A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

$100,000 AND A PLASTIC SUMMER CAMP TROPHY THAT YOU ALL HAVE TO SHARE: Once last time, Marsha takes the solo on NBC's The Sing-Off:

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Tonight’s Sing-Off showcased the brilliance of the format NBC has chosen here. Pick a bunch of groups that are all going to sound at least acceptably decent, use amiable judges, don’t let anyone vote until the end, and get the whole thing over within 15 days. The audience will focus much more on the songs they like and the groups they have crushes on (and the songs they’ll download from iTunes) and who wins (and whether the right groups went in the right order) will matter much less to the viewers than the fact that they had fun.

I don’t have much to say about the result, except that once again, the competition was won by six guys who can pull off wearing fuschia shirts. And once again, the winner was obvious from the first episode. And I’ll be happy to buy their album.



A lot of fun performances tonight, with some strange ones and some misses. I can’t really complain about padding when it involves 2 hours of a cappella on network TV, but I can complain about their use of some of the guest “stars.” For example – didn’t we have this exact same Boyz II Men thing last year, where they sang mediocre lead and relegated the superior group to the background? And I felt bad for the backup guys in TOTT in “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” - Jerry Lawson didn’t come close to hitting most of those high notes, Nicole was uninspired, and there was no energy in that performance. Those guys are so good, and having to back up those leads was sad. More below in the hail of bullets:

• Why do they always dress the Backbeats worse than anyone else? Seriously, the pink sparkly bumble outfit on the Joanna in the Backbeats? Oy. And the holiday outfits? Did you see the SHOES??
• Didn’t need to hear the judges sing, but hearing Ben Folds beatbox? That was fun.
• The sound balance was off in the Backbeats/Sara Bareilles number – whole thing sounded muted, or like someone turned up the bass and turned down the treble on a bad car stereo. Same issue on the opening of “Fix You” with SCS.
• See how much better SCS sounds when all six of them are on backup? I’m telling you – two more guys. Ben Folds, however, was not sounding great – and he was flat on the verses. SCS came off better with the guest stars than the other groups, though, in part because of the sound engineering, in part because Ben knows how to share a stage.
• Um, Sheryl? There was this memo that went around that explained this a cappella thing and politely suggested that you leave the guitar at home. Did you not get that memo? Oh, you didn’t? And you brought another guy with a guitar too? Um, ok. Guess we’ll just live with that.
• "Ain’t No Sunshine” is one of my favorite songs, and this worked great tonight – 12 guys backing it up, Neil and the arrangement giving everything room – really nice. Wish they’d taken the Backbeats cue and done Cherry Cherry (my fave Neil Diamond song) but for my money, this was by far the best guest-star number of the night. (I got to hear another favorite when SCS swan-sang “Drift Away” - one of my favorite songs of all time, and one I always love hearing done a cappella.)
• Nice to see Courtney get to sing – it’s unfair that she has mad beatbox skillz, and a lovely voice. And she’s pretty. And probably nice, too. And they don’t dress her (as much) like a space hooker. Yes, I’m a little jealous, you wanna make something of it?

And that’s another a cappella December in the books. Thanks to the ALOTT5MA for having me – see you in the comments!