Im leaning this way too. Even if it was executed perfectly we all would have caught it. It would be too obvious as this band never sounds like the record. Over the years we have all caught the slightest of mistakes from recordings, dubs, and backing tracks. No way JBJ would expose himself like this with 5 shows left in the tour.

I believe in Matt, don't see a reason to lie, somebody ****ed it up, it was clear since the video got out, we just didn't know who, now we do

Considering Jon has sounded raw and live on every single show so far except this one, makes me believe that there was no intention to lip sync. Especially considering it wasn't just the vocals - it was the guitar as well. If they had used this track previously, we would have picked it up. I mean, even before the stuff up, the performance sounded exactly like the studio track. There's no way the band would do this, and there's no way none of us would have not picked it up in previous shows.

Believe it or not, and I can't believe I am saying this, but I am tending to believe Matt.

He said "sound crew recorded sound check."

He did not say 'sound crew played an old radio edit of the album track.'

I think Matt may have taken a quick peek here and saw all the chaos that was happening regarding this whole vocal, track thing. I'm glad he explained everything. Technical f-up like he said, lets move on.

I'm tending to lean more on the theory that the track that should have been played was a combination of backing vocals and Jon's own, but the entire (alternate!) song was mistakenly played instead, since the band sans Jon was playing live.

As for Matt's explanation, how in the world would you use a version that is two bars off to sync lighting?

Thanks for doing that. After I watched your video, I went back to the long clip that was posted and, comparing them, I could see where the guys didn't step up to their mics for the backing vocals where it would have been in the out of sync tape, but where it fell in line with what Jon was doing.

I feel better about it now, even though something about it still feels a little fishy. I guess once you start questioning something it's hard to un-question it.

But thanks again for showing the difference.

Algorithms are used in pre-prod to sync with the studio versions. My guess is Jon is like Springsteen and just flies in 2 hours before the show and they never had time to reprogram to a live track.

U2 does this all the time, but actually spends weeks doing it live.

woah woah wait a minute. How the heck does this explain why jon was "singing" or in this case "mouthing words" into to mic with no sound coming out?

It doesn't. Matt is well known for pretending to know things which he clearly doesn't.