I don’t know if anybody else has been watching The Voice. I guess if, according to host Carson Daly, the original singles from the two top vote-getters (Dia Frampton and Javier Colon) reached numbers 1 and 2 on the iTunes charts, then someone must be watching. Well, this essay is for all you people who, admittedly like me, have nothing better to do this summer.
When I first saw promos for The Voice last spring, I was completely uninterested. Another singing competition show? C’mon people. We already have America’s Got Talent, which always seems to come down to singers, American Idol, the perennial juggernaut and granddaddy of them all, and, at least according to Wikipedia, 176 other “Singing Competition” shows over the years. One-hundred and seventy-six!? You have got to be joking. I know, I know, some of those shows are international. I don’t care. That’s a ton of freaking singing shows.
But my disinterest wasn’t even really based on the subject matter. I kind of like shows like this. I was a religious viewer of American Idol until I started college where, without a TV in my dorm, I couldn’t find a regular place to watch it. It was based on the drag of it all. I really just didn’t want to devote any more time to a stupid singing show. I mean, there are so many better things that I could be devoting my time to. Like reading a book or playing a musical instrument or conversing with humans or preparing myself mentally and spiritually for second season 2 of Bachelor Pad.
But I give just about everything a chance, so I tuned in (err, “clicked in” via Hulu) to the first episode. And it was pretty neat. It had a new feel. I wouldn’t exactly say it was “fresh”, as so many people seem to like to do. But it was cool. I was happy that they’d at least managed to get judges who were recognizable and relevant. Ok, Xtina isn’t all that relevant, but she was at one point. And she’s famous and accomplished enough for that not to really matter. But the other three judges are all very good at what they do. Cee Lo is on top of the pop world right now and is literally a genius. You will never convince me otherwise. Adam Levine is the frontman for one of the biggest bands on the planet. They still sell out enormous theaters and maybe even a stadium or two. And Blake Shelton is apparently a really famous country singer. He’s also apparently married to an equally famous country singer. Cool. I’ll play ball.
The whole point of the show was for the judges, or coaches as they were so endearingly called, to choose teams of singers based on their voice alone and then have those singers compete against each other until someone is crowned “The Voice”. Which, in principle, is a pretty cool premise. And quite a different one. The Voice wants to be the anti-Idol. American Idol is about star power. It’s about being beautiful, young, and talented. In that order. It’s about looking the part and then hoping you have enough musical ability to parlay winning a reality show into a legitimate singing career. Except that formula doesn’t really work. In the 10-year history of Idol only one actual star, Carrie Underwood, has come out on top. And the list of Idol winners who didn’t make it in the real world is laughable. Or, at least it would be, if you even remembered any of them.
The Voice is the first (major) network television show to attempt to fight American Idol. But it’s not playing with that same formula. Because Idol doesn’t create stars, it just creates ratings and millions of dollars for FOX. By emphasizing the singing ability of the contestants first, The Voice is attempting to transcend all of the glitz and glamour, all of the superficiality of American Idol, and actually develop a legitimately talented star.
And it might have worked. Except for the fact that 15 minutes into the first episode the four coaches turned their chairs around to confront a female singer who none of them had deemed worthy and Cee Lo said, “Damn girl, if I’da known you looked like that I’da turned my chair around for ya.” You see, she was beautiful, by all standards, and under different circumstances, she would have been deemed more than worthy of advancing in a singing competition. Because no matter how many times our mom, first grade teacher, and weepy girlfriend tell us that it’s what’s on the inside that counts, we don’t buy it. Not for one minute.
Fast forward to the finale. We have four contestants remaining, whittled down to one representative from each of the coaches teams. I’ll describe them to you. And because every detail counts, I’m going to be honest and not particularly politically correct. Get over it.
Javier Colon
· Team Adam
· Dark-skinned Hispanic dad
· Wears dorky, blank flexfit hats that are cocked awkwardly to the left
· Completely golden, but not very relevant voice
Vicci Martinez
· Team Cee Lo
· Kind of dykey short girl
· Seems to exhibit relevant fashion sense
· Really cool, raspy rock-and-roll voice
Beverly McClellan
· Team Christina
· Totally dykey 40-something
· Dresses like a Johnny Depp character who used to be a skinhead
· Has kind of an edgy-Tracy Chapman/Janice Joplin thing going on
Dia Frampton
· Team Blake
· Doey eyed, super cute, ambiguously ethnic
· Typical indie chick sensibilies
· Charming, warbling singer/songwriter voice
It’s an incredibly diverse final. Exactly what the producers wanted, I’m sure.
I know what you’re thinking. “Dia won, didn’t she? The attractive girl beat out the three other weird finalists, thus proving your point about American’s lust for…well…lust.” Wrong! She came in second. Javier won.
Here’s the thing though, she sort of felt like a ringer. (And she sort of was. Hey hipster girls, remember Meg & Dia from your emo days? Yeah, same Dia. Go figure, huh?) She always seemed like someone to drum up interest in the show. Her iTunes singles from the show, which included a cover of The Fray’s cover of Kanye West’s “Heartless” (although The Fray’s version was never mentioned), were routinely near the top of the iTunes charts. She was cool and popular and pretty. I’m not saying the competition was rigged. Although, if it was, I would neither be surprised nor care in the slightest. I’m just saying that her general charm, image, and sex appeal, in both Blake Shelton’s wandering hillbilly eyes and the eyes of the voting audience advanced her as far as she did, not her voice.
I’m also not saying that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s the reality of the situation. It’s the reality of the music industry that we, as American consumers, have created. Let’s do a couple brief case studies. First let’s look at Katy Perry. She’s produced hit single after hit single after hit single. She’s released 5 hit singles off of her latest album. Five! That’s some Beatles action right there. And she’s managed to do it without actually making any real contributions to the world aside from providing us with ample opportunities to ogle her ample cleavage. Next let’s look at Adele. She’s currently sitting at number 2 with her song “Rolling in the Deep”. It’s a killer song that carries serious lyrical weight and she has a killer voice. But let’s be honest, she doesn’t exactly look like a superstar, if you know what I mean. Even in the video for that song, she’s sitting in a chair the whole time and the camera never focuses on her, uh, “full figure”. If she looked more like the Katy Perry, or even the kind of dykey Vicci Martinez, she’d be all over the talk shows, and music video stations. She’d have two or three singles instead of just one. And she probably would have been discovered or whatever much, much sooner. And that’s just the reality.
So don’t go and pat yourselves on the back just yet, America. It’s nice that the just-a-bit-too-old-dork-dad Javier Colon won The Voice. And even though his singing voice is not really applicable to anything remotely resembling popular music, it really is very nice. But none of it means a damn thing. It doesn’t mean that we’ve somehow transcended physical appearance. It doesn’t mean that we’ve rejected the idolatry of American Idol. It doesn’t mean that we’ve changed. We are who we are. And we are shallow. Sorry, NBC’s The Voice. We’re just not who you want us to be.
