Dave’s a rock star being a rock star. And it’s a pretty tame swipe all things considered. I think he’s earned the odd cheeky dig. It came across very light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek.
However… to answer your question… no.
She quite clearly does sing live. Not only does she perform variations of songs and adapt lyrics to fit the city she’s in, she also interrupts her own renditions to direct stewards to people who need help. When I took my daughter to see her in Edinburgh, it appeared she had a cold too, which did manifest itself in the way she performed. As much as the “pop stars all lip sync” cliché pervades, especially amongst rock fans, I doubt anyone who has spent any time watching any of Swift’s Era’s Tour performances would genuinely hold the view that she’s not singing.
However… I am not actually sure Dave Grohl was suggesting that she didn’t sing live. It was part of a self-deprecating skit in which he was mocking the Foo’s latest tour as the “Errors Tour” due to the number of technical issues they’d faced. In which Grohl went on to say “That’s because we actually play live. WHAT?! Just saying. You guys like raw, live rock ‘n’ roll music, right? You came to the right fucking place.”
Is the Era’s Tour live music? Or is it just live singing? Well she does have a band.. in fact she has two… one on each side of the stage. Are they just for show? It didn’t seem so, and it seems unlikely…
… albeit I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the techno-beat stuff in some of her more energetic songs was pre-recorded. Or if, as Dave was alluding to, they didn’t have some fall-back track in case of technical issues. One thing you can say about the Era’s tour is that it’s highly polished. And unlike with the Foos, she’s the focus. Everything else from the dancers and the backing singers to the band are expendable if it means keeping Swift on track. So there’s definitely a difference in the rawness of the live music, which is probably what he meant. And that’s fair.. the Foo’s are a rock n’ roll band. You gotta kind of give them that one. If their music wasn’t more raw than hers, something has seriously gone wrong somewhere.
Nevertheless, there are multiple acoustic segments in which she plays either her own guitar or piano, in one part actually performing original mashups of her songs. In the first Edinburgh show she had to restart the guitar segment because she got cramp in her wrist – causing her to have to profusely apologise to the crowd. If she’s not performing live, she does a hell of a job of faking it.