Pop Stars You Don't Want To Hear Sing In Real Life

There are a few — key word few — pop stars who can sing, dance, and generally put on an incredible live show with vocals and visuals. Those pop stars are Beyonce, who blows every living human out of the water, Lady Gaga (big ups for her Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2017!), and ... almost no one else. In fact, these pop tarts should probably never ever perform on the same stage as the famous "Telephone" duo, because hardly anyone comes close to holding a candle to these two.

Sorry, Selenators, but it's time to rip off the band-aid: Selena Gomez can neither sing nor perform well live, and her struggles are well-documented in a slew of YouTube videos dedicated to her worst performances through the years.

She was slammed after the American Music Awards in November 2017 for appearing to lethargically lip sync to her song "Wolves" with DJ Marshmello, but it was hardly the first time her live vocals came under criticism.

In August 2016, The Sydney Morning Herald reported of her local Revival tour stop, "Her voice didn't quite hold ... Gomez was relying more and more on her pre-recorded vocals and her two backup singers ... Her fatigue was particularly noticeable, when she struggled to reach her top notes and pulled away from her microphone to catch her breath."

During the same tour, The Straits Times noted, "Her fire dimmed noticeably at the halfway mark ... There was not much belting by Gomez ... One could not help feeling that Gomez had checked out and was just going through the paces."

In fairness to Gomez, she's struggled with lupus for years, which may have contributed to her lack of energy and lung power, but even Gomez herself admits to knowing of her own limitations. In summer 2015, Gomez told The Elvis Duran Z100 Morning Show (via Billboard), "I know that maybe vocally I wouldn't be the greatest singer in the world." No kidding.

Alicia Keys is a multiple-Grammy winner and a onetime soul ingenue ... so what in the fresh-faced Hell happened to her voice? As it turns out, years of overuse and poor technique: In 2008, Keys had to cancel two tour dates due to swollen vocal cords, and her pipes haven't been the same since. While performing a tribute to Whitney Houston during the pop legend's funeral in February 2012, Keys' voice was alternately scratchy, pitchy, and flat, which many dismissed as being due to her grief at the time.

Fair enough, but her voice never really got any better live: During an October 2012 taping of VH1 Storytellers, Keys' voice gave out several times. In December 2012, her voice cracked numerous times while performing at the 121212 Hurricane Sandy benefit concert.

During a January 2013 performance on The Late Show With David Letterman, Keys delivered a scratchy, strained, often off-key rendition of "Girl On Fire" that made many wonder if it was just her throat that was burning.

Considering Adam Levine is a coach on The Voice, you'd think he'd utilize his own voice a bit better than he sometimes does. After this performance of "Lost Stars" at the 2015 Academy Awards, Levine's falsetto was ripped apart on social media for being almost constantly off-key compared to the studio version of the same track.

In June 2014, The New York Daily News described Levine's live vocals during a concert in the Big Apple as "even narrower than his figure. It's a pinched whine, passable in ballads but murder on a form like funk, which demands something meatier. That's a sizable problem because rhythmic music — either funk or reggae — makes up a core element of Maroon 5's canon." Ouch! Would Levine even hit the red button for himself?

Unlike Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears never pretended to be able to belt out a tune, and her success was largely due to her image and dancing over her abilities as a vocalist, as these isolated live vocals clearly show.

Spears can still put on a quality show in terms of visuals, though she admits to using a backing track when she performs live.

"I'm glad you're addressing this question because it's really funny. A lot of people think that I don't sing live. I usually, because I'm dancing so much, I do have a little bit of playback," Spears admitted to an Israeli TV show in June 2017. "But there's a mixture of my voice and the playback ... It really p**ses me off because I am busting my a** out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever really gives me credit for it, you know?"

Perhaps because she's so often criticized, Spears feels pressure to prove herself live: In August 2017 she performed a rendition of Bonnie Raitt's "Something To Talk About," and while she did in fact sing the entire song live, it showcased her severely limited octave range.

Like Justin Bieber, Rihanna can do amazing work onstage when she puts her mind to it (and when she actually shows up), like in this performance of "Love On The Brain" from the Global Citizen Festival in September 2016 ... but she doesn't always feel like putting in work (work work work work).

Take, for example, this painful note at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards while performing "Needed Me," this lazy choreography and vocals from circa 2012, this barely audible rendition of "Man Down" from Rock In Rio in 2011, and the abundance of off-key notes in this 2010 performance of "Only Girl (In The World)" on Saturday Night Live.

Iggy Azalea is stunningly gorgeous and a great dancer. Unfortunately, that can't save her from her live raps being often unintelligible, like in this live performance from 2015. A lot of the lyrics are explicit and NSFW, but her delivery is so jumbled that you'd never know what she's actually saying.

It was far from the first time the Aussie M.C.'s enunciation was a problem. In March 2012, she performed with mentor T.I. in Atlanta along with a backing track to her song "Murda Bizness," and while this video and the basement venue's audio issues may have to take some blame, most people still can't understand a word she's rapping — though T.I. comes in loud and clear. During a Vevo Certified SuperFan Fest performance, she sounded completely marble-mouthed while rapping to "Change Your Life" and "Bounce."

When he's not busy reciting his own name more than a Pokemon, Jason Derulo is usually dancing his taut behind right off. As a result, though, his live vocals can sometimes suffer, and he noticeably avoids certain high notes and falsetto tones during performances, perhaps due to the breath required to do the aerobics of dance combined with belting. Still, Derulo has enough presence and sophisticated enough choreography to put on a decent show — it just depends on whether you're there for the singing or for the spectacle.

Halsey's "Closer" collaborators The Chainsmokers struggle live much more than she does. Vocalist Andrew Taggart's vocals at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards performance of the duet was atrocious, with Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, and The New York Times all calling it the worst moment of the entire show.

At least they're somewhat self-aware: Taggart told Billboard, "It sounded like s**t. We were told my voice was going to be mixed well, but there was no reverb and it was way louder than the track for the broadcast. I was set up to fail. Nearly every other person lip-synced it, and we knew because we had them in our ears. So now I know why you lip-sync."

Early in his rap-singing career, Drake garnered a slew of criticism for his weak live vocals compared to his often-autotuned studio delivery — and he admitted that he couldn't sing well live, as evidenced here in these comparisons between his vocals with and without AutoTune.

He told Vibe in 2010, "I could never really take singing on the road the way I can take rapping on the road. I can't get on stage and blow people away with my range and vocals. I'm a studio singer because I can convey emotion and I have unique melodies, so that's kind of what I pride myself on, but that's where it stops ... Not to wish that I couldn't sing better."

However, Drizzy has improved thanks to vocal coach Dionne Osborne. Osborne told Jezebel in November 2014, "One thing we worked on right away was his live sound — he had this tone that he didn't use in his recordings, this thin tone to make the sound cut ... He was worried it wouldn't sound cool enough or hit hard enough live."

"Part of the problem was his approach physically," she added. "He'd be bending over to the floor and doing all of this crazy stuff and I'd be like, 'What are you doing? Your diaphragm is totally curled over.' We talked a lot about body structure, too ... We grounded his sound. Made him support more from the diaphragm and the lower abs."