These were pre-recorded from her 'Piece of Me' show in Vegas. Britney has always lip synced her performances, but these ones had issues. Not just the fact that the lip syncing was painfully obvious or that she didn't care to hide it. But the fact that they cut out all background noise and replaced it with the CD audio. It's reminiscent to what they did with the 'Femme Fatale' tour DVD. The audience could barely be heard, which made for a very dry showing. Better choreography and pre-recorded "live" vocals to give it a live feel could have made these performances so much better.
Her VMAs performance definitely had more energy. If she couldn't be assed to make the effort with some pre-recorded vocals then at least amp up the choreography level. I mean this really isn't acceptable almost 20 years into her career.
She's also on the cover of UK's Marie Claire's October issue:
