Is it live, or is it Memorex?

“Is it live, or is it Memorex?” is best known as a U.S. advertising slogan for Memorex audio cassette tapes, popularized in the 1970s. The line played on the idea that high-fidelity recording could be so accurate that listeners could not tell whether they were hearing a live performance or a playback. It became widely recognized through television and print ads featuring celebrity performers (most famously singer Ella Fitzgerald) and entered everyday speech as a catchphrase used to question the authenticity of a sound or performance. Because it originated in advertising and circulated broadly, it is often attributed to “Anonymous” rather than a single author.

The quote is a rhetorical challenge about authenticity and perception: can you distinguish the “real” event from its reproduction? In its original commercial context, the intended answer is that Memorex recordings are indistinguishable from live sound, implying technical excellence and trustworthiness. More broadly, the phrase became a shorthand for skepticism—suggesting that what seems immediate or genuine may be mediated, staged, or technologically produced. As a cultural artifact, it also captures a late-20th-century fascination with high fidelity and the blurring boundary between original experience and recorded simulation.

“Is it live or is it Memorex?”; “Is it live, or is it Memorex?”; “Is it live… or is it Memorex?”