Everybody loves talk show host and TV personality Ellen DeGeneres. How can they not? So when fellow TV show host and comedian Jimmy Fallon challenged Ellen to a lip sync battle on The Tonight Show, you know that sparks are going to fly. Grab your popcorn, people, because this is one fight you don’t want to miss.
What’s a lip sync battle?
For those who aren’t updated on the latest pop culture trends, a lip sync battle is what it says on the tin: two people lip syncing to songs against each other. This was first used as a game in a segment on The Tonight Night with Jimmy Fallon.
The game was the brainchild of John Krasinski, Stephen Merchant, and Krasinski’s wife, Emily Blunt. Fallon then developed this as a recurring segment on this show, wherein celebrities would battle each other in lip sync performances for two rounds. Afterward, the crowd would determine the winner of the battle by applauding the loudest for their favorite contestant.
The game became so popular on Fallon’s show that it was later developed as a separate show on Spike cable network, and is now on its second season. However, the game is still being used on The Tonight Show.
Why do we like it? Because more than anything, we can get to enjoy celebrities go overboard with their performances without having to hear them actually sing.
Which brings us to…
Ellen DeGeneres vs. Jimmy Fallon in a lip sync battle
For this segment, Fallon had Justin Timberlake as the judge for the contest. He then started the battle with a rousing lip sync performance of The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside.”
Ellen, however, didn’t want to go head-to-head with Fallon and decided to bring down the tempo a notch with her first-round performance of “Do you know where you’re going to” by Diana Ross.
In response, Fallon decided to go all-current on his second round with Silentó’s “Watch me (Whip/Nae Nae),” which at first seemed hard to beat given the TV show host’s legwork.
But Ellen was Ellen, and came up with her own lip sync rendition of– yes, she did— Rihanna’s “Bitch better have my money.”
So who won the competition? We’ll let you watch it and see for yourself. But suffice to say, Ellen’s mic drop– plus her singing “Bitch better have my money”– was worth every minute of the lip sync battle.
You can catch the video here:
