While Britney Spears has yet to have a lip-syncing scandal as big as Ashlee Simpson’s SNL debacle, her career has been riddled with vocal criticisms, with the most recent one coming earlier this summer when a version of her hit song, “Alien”, was released without the assistance of auto-tune. While her producers have defended the singer’s out of tune track by stating it is a leaked track of a warm-up session, there has yet to be a valid excuse rendered for what transpired at Spears’s latest show during her Planet Hollywood Las Vegas residency.

Yesterday, a Britney fan posted a clip of her latest concert performance to Instagram. In the video, Britney is shown singing and performing to “Perfume”, a ballad from her recently released album, Britney Jean.

Everything seems to be fine, except for one big, glaring error. Hear the vocal track from the video? Does it sound like Britney?

If you think it doesn’t, you’re in agreement with hundreds of angry fans across the globe.

This may be the most embarrassing thing that has EVER HAPPENED to Britney Spears: http://t.co/GzwYF93I66 pic.twitter.com/d6A9UXZkea

— Cosmopolitan (@Cosmopolitan) August 18, 2014

Britney is under hot-water once again for supposedly lip-syncing during one of her live performances. This time, the gaffe seems to be quite apparent as most suspect that they hear the voice of Spears’s back-up singer and co-writer of the track, Sia, in the Instagram video.

The mistake is easy to spot considering Spears released an acoustic version of “Perfume” earlier in the year in which she and Sia sing the song in a duet fashion, bringing prominence to Sia’s voice. A video was also released earlier which showcases Sia singing the song all on her own. If you want to judge the video yourself, here are videos to provide a vocal comparison:

Britney:

Sia:

Acoustic Duet:

Despite the auditory evidence, Britney’s camp insists that the performer did not lip-sync during her act and that the voice in the video is indeed Britney’s, telling fans to “Get your … ears checked.”

However, Britney’s managers and producers have previously supported her lip-syncing scandals, defending her by saying that it is impossible for anyone to perform the way Spears does and not use backing vocals: “To put on the show that she puts on, it’s virtually impossible to sing the entire time and do what she does. She’s singing on every song, basically, when she has the ability to sing. There’s no way you can dance for 90 minutes straight and sing the entire time,” stated manager Adam Leber.

Leber’s assurances that no one could perform that hard for 90 minutes without lip-syncing at some point apparently missed the attention of another of Spears’s managers, Larry Rudolph, however, when he stated that Spears would most certainly be singing live during her Vegas residency:

She’s going to be singing live. She does choreography and vocal coaching every day. The vocal coaching is really just to strengthen her voice and get her to a point where she can go out there every night and do a full show.

It’s hard for the public to fully understand what goes on when you get on stage and you’re dancing full out during a song. No matter what anyone says, there’s not a single artist who goes out there and does full choreography and is singing without a vocal track underneath them at the same time. It’s physically impossible. We’re just trying to build up her stamina and get her to a point where she can do as much as humanly possible. The idea is to try to get her pretty close to 100%. There might be some numbers where she’s full out dancing with a (vocal) track underneath her, but there won’t be any lip-syncing across the board on anything.

With a career that has been marred by a plethora of issues, this Instagram video of supposed lip-syncing is not going to destroy Spears’s career anytime soon.

The next round of #PieceOfMe tickets are up NOW!! Which shows are y'all coming to?? ❤️ http://t.co/y4Yk75uy41 pic.twitter.com/7Us9M4wNQ6

— Britney Spears (@britneyspears) May 16, 2014

What do you think? Was Spears lip-syncing during her performance? Let us know in the Comments section below.

Image via Twitter