A Lively Lip Dub

After a three-year hiatus, it’s back.

On March 20, Novi High School filmed its Lip Dub, featuring students and staff showing off their Wildcat pride, all whilst lip-syncing to catchy pop songs. The 55-minute advisory period was specifically designated for the Dub. Students streamed from classrooms to meet up with friends, their sports teams, or clubs and lined the hallways along the route, scrambling to get into position to hopefully make an appearance in the video.

“It’s very chaotic, and every year I try to make it simpler,” French and broadcast communications teacher Nicholas LeTarte said.  “Sometimes things are just messy and you just can’t make them simple, so it’s always stressful, but when it’s over, it’s fun.”

The mechanics of the Dub are relatively simple. Letarte essentially films the video in one take, swirling his way through the halls based on a pre-mapped out route, with a few selected students lip-syncing to the songs in the main frame, and the rest of the student body along the sides of the frame, silently cheering so that the music can be clearly heard.

In regards to which students get to be the chosen front and center singers, Letarte sent out a Google form to all NHS students with slots open for names and designated song selections.

“You could sign up for a song, and basically it was first come first serve, so whoever signed up first, got it,” he said.

As for song choices, this year the Dub features artists such as Taylor Swift, Elton John, Ed Sheeran, Sia, and the Weeknd, to name a few, and the songs are mostly chosen by the TV and news broadcasting students.

“A lot of my TV News kids made this big list, and then I went through them and used the ones that I thought that people could sing.  They can’t be super difficult to sing because when people actually go to lip sync, it’s got to be somewhat easy.  So, trying to do upbeat, pop songs, but also a variety so that there are some older songs too” LeTarte said.

If we rewind a few years, the concept of a “Lip Dub” originated by chance, along with the guidance of a neighboring school, Letarte points out.  

“I saw a trend on YouTube and I was like I think we could do that, I think we could do it pretty well,” LeTarte said. “Brighton High School made one a couple of weeks before I was about to do it, and we studied that one and we were like ‘oh yeah this one’s really cool.’ And so we tried to be as good as them; that was our goal.”  

The first Lip Dub that Novi posted was in 2018 and was a huge hit, with a whopping 546,000 views, along with the 2019 dub reaching an impressive 113,000.

Overall, the 2023 Lip Dub provided an energetic, much-needed mental break from the cold winter months and signaled the return of an annual tradition. As of April 3, 2023, the video has roughly 12,000 views.