IN THE STREETS & ON THE WEB

THE LONDON TIMES CLAIMS BEYONCE LIP-SYNCHED "THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER"

On the heels of Beyoncé's flawless rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at Monday's Inauguration ceremony, a new report claims the diva was lip-synching the entire time.

Observers at the ceremony close enough to the front could tell that Beyoncé was not belting it out, but instead was singing along to a pre-recorded track, the London Times reported.

Pre-recorded inauguration ceremony performances are not unheard of: At President Obama's 2009 inauguration, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Itzhak Perlman opted to go in favor of pre-taping because of cold weather and wind. The sound emitted from their instruments could have been severely affected by the elements.

They were very insistent on playing live until it became clear that it would be too cold," Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, told the New York Times.

"It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way.”

“This isn’t Milli Vanilli,” she said, referring to the 1980s group stripped of their Grammy for lip-synching.

In 1991, Whitney Houston’s jaw-dropping performance of the National Anthem at that year’s Superbowl – arguably the best performance of the Anthem to date – also turned out to be lip-synched.

“The music was pre-recorded, and so was the vocal,” musical director Rickey Minor confirmed to ABC News. Minor, who is currently the musical head of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” explained that with such a large crowd it would have been impossible for Houston to hear herself.

The Times of London also claims the Marine Corps Band was not playing, despite the fact that band director Michael J. Colburn was seen emphatically making conducting gestures on television.

"All music [for inaugural ceremonies] is prerecorded as a matter of course," a spokesperson for the Marine Corps Band told Washingtonian Magazine, "and that's something we've done for years and years. The Marine Band did perform live throughout the ceremony but we received last-minute word that Beyoncé wanted to use the recording."