The Chainsmokers: We ‘Sounded Like Sh-t’ at the VMAs

The 2016 MTV Video Music Awards gave a prime slot to The Chainsmokers and Halsey, whose collaboration “Closer” has been the biggest song in the country for multiple weeks. Unfortunately, the performance was uneven to say the least…and in a new Billboard cover story, the group’s Andrew Taggart fully admits that they weren’t ready for primetime:

“It sounded like shit. 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.”