Cher ‘Struggling to Sustain Live Vocals’ After Allegedly Lip-Synching on ‘Saturday Night Live’

Singing icon Cher is facing mounting fears her legendary career may be kaput, say insiders after a disastrous stint on Saturday Night Live triggered renewed buzz that her voice is frazzled and she can no longer sing live.

The 79-year-old diva’s shocking recent gig as the show’s musical guest for the first time since her debut in 1987 should have been a triumphant moment, but quickly turned to a disastrous embarrassment due to her allegedly obvious lip-syncing.

Fans online mocked that she was not even pretending to sing and questioned whether the Grammy winner still had the famed pipes that made her a superstar thrush.

According to a source, folks close to the songbird are also wondering the same thing.

“Fact is, she’s struggling to sustain live vocals the way she used to, there’s just no denying that,” says an insider. “People around her worry that the years of nonstop touring, late nights and hard living have taken a toll that she simply can’t recover from.”

More than two years ago, Cher dropped her first-ever holiday album, Christmas, and told The New York Times that she’d been told by her doctor she had the “vocal cords of a 25-year-old girl,” despite her advanced age.

“I mean, look, you don’t usually have a very great voice at 77, right? But it seems like a lot of us are having some sort of resurgence. I don’t know what it is. Revenge of the old people,” she crowed.

But things seem to have dramatically changed, because industry insiders claim Cher has been relying more and more on backing tracks to mask the wear and tear on her once unbreakable voice. “She becomes breathless far more easily now and struggles to power through songs she used to have no problem with,” says a source. “It’s obvious that she just doesn’t have the voice she used to.”

The “I Got You Babe” belter previously had vocal surgery and bounced back, but years of pushing her voice have taken an irreversible toll, notes an insider, who warns, “Cher loves to pretend that she’s not aging, but even she can’t outrun Father Time.”

“People want to remember Cher as the powerhouse she was and unfortunately by continuing on when she’s not at her best, she’s risking her legacy — but she refuses to see that.”