It seems like America is embracing movie musicals again, and that is great. Movie musicals have a long and storied history in the United States, from children’s classics such as Mary Poppins and the Sound of Music to West Side Story and Singin’ in the Rain. Motion pictures and music can have a magical effect when put together on screen, and have delighted audiences for decades.

However, there is one problem with current movie musicals that needs to be fixed: the actors can’t sing. This not only takes away from the quality of the music, it affects the quality of the film as a whole.

In La La Land, for example, the entire movie is reminiscent of the Golden Age of Hollywood, with tap dancing and lively jazz music. Everything from the cinematography to the costumes is absolutely gorgeous. There are scenes filled with bright colors, a vibrant score, and stellar acting. Emma Stone rightly deserved that best actress Oscar, and the film was just as brilliant as every critic and audience member said it was. There was only one thing missing: good vocals. The beauty of each song was dampened by mediocre vocals without the rich tone of trained musical theatre singers.

The same goes for the recent Beauty and the Beast live action remake by Disney. The film was dazzling and nostalgic for every kid and adult who was fond of the original. Again, the only problem that kept it from living up to the animated version was that they cast actors for the main roles who cannot sing.

The obvious question here is, why is Hollywood casting actors who can’t sing in roles where singing is a quintessential part of the job? The answer is, they’re good actors. In La La Land, there were no two actors who were better for the parts of Mia and Sebastian than Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. In Beauty and the Beast, there was no one more perfect for the role of Belle than Emma Watson. We do not need to omit actors who can’t sing from movie musicals, we just need to let them act without worrying about a whole other art form.

To fix this problem, we need to bring back dubbing. We need to hire actors to act, and singers to sing. This will not only make the job easier for the actors, it will create a richer cinematic experience for the audience.

This practice is nothing new at all. For example, in the classic West Side Story which I mentioned above, both Tony and Maria’s voices were dubbed over by professional singers. Did it lessen the authenticity of their performances? Not at all. In many of the major Disney animated films, there were separate actresses for both the speaking and singing roles of the Princesses. There is nothing wrong with dubbing, and it makes a film better, not worse.

I am thrilled that movie musicals are making a comeback. Let’s make them even greater by hiring actors who can act and singers who can sing, and we can create a new generation of classic films that will bring us back to the Golden Age of Hollywood.