Kid Rock is clarifying a few key details about Turning Point’s “All-American Halftime Show” after some people accused him of lip-synching during the program held on Super Bowl Sunday.
In a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday (Feb. 10) — two days after the inaugural event was broadcasted between halves of the Big Game — the musician denied using a pre-recorded track to fake his vocals, but confirmed that his performance was pre-taped rather than aired live. According to him, the confusion was caused by editors in post-production not quite lining up the audio of his performance of rapid-fire track “Bawitdaba” to the video, making it look like he was lip-synching.
“If I was ever going to lip-synch, which I wouldn’t, that would be the last song I would ever … do it to,” Kid Rock explained in the clip, in which he stands next to his DJ, Paradime, who performed with him for Turning Point. “We’ve performed this song every night on tour since 1998.”
“It’s extremely difficult for them to line up the sync,” Kid Rock conceded, noting he feels “confident” it would have come together perfectly if the editors had been given more time. “That song takes so much energy. I’m flipping mics, I’m jumping around like a rabid monkey on stage … I have nothing but good things to say not only about Turning Point, but the production team that they work with. Nobody’s perfect or gets it right every time.”
“For the haters and the trolls out there …,” he added before flipping off the camera.
Also in the video, Kid Rock and Paradime demonstrated how tricky “Bawitdaba” is to perform live, with the DJ needing to fill in some lines for the hip-hop/country star so he can take enough breaths in between bars. Nevertheless, Kid Rock says he executed it live while pre-filming the Turning Point show and blamed “fake news media” for spreading misinformation about him lip-synching.
“The problem is people amplify this all over the internet … they did it to Bad Bunny, in his defense,” he said in the clip, referencing how some people took it seriously when Benito joked on Saturday Night Live that everyone had “four months to learn” Spanish before his Super Bowl Halftime Show. “They do it far too often, especially in the fake news media, the left-wingers, crazy libt–ds.”
Kid Rock was just one of several artists on the bill for the “All-American Halftime Show,” which Turning Point hosted for the first time ever to counterprogram against Bad Bunny’s official NFL halftime show (which, for comparison, was performed live on the field at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Feb. 8). Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett also shared the Turning Point USA stage for the alternate mid-game concert, which drew in about 6.1 million concurrent live viewers.
Watch Kid Rock’s video explaining his Turning Point USA halftime performance below.
