese-filled celebration of our Independence Day, but I’ll take a pass.

This year, I was — how should I put this — compelled to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from start to finish. I mean no disrespect to the University of North Alabama marching band (go Lions!), the Green Giant, or Snoopy, but I simply do not care. Sure, every now and then, a dance routine or something would catch my attention. The Spider-Man balloon always hooks me for a minute — comic nerd that I am — but then I remember it’s just a balloon, and not even Hoda and Al can make that cool for more than ten seconds.

If the parade were just silly floats and big balloons, it would probably be bearable. But the thing that really drives me up and over the wall, the very catalyst for writing this column, is the lip syncing.

When did lip syncing become socially acceptable? What are we even doing here? These performers are getting paid thousands of dollars to stand on a float and pretend to sing. People often see professionals doing something and say, “I can do that,” and, almost always, they could not. Well, I am here to say: I could, in fact, do that. I could join that parade and pretend to sing Lil Jon on the Toys “R” Us float (debatably the oddest pairing of brand to performer you could conceive). I don’t know a single lyric of Lil Jon’s music — but luckily, that doesn’t matter because the whole thing is fake.

How can we just sit idly by and allow this to continue? It would be like the Rockettes coming out and just holding up a giant screen playing one of their performances instead of actually dancing. People would be in an uproar — and rightfully so!

I tried looking up the reason behind all this, and the explanation I keep seeing is that it’s too difficult logistically. It’s almost 2026. You’re telling me we don’t have the technology for someone to sing on a moving float? That seems like nonsense to me. Although, to be fair, this is also an event where giant balloons are still the main attraction.

I think these performers are scared to sing live. One diva somewhere along the line probably slipped lip syncing into their contract, everyone else followed suit, and the rest is history. Maybe one day someone will take a stand and say, “No!” If you can’t sing live, you’re out. Enough of this artistic injustice! Instead, people are probably out there bragging about how they heard KPop Demon Hunters live at the Thanksgiving Day Parade — when if you just listen to KPop Demon Hunters on your Spotify like a normal person, you heard the exact same performance.

So maybe I’m being unfair to parades in general when I should just be directing all my anger at lip syncing. Either way, next year I’ve already decided to skip the 100th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — an early New Year’s resolution, if you will.

Maybe I just need to expand my parade horizons. Say what you will about the Sheboygan parade scene, but I’d bet good money they don’t have a single lip-synced performance on the entire circuit.