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'Singing Bee' laughs at lyrics |
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Written by Mike Duffy, MCT
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
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"The Singing Bee" is creating a happy summertime buzz.
NBC's hot weather Karaoke Nation success story — and a surprise addition to the fall season lineup after its July 10 premiere drew 13 million viewers — has struck a musical chord with viewers by following the golden rule of Top 40 radio: The hits just keep on undulating.
"You'll see, over the course of the series, everything is fair game over the last 50 years," says series creator-executive producer Phil Gurin. "You'll see Elvis. You'll see Kelly Clarkson. You'll see everything in the middle. We're going to do TV theme songs and pop songs and standards. We're going to do holiday themes. We're going to do commercial jingles. We're going to do every genre of music.
"The good news about our show is we have a lot of music in a given episode," adds Gurin of the peppy game show-variety show hybrid, hosted by personable former "Dancing with the Stars" hoofer and `N Syncer Joey Fatone. "There's going to be 20 to 30 songs per episode, so if you didn't like this one, just like a radio station, stay tuned; maybe you'll like the next one."
"The Singing Bee," with new episodes airing at 9:30 p.m. EDT Tuesdays on NBC, challenges its high-energy contestants to keep warbling the correct lyrics to familiar pop and rock songs after the similarly high energy house band suddenly stops playing.
"If you sing in the car, if you sing in the shower, this is the show for you," says Gurin. "Now, if you have a good voice, that doesn't hurt. But what we're looking for are regular folks, people who just love music. And if you're at home watching it, you're sitting on your sofa, you go, `I could be on that show.'"
"The Singing Bee" had the especially good fortune to premiere one night before Fox's similar "Don't Forget the Lyrics," a slower moving karaoke-influenced game show hosted by Wayne Brady. Though Brady's show also has been renewed, it feels clunkier, has too many rules and draws little more than half the viewers of its fresher rival.
What's the "Bee" secret?
Cheerful, upbeat and unabashedly cheesy — how else to explain the Honeybees, a hip-shaking, skimpily clad gaggle of go-go dancers in bumblebee black-and-yellow — "The Singing Bee" takes the goofy essence of karaoke culture and turns it into a sing-along carnival.
"That's what is so much fun about it," says Fatone of the show's exuberant "melting pot of different people" studio audience and contestant wanna-bes. "You never know what you're going to get. When I put the microphone in front of the person, you don't know what they're going to do. Either they try to sing the lyrics, or they scream at you. I've gotten pushed out of the way. You never know what's going to happen in a live audience."
That good-natured spontaneity bounces right through the TV screen.
Having been catapulted back into prominence by the one-two punch of "Dancing with the Stars" and "The Singing Bee," Fatone is enjoying the ride and feeling blessed to have "a chance to be myself and to have fun."
"What you see is what you get," says Fatone. "I love entertaining people."
"It keeps coming back to the fact that we made a show that was different," says Gurin. "We made a musical variety game show. And so we felt all along, and NBC felt all along, once the viewers saw us, hopefully they'd like what we had to offer."
They saw; they liked. "The Singing Bee" is hot fun in the summertime, making a joyful, do-it-yourself juke box noise that NBC hopes carries over into fall and beyond.
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Mike Duffy:
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