During Saturday Night Live’s Christmas episode, Cher was accused of lip-syncing.
The pop icon, praised for her voice, is now being slammed during her performance on social media by viewers. Several members of the audience believed that Cher was being disingenuous by lip-syncing during her performance.
The legendary star, 79, sang various Holiday songs during the episode and seemed to really enjoy her time. Although viewers were quick to notice a few inconsistencies in her set, particularly during her first track of the night, a rendition of her 2023 Christmas jam DJ Play a Christmas Song.
On more than one occasion, Cher’s lips can be seen not moving while the song and her vocals continued undisturbed. While SNL usually allows backing vocal tracks for its guests, the show discourages lip-syncing.
Viewers on social media have complained about this, with some saying, “She isn’t even singing… this is some of the worst lip-syncing I have ever seen.”
But while many have called out the icon, others have gone to her defense, saying that it doesn’t matter whether or not Cher was singing live. “Cher just did one of the work lip-syncs I’ve ever seen on SNL, which obviously makes her even more iconic.”
Cher is the ONLY person that gets a pass for lip syncing on #SNL. She’s an icon, lip sync if you want Queen! pic.twitter.com/qrfEO3mUhc
— BravoUniversitea (@BrvoUniversitea) December 21, 2025
Other fans have compared Cher’s performance to Ashlee Simpson’s infamous 2004 lip-syncing controversy. One viewer said, “Cher doing a hell of an Ashlee Simpson impression on SNL. Gotta imagine society has moved past pretending any of these people actually sing at this point, but it’s kinda wild how pissed people actually were about that.”
The comment refers to the 2004 episode where Simpson was outed for lip-syncing while serving as the show’s musical guest. She has performed her famous Pieces of Me, but when she came onstage to perform her second song, Autobiography, the wrong vocal players from the earlier song. Simpson reacted by panicking, dancing to try to cover it up, and quickly walked offstage.
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