The Masked Binging ER Singer

The Masked Singer Logo

Some weekends ago (mid February) I binge watched a show about 2 weeks before their season finale. Then for the final two weeks since the show aired on a night I wasn't able to watch I on demanded those episodes, but had to wait a few days (like 5 days) for Crumcrust to list the episode. The show was on Fox. One of those music competition shows, that I normally don't watch or like, but this one I did. I was pleasantly surprised. The show was The Masked Singer hosted by Nick Cannon. It is a singing competition with a twist. The "contestants" are celebrities of every kind except their identities are hidden behind fancy costumes with full head masks. On The Voice the contestants identities are hidden because the judges have their chairs facing away from them while they are singing and they turn their chair around if they are interested in who is behind the voice. This one the judges are face forward but the contestants are hiding behind full head masks. When they speak in their "normal" voice their voice is electronically altered so it is only when they are singing that the judges hear their real voices.

A Celeb contestant being escorted by security.

Interesting I noticed that this show seems to be based on a Korean show called "King of Mask Singer" looks to be from 2017. UGH. Oh of course if I had bothered to do more research before getting hooked on the show I would have known it was based on a popular South Korean TV show.

Celeb Contestants: Rabbit, Alien, Lion, Bee, Peacock and Monster

The competition started with 12 Cosplaying Celebrities who were only identified by their costumes: Peacock, Bee, Monster, Poodle, Alien, Deer, Hippo, Raven, Pineapple (yeah a sort of SpongeBob SquarePants vibe), Lion, Unicorn and Rabbit. Some of them took on the persona of their costume. The panel of Judges: Robin Thicke, Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger (with guest judges for 1 or 2 episodes each: Joel McHale, J.B. Smoove and Keenan Thompson) had to try to guess who was behind the mask.

The Regular Judges: Robin Thicke, Jenny McCarthy, Ken Jeong and Nicole Scherzinger

 Each week the celeb who got the least amount of votes from the panel of judges and from the audience were unmasked. When the characters were introduced before each performance some clues were given about the identity of the celeb. For most of the celebs the panel was way off but there were a few one or two of the judges got right. I only got one completely right (I had an alternate idea, but I was right and the judges were also on that one), and a couple were among the celebs that I had thought were that character but either didn't know or was going for someone else. For the most part I think I had at least heard of each celeb (a couple just barely), many I already was aware of. I was disappointed with who actually won. The way celebs are now days I almost thought there would be a few times when I had no idea who the hell they were, a couple were close. It would be pretty funny yet also sad if a celeb was unmasked and then they had to explain to everyone who they really were. I thought there were one or two that almost needed that.

Celeb Contestants: Poodle, Deer and Pineapple

I won't match up which character was which celeb you can find that out for yourself if you are interested. I will list the competing celebs below somewhere. Before I decided to watch the show I had heard about who one of the characters was and wanted to hear what they sounded like singing since they were not known for their singing. Then after I had watched a few episodes I went to IMDb to check off that I had seen the show for my watch list and I accidentally saw the identities of two of the characters that I hadn't seen unmasked yet. One of them was unmasked the next episode I watched. The cast list there also lists the security guards, who escorted the masked celebs around during the filming process, and the non-celeb supporting performers: the backup singers and dancers during each performance.

Celeb Contestant Raven

As with any singing competition, there were the two extremes of voices, the pleasant sounding angelic type voices and the blackboard screeching "stop that damn noise" type. I was surprised by a few of the non-singer/musician celebs who had nice voices.

Celeb Contestant Hippo

Here in no particular order are the competing  celebs: Ricki Lake, Margaret Cho, Rumer Willis, Gladys Knight, Terry Bradshaw, T-Pain, Tori Spelling, Donny Osmond, Joey Fatone, Antonio Brown, La Toya Jackson and Tommy Chong.

Celeb Contestant Unicorn

All in all I'd give The Masked Singer 3 or 4 stars out of 5. It was enjoyable but I am not a huge fan of voice contest shows. Oh I just recalled a show from a few years back (early 2000s maybe? Possibly Pre-American Idol) that I had liked where contestants dressed up like their music idol and performed their song. I forget what it was called. Some of the contestants nailed the look, but sounded nothing like who they were performing as, and of course there were a few the other way around sounded like them but even with heavy makeup looked nothing like the idol. I think I found it Your Big Break (1999-2001) Hmm it was syndicated.

My favorite performers based solely on their performances were Peacock, Bee and Alien. Rabbit was an overall good performer and was one of the characters that really got into his masked persona. He had a crazy head twitch thing going on.