The actor got top billing, but someone else provided their singing voice. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for those musical movie moments when the voice you hear doesn’t actually belong to the person singing on screen.
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00:00 Welcome to Nizmojo, and today we're counting down our picks for those musical
00:12 movie moments when the voice you hear doesn't actually belong to the person
00:17 singing on screen.
00:18 Number 10 - High School Musical - Zac Efron. This might shock and sadden a number of
00:34 former tween hearts, but it's true. Zac Efron basically didn't sing in High
00:39 School Musical.
00:42 While he's been quoted as saying that it was a surprise to him when, after
00:53 everything was recorded, his voice was not on them, the reason appears to be
00:57 related to his vocal range.
01:00 Apparently the role of Troy Bolton was written for a tenor, while Efron is a
01:04 baritone and couldn't quite get the vocals right. So the producers had Drew
01:20 Seely voice almost all of Zac's singing parts in the film. And before you totally
01:26 freak out, don't worry,
01:27 yes, it's Efron singing in High School Musical 2, High School Musical 3,
01:32 Hairspray, and The Greatest Showman.
01:35 Number 9 - Oh Brother, Where Art Thou - George Clooney. If you assumed that George
01:50 Clooney could sing because his aunt was the great Rosemary Clooney, you'd be very
01:55 wrong. But don't feel bad, the producers and directors of Oh Brother, Where Art
02:10 Thou made the same assumption when they asked him to sing in that film. Even
02:15 Clooney himself thought that he had at least a little talent in that realm.
02:19 However, once they heard the recording, they knew they were wrong.
02:26 And thankfully Clooney, after hearing it played back to him, had no false
02:41 perceptions about his singing abilities and was completely fine with lip-syncing.
02:46 So in stepped Bluegrass musician and singer Dan Tyminski.
02:51 Number 8 - My Fair Lady - Audrey Hepburn.
03:05 While Henry Higgins was able to improve Eliza Doolittle's voice in My Fair Lady,
03:23 the only way the producers found to help Audrey Hepburn sing better was to get
03:27 someone else to do it for her. And that person was Marnie Nixon, a soprano with
03:33 a beautiful voice who ghost-sang for actresses in musicals on multiple
03:38 occasions. However, it isn't all Nixon on the soundtrack.
03:51 For the "Just you wait" number, the filmmakers used Hepburn for the, shall we
03:55 say, harsh bits. Whereas it's all Nixon in the more musically demanding bridge.
04:02 Number 7 - The Sound of Music - Christopher Plummer.
04:29 1965's The Sound of Music gave us many things. Great songs, great performances,
04:37 and great scenery. But one thing The Sound of Music didn't give us was the
04:41 sound of Christopher Plummer's singing voice. Well, actually it did, but only in
04:47 very brief moments. You see, as Plummer told NPR back in 2012, while his voice
04:53 was used for the entrances and exits of the songs, the rest of the singing was
04:58 the voice of a man named Bill Lee.
05:03 While you probably don't know his name, you might recognise his singing from
05:15 numerous other films, including the awesome baritone line from Shia Khan in
05:20 The Jungle Book. Luckily, with the release of the deluxe edition of the
05:35 soundtrack in 2023, we got the chance to hear the songs with Plummer's own pipes.
05:42 He's not bad.
05:53 Number 6 - West Side Story - Natalie Wood.
05:59 You may not have ever heard the name Marnie Nixon before today, and yet
06:12 you're about to hear it again on this list. Just like Nixon was used to make
06:17 Audrey Hepburn's singing sound great, so too was she chosen to improve the
06:22 melodic sounds coming out of Natalie Wood's mouth in West Side Story.
06:38 Wood's contract provided for her being given a chance to sing the songs
06:43 herself, but it didn't take long for the music supervisors on the film to make
06:48 the decision to go with Nixon. Although Wood's singing did make the final cut on
06:53 the reprise of Somewhere.
07:04 Number 5 - La Vie en Rose - Marion Cotillard.
07:11 It's true that Marion Cotillard took singing lessons for her role as the
07:22 legendary French singer Edith Piaf, but it's also true that she didn't sing in
07:28 the movie, and she knew that was going to be the case when she was taking the
07:32 lessons. However, she took them anyway in order to be sure she could properly move
07:38 her lips and tongue and mouth to make it uber believable that she was the one
07:43 singing, and it worked.
07:48 "But I needed to learn her technique and I wanted to learn how to position my tongue, how to position myself, the breathing and everything."
07:55 Her performance, including the lip-syncing scenes, all came together
07:59 perfectly and earned Cotillard the first ever Best Actress Oscar given for a
08:05 French-language performance.
08:09 Number 4 - Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody - Naomi Ackie.
08:25 "It's growing, I know you're listening on."
08:34 If you saw the 2022 biopic Whitney Houston I Wanna Dance With Somebody and
08:41 was amazed at how similar actress Naomi Ackie's singing voice was to that of
08:46 Whitney Houston, well, here's why. The voice doing most of the singing was
08:52 Whitney Houston. Ackie has a great voice and a vocal range similar to Whitney, but
08:57 her actual singing was only used sporadically throughout the film to fill
09:02 those little moments.
09:05 As she explained to People, "That's why the beginning singing in the gospel choirs
09:16 was me and then you hear this change so that we know it's Whitney." In 2015 for
09:23 the Lifetime movie Whitney, lead actress Yaya DaCosta also didn't sing the songs,
09:28 but instead of Houston, R&B singer Deborah Cox provided the vocals.
09:45 Number 3 - Ray - Jamie Foxx. Given that he's released five albums, been nominated
09:51 for ten Grammys, and even won one, we all know that Jamie Foxx can sing.
09:58 But that didn't matter on the set of the Ray Charles biopic Ray, because as
10:08 director Taylor Hackford said about the music in his film, "I had to have Ray
10:14 Charles singing. These are masterpieces."
10:19 And what Hackford wanted, he got. Which meant Foxx's well-deserved Academy Award
10:33 winning performance involved lip-syncing to Ray Charles' recordings. However, while
10:38 the singing was Charles, the piano playing, that was all Foxx.
10:44 Number 2 - Bohemian Rhapsody - Rami Malek.
11:06 There's a guy out there whose singing voice is amazingly almost identical to
11:13 that of the late, great Freddie Mercury. His name is Marc Martel. While Rami Malek's
11:20 Oscar-winning performance in Bohemian Rhapsody saw him brilliantly inhabit
11:25 Mercury in his accent, movements, and persona, Malek just couldn't get the
11:30 singing voice right.
11:34 But Canadian Christian rock singer Martel sounds eerily like Mercury. So,
11:48 when you see Malek singing in the movie, it's mostly one of two voices you're
11:53 hearing, neither of which is usually Malek. The filmmakers used both Queen
11:58 recordings and Martel versions throughout the film, with a little Malek
12:03 in there occasionally.
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12:35 Number 1 - Selena - Jennifer Lopez
12:40 You'd think that one of the reasons one would cast Jennifer Lopez in a musical
12:55 biopic would be to have her sing. However, while that sounds like an obvious
13:00 statement today, we have to remember that Selena came out in 1997. And back in
13:07 1997, Lopez wasn't known for her vocal talents.
13:11 "I'm not a singer. I haven't performed as a singer. So I'm a dancer. I'd be singing in the
13:16 mic-V over here. You know, I'd be like, 'Yeah! Oh, the mic!' You know, because it's not really my voice."
13:22 In fact, her first album, On The Six, wasn't released until 1999. And it was
13:28 partly her experience making Selena that inspired her to dive into music in a way
13:34 she hadn't before.
13:37 All that being said, Lopez is lip-syncing to Selena's voice in the
13:51 movie. Which of these non-singing performances surprised you the most? Let
13:56 us know in the comments. "And they start playing and it just sounds like a cat
14:00 being run over by a semi and I'm like, 'Oh my God!'" Do you agree with our picks? Check out this
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