Reba McEntire Defends Garth Brooks Following Lip Syncing Controversy

Garth Brooks received a lot of criticism over his lip-syncing at the CMA's this year, but now his old friend Reba McEntire is sticking up for him.

Speaking to journalists, McEntire defended Brooks by referring to the fact that he'd played a string of several shows leading up to his performance at the award show, according to Taste of Country.

"He's the hardest working man I've ever seen in my life," McEntire said. "He will not let his fans down. I kinds applaud him — he did need to lip-sync, he showed up!"

"He's not that good at it," the country music icon added, "so you know he doesn't do it very often!"

McEntire, who presented Brooks with his Entertainer of the Year award at the CMA's, also told reporters that she thought Brooks was a hard worker. "I can't out-work Garth. I'm not going to criticize Garth at all. I can't out work him," she said.

People began to notice that it appeared as if Brooks was lip-syncing during his performance, and eventually he admited that that's exacty what happened.

"We decided to lip-sync it because my voice was just not there, and we wanted to represent country music the best we can," Brooks said, The Tennessean reported.

The 55-year-old entertainer said he was ill, coupled with a 12-shows-in-10-days tour run.

"We made a game-time call on whether to sing to a track or lip-sync," Brooks said. "And we decided to lip-sync it."