If Alicia Keys’ voice fails during the Super Bowl and it gets edited out, did it even happen?

It is a temporary disorder that singers all over the world fear: the dreaded voice break.

When Alicia Keys belted out the first notes of her iconic anthem If I Is not Got You during the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday – and warbled slightly before recovering – it was a vulnerable but, for many, assignable Moment about the reality of live performances.

But if you watch the NFL’s official YouTube video or Apple Music’s video of the same performance, the crack never appeared.

“Nothing against Alicia Keys, but I remember her voice breaking last night,” said one TikTok user in a video with 9.5 million views.

The NFL video, which had been viewed over 17 million times on YouTube by Wednesday afternoon, was apparently edited to smooth out the score. And that many people divided onlineSome say that the NFL showed Keys mercy by editing out the mistake, and others say that it is the mistake that makes her performance authentic.

“Bangs happen because artists are human,” said a singing teacher in a TikTok video, just one of many on the platform who defended Keys.

But what worried Robert Komaniecki, a lecturer in music theory and music history at the University of British Columbia, was not just this specific example of vocal editing, but also how easy it has become to edit the official recording of a live event.

This type of editing is simple, he said, and probably takes less than five minutes, whether using pre-recorded rehearsal audio or editing software that can smooth out glitches and fine-tune the sound.

“I think some people are a little bit unsettled by that. That millions and millions of people witness something happening and then there’s just no evidence in the official record that it happened and no recognition that it’s changed,” Komaniecki told CBC News.

The NFL has not publicly commented on this apparent change. CBC News has reached out for comment.

Keys has not yet commented on the matter, although he has been Video posted on X Shortly before the performance, however, she remarked how “cold” it was in Las Vegas.

On Instagram, her husband, record producer and rapper Swizz Beatz, praised her performance, writing: “Y’all talking about the wrong damn guy!!! … Tonight’s performance was just amazing.”

Changed live performances the norm?

When uploading or creating albums, small errors are often corrected during live performances: the crowd noises are turned down, the cheers are turned up, and swear words are edited out by the technical team.

And live performances are often not so live, especially when it comes to the US national anthem, which is arguably one of the most difficult songs to sing. In fact, some of the most memorable “live” performances of the US anthem in history were pre-recorded.

The version of Whitney Houston’s iconic interpretation of The Star-Spangled Banner at the 1991 Super Bowl that was heard on television was lip-synced, according to her producer. Although she sang live on the field, the audio was pre-recorded for the broadcast, Rickey Minor, Houston’s longtime music director, told Today.

WATCH | Beyoncé on her performance at the inauguration:

Beyoncé sang lip sync The Star-Spangled Banner at the second inauguration of former US President Barack Obama in 2013, the singer admitted.

“Since there was no proper sound check, I didn’t feel comfortable taking any risks. It was about the president and the inauguration, and I wanted to make him and my country proud, so I decided to sing along to my pre-recorded song,” she said in a press conference ahead of this year’s Super Bowl.

And today there are technologies that can optimize live vocal performances, Komaniecki said.

“It is a fallacy to think of live performance as a mere representation of what an artist can do without help, because in that performance he gets all kinds of help.”

The Super Bowl super audience

While Keys’ live performance wasn’t the first to be altered, it may be the most watched: Sunday’s Super Bowl was the most-watched program in U.S. television history, with the game averaging 123.4 million viewers on television and streaming platforms, according to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

The Super Bowl also attracted the largest audience in Canada, with an average viewership of 10 million across TSN, CTV and RDS, preliminary data from Numeris confirmed.

And viewership peaked at 12.6 million during the halftime show featuring R&B superstar Usher – and Keys.

As pop culture magazine AV Club notes, it’s possible that her performance was edited because the halftime show is now sponsored by Apple Music.

The streaming service became the show’s sponsor in 2022, replacing Pepsi, which held the position for a decade. Since then, the streaming service has been trying to make a more influential impression than ever before.

“We’re trying to expand the campaign to more than just a show on a Sunday afternoon,” said Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music and president of Beats, at a press conference last Friday.

In the live performance available to Apple Music subscribers, Keys’ fragile voice also appears to have been edited out.

CBC News has also reached out to Apple for comment.

Glitches at the Super Bowl

While the apparent editing of Keys’ performance has generated some conversation on social media, it’s a minor issue when it comes to controversy – perhaps most memorable being Janet Jackson’s infamous wardrobe malfunction with Justin Timberlake that exposed her breasts.

Even assuming the best intentions of the NFL and Apple Music, Komaniecki said in Keys’ case, a voice breaking during a live performance shouldn’t be embarrassing for anyone.

“When I heard that, I was almost a little excited, like, ‘Oh, these microphones are really on, this is a real live performance,'” he said.

“It made me admire her even more as an artist.”