Olympic ceremony music!

For serious? The world has lost hope.

That was nothing compared to the abhorrence that was Ed Sheeran singing Wish You Were Here during the closing ceremony.

Sport aside, the media coverage of The Olympics (in the UK) and the whole Britpop culture theme to both opening and closing ceremonies was a joke. It seems the BBC at every turn wanted to get the life story of every single medal winner (and loser) the second they crossed the finish line (or whatever) going so far as bringing up the fact that they had recently lost a parent or something in order to get a few tears on camera. Added to that some of the editorial decisions have been shockingly bad:

I persevered with the BBC even after they decided to show a short film about Nazi eugenics and slavery and how this relates to sprinters just before the men's 200m final.

I bit my tongue when the BBC recounted the hilarity of all the people who have suffered some kind of injury during The Olympic Games with a slapstick montage. Perhaps the least tasteful was seeing Britain's hockey captain Kate Walsh get her jaw broken in slow motion with comic sound effects and the theme tune from The Banana Splits Show playing in the background.

One could perhaps forgive the BBC calling the Caribbean Islands "flea bites on the flank of the USA"; or maybe even overlook the time they said that "South Koreans do well when they have a weapon in their hands"; but some of the acts that performed during that closing ceremony were unspeakably bad.
 
Okay, heres the answer to the Olympic opening ceremony.

Almost every single piece of audio that came through your televisions while watching the Olympics was pre-recorded. Every single musical act was mimed.

Arctic Monkeys sounded great, because they recorded there tracks earlier in a studio, where they mimed to there songs and we heard the pre-recorded track, which obviously sounded great.

Paul McCartney was a different story though. Paul McCartney also recorded the tracks in the studio beforehand, but when it came to playing it on the night, he went completely live. Paul had agreed to mime to the television, but would play live to the stadium. So, all of his gear was miked to sound good live, but not to sound good coming through your telly. And Paul did not come in at the same time as his backing track, so they had to shut it off, this leading to a horrible sounding feed of his performance. Drums too loud, piano horrible.. but most of all, his vocal mic sounded atrocious. Everyone knows Paul is losing his voice, but come on that badly? I don't think so. If his vocals were set up properly for a studio or (telly) feed, then he would have sounded much better.

Paul McCartney is a great performer and didn't deserve what happened to him that night. Others would disagree, and say they don't like him... which is fair enough, but you have to admit something went horribly wrong that night.

For people that think Paul has gotten too old and has lost his good voice now, maybe you should look at this which was 6 months AFTER the Olympics -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um7iNmIJ0tU
 
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