Beyonce's dad and manager Mathew Knowles has said that a purported recording of his daughter badly squawking her hit song 'If I Were A Boy' isn't real and that the vocals have been altered to sound rubbish. The noisy clip, allegedly a 'board mix' from the singer's performance on US programme 'The Today Show', was aired by Howard Stern on Wednesday and has been circulating t'interweb ever since.
It's claimed the recording Stern aired is what Beyonce sang into the mic on 'The Today Show' while the audience heard studio recorded vocals instead. Even if the vocals are real and haven't been doctored, it should be noted (as I think one of Stern's team does) that often the reason why artists mime on shows like 'The Today Show' is because there is no time to sound check and there are no monitors on stage so artists can't hear themselves (and of course if a pre-recording is actually blaring out of the speakers, then they certainly can't hear what their actual live vocals sound like). A similar recording of Enrique Iglesias circulated online previously, and he subsequently went onto the Stern show to sing live to prove that, when not surrounded by blarey speakers playing a pre-recorded vocal track, he could actually sing.
The recordings and the Stern team's thoughts on it are here.