Song Sung Blues
America's got talent, reportedly, but its ablest ranks are so busy perfecting their baton-twirling skills and ventriloquism acts they no longer have time to write The Great American Sitcom or The Great American Dramedy. Thus we're left with fare like "The Singing Bee," a MeTube Era twist on the unkillable cathode cockroach "Name That Tune," and "Don't Forget The Lyrics," a supersized version of "The Singing Bee."
In both shows, tuneless lounge lizards attempt to belt out karaoke staples with 100 percent accuracy. "The Singing Bee" offers contestants a shot at $50,000 plus the chance to be blinded by the stunning perma-grin of host and former 'N Sync space-filler Joey Fatone, who is either ecstatic to be back in showbiz or gobbling 400 milligrams of Prozac a day because his career has come to this. (The phrase "ear to ear" hardly captures the vitality of his smile; if the cameras ever show the back of his neck, don't be surprised by the gleaming incisors you'll see there.)
"Don't Forget the Lyrics" ups the prize money to a cool million. There's way more flashing, blinking stage bling too, and unlike Fatone, host Wayne Brady is capable of ad libbing more than a frozen grimace of welcome as he introduces "Don't Forget the Lyrics" amateur croakers.
While the singing on these shows may leave you with the impression that it's actually harder than it looks to be, say, Ashlee Simpson, the brainpower on display is perhaps the most convincing example of how we as a culture just keep getting smarter and smarter. In the Jeopardy Era, any dork with an Encyclopedia Britannica could memorize enough stray facts to sail through "Presidential Trivia" or "Joanie Loves Karachi." It takes a savant of a rarer, higher order to meticulously replicate the lyrics of a Bananarama song no one ever listened to that closely in the first place.
But if gray matter grandstanding automatically assured great TV, we'd be watching math professors solve equations every night. And it turns out that bad singers who aren't dangerously convinced they're great singers singing badly isn't all that interesting. There's a genre of books and websites devoted to the various ludicrous ways people misinterpret popular song lyrics, and no doubt the producers of "The Singing Bee" and "Don't Forget the Lyrics" were hoping for some "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" hilarity. But none of that seems to happen on these shows.
Instead, contestants blow lyrics in minor ways, transposing two key words, say, or even more commonly, appending a soulful but superfluous "Well" or "Yeah" into the mix and thus disqualifying themselves. Even more than a shot at fifty grand or more, what contestants really want is the opportunity to expose their untapped but undeniable (if off-key) star quality to the world without risking a bitch-slap from Simon Cowell, or even worse, David Hasselhoff. But they've come to the wrong place for that. On these shows, there's no special reward for talent, and originality actually gets penalized. Just like it is, it seems, in the world of TV game show creation.
A frequent contributor to Las Vegas Weekly, Greg Beato has also written for SPIN, Blender, Reason, Time.com and many other publications. Email Greg at [email protected].