Emeli Sande has admitted to miming on Tuesday night's Concert for Ukraine after her performances sparked accusations from viewers.
The Read All About It and Next to Me singer was one of the first acts to take the stage at the Resorts World Arena in Birmingham for the event in aid of the Disasters Emergency Committee's appeal for Ukraine. It's now been over a month that since the eastern European country was invaded by Russia and, so far the concert has raised well over £11 million.
Emeli joined a Concert for Ukraine line-up also including Ed Sheeran, Camila Cabello and Nile Rodgers and Chic and delivered a performance of her recent track Brighter Days. However, within a few lines of the song, ITV viewers flocked to Twitter to speculate if the Brit winner was singing live or in fact miming.
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One tweeted: "Cannot believe Emeli Sande. Miming to her song. Shocking!" Former X Factor star Grace Davies responded: "sorry emeli sande i love you but that was the least believable miming i have ever seen," and another viewer posted: "Worse case of miming I've seen in a long time by Emeli Sande."
And now University of Sunderland chancellor Emeli has admitted she was lip-syncing and has apologised to fans. In a video posted on her social media, she said: "Hey everybody, I really hope you enjoyed the ‘Concert For Ukraine.
"It raised so much money and it was such an important thing for me to be a part of. I really wanted to sing, but I woke up the day of the concert and my voice was like this, which is really annoying because the day before I was singing Mariah totally fine."
She added: "I had to make a very difficult decision: do I pull out of the concert, which I really didn’t want to do, or do I lip-sync to the track? And I chose to lip-sync.
“I’ve never done it in my career ever before, and I never ever will do it again. But for me, it was more important that I got to perform the song with the amazing Kingdom Choir, and that the message of the song came through.”
Ending her video with an apology, Emeli said: "I apologise to everyone who noticed that it was a lip-sync. I promise that it will never happen again, but I hope that the message of the song still came through"
