'The Sing-Off,' hum
along if you please
NBC short-run reality series is a bland space-filler
By Tom Conroy
Dec 15, 2009
Simon Cowell didn’t invent the practice of humiliating showbiz wannabes on talent shows — it goes back at least as far as the famous gong on radio’s “Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour.” But since the first episode of “American Idol,” viewers have been conditioned to expect a little sarcasm in TV judges’ comments, preferably delivered in a British accent.
“The Sing-Off,” a limited-run series on NBC that premiered last night and will air again at 8 p.m. tonight, Wednesday and next Monday, takes the opposite approach. After the eight vocal groups in the competition performed last night, the judges bent over backwards to find something nice to say.
Since most of the groups were at least somewhat enjoyable, the resulting show was blandly entertaining — decent TV filler for the cold weeks until new episodes of our favorite dramas and comedies (not to mention “American Idol”) start airing in January.
The show’s host, the former boy-band singer Nick Lachey, who will probably always be best known for “Newlyweds,” his celebreality show with his former wife, Jessica Simpson, was given the job of tying the show’s gimmick — all of the groups perform without instruments — to larger pop-culture trends. “From high-school musicals to prime-time television, group singing is a phenomenon,” he said at the opening.
People who have watched Fox’s “Glee” probably would think of the groups on “The Sing-Off” as underdog outsiders, though most of the singers seemed to be well-adjusted individuals who probably had lots of friends in high school. The groups’ real struggle last night was choosing between songs that are suited for voice-only treatment but potentially boring and songs that are more interesting but potentially too tricky.
The opening act, an all-male vocal ensemble from Puerto Rico called Nota, hit the sweet spot with a version of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours.” Keeping their harmonies tight throughout, they played with the tempo and even threw in a percussion break.
No other group, sadly, hit that high mark again. Noteworthy, an all-girl group from Brigham Young University in Utah, got positively screechy toward the end of their rendition of Aretha Franklin’s “Think.” True to their name, the members of Solo, seven young singers from a bad neighborhood in Omaha, Neb., seemed more interested in performing lead than in harmonizing.
The three judges were gentle with everyone, though both the singer-songwriter Ben Folds and Shawn Stockman, a member of the R&B group Boyz II Men, always included some intelligent technical criticism. Nicole Scherzinger, whose group, the Pussycat Dolls, isn’t exactly known for its live vocal skills, played the Paula Abdul role, praising the acts’ looks and enthusiasm.
She also harped on how amazing a cappella singing can be and how wonderful it is that “The Sing-Off” is showcasing the genre, as if showcasing neglected art forms hasn’t always been a priority in network television.
Equally irrelevantly, the show included segments recounting contestants’ inspiring backstories. One member of Nota had just nursed his wife through a bout of swine flu, and one of the kids in Solo talked about how they had overcome “violence and low income and no funding.”
Pity the girls in Noteworthy: All they could offer was they had to finish their final exams while doing the show.
|
|
|
