Legendary singer Cher has been defended by fans following her Thanksgiving Parade performance.
This week, US residents and Canadian natives are celebrating the holiday season by honouring friends and family.
While practising peace and harmony is a good place to start, Thanksgiving is often also an excuse to stuff yourself silly and dig into a slice of pumpkin pie… or five.
Another staple of the season is the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.
This year, the 3.5-hour celebration featured 16 character balloons – including Kung Fu Panda and the Pillsbury Doughboy – as well as performances from Jon Batiste and Cher, 77.
At the parade on Thursday (23 November), the latter performed her new Yuletide-inspired single, DJ Play a Christmas Song.
However, the show – which was set on a silver stage – has received backlash online from fans.
Many NBC viewers took issue and have claimed that the iconic singer was performing a lip sync to the new track.
One X (formerly Twitter) user wrote: “I mean couldn’t she have tried a little harder to sell the lipsync?”
Another commented: “Shout out to Cher to not even pretend to live sing. If you’re going to lip sync, at least embrace the full auto-tune and camp of it all.”
“I’ve never seen a worse lip sync than Cher right now,” said a third.
However, many more users rushed to the platform to celebrate the star’s performance.
One fan said: “@Cher You are so amazing! Love your Thanksgiving Day Parade performance!!!”
A second wrote: “Thanksgiving day parade is …Slaying this year????? Brandy? Cher? Pentatonix in FULL? We are so back.”
“Everyone waits until the end of the parade to see the magical person who’s been around since the dawn of time….and she came on right before Santa Claus! We love you @Cher,” replied another.
A fourth commented: “Every single performer at the parade (sic) lip syncs and they always have.”
Last month, the ‘Believe’ singer made headlines after she called for artificial intelligence (AI) to be made illegal in the music industry.
After allegedly hearing an AI-generated version of herself covering a Madonna track, Cher told the Associated Press: “Someone did me singing a Madonna song and it was kind of shocking.
“They didn’t have it down perfectly. But also, I’ve spent my entire life trying to be myself, and now these a******s are going to go take it?
“And they’ll do my acting and they’ll do my singing?”
The actor added that she feels as if AI shouldn’t be able to ‘take away’ art after you have worked hard on it.
“I’m telling you, if you work forever to become somebody – and I’m not talking about somebody in the famous, money part – but an artist and then someone just takes it from you, it seems like it should be illegal,” she said.
