SING IT, AMERICA! is a revolution in television. Oh, sure, reality TV competitions have been around for a while—Star Search, for one—but for some reason the public is primed for this type of show right now. Game show contestants have too much luck for the audience to feel truly invested, and scripted shows seem too contrived. Some executive somewhere decided that talented members of America’s public needed to be showcased and then bumped off week by week, with a record-deal contract and a shot at fame dangling in front of their noses at the finish line, and a million people leapt for the chance.
Every week, we sing. Every week, a panel of five judges gives their critique or praise. Every week, the judges, with input from the call-in audience, eliminate one of the contestants. And every week, the live studio audience and the people at home glued to their television sets have something to discuss for the next few days. And tonight our fates will be decided.
I want this so bad that my teeth ache. I tell myself to relax my jaw and I breathe slowly and deliberately through parted lips. I’m blinking perspiration off my eyelashes, blurring the row of televisions where we can see the broadcast backstage, and I’m not even under the hot stage lights yet. There’s a few seconds’ delay, but it’s almost live.
“Find your places, please,” says a PA, sweeping through the room.
Our host, Matilda Gottfried, walks her fingers over her lapels, adjusting every pleat on her outfit. She strides out of view and a few moments later, she’s on the screens. As the applause dies down, she clasps the microphone in her hands and shares a giant grin. “Welcome to the finale of Sing It, America! It’s been a long, wild ride with our three very talented contestants. Tonight, one of them will be chosen, by you, to be our next national pop star. They’ve been dreaming and hoping for this moment for all of their young lives. Will it be Anna Williams, a classically trained dancer who can also hit a high note? Will it be Stephen St. James, who has stolen the hearts of all American women since day one? Or will you choose Cassidy Holmes, our sassy sweetheart? Tonight’s the night when one of their lives will change forever. This entire time, you in the audience and you watching at home have been in charge of their fates. We’ve had to let some really talented people go over the past few weeks, but now we have three wonderful, dedicated hopefuls here tonight.
“Tonight, we’re going to hear three different songs from each of our contestants. We’ll hear a ballad, a pop hit, and one of their own picks. When we give the go-ahead, call in to vote for your favorite.
“But first, let’s meet our judges . . .” The screen cuts to the five people sitting genially in the first row. “Music producer Jenna Kaulfield.” A blonde with gray eyes and a thin mouth, she waves her acknowledgment. “Talent agent of some of the world’s greatest bands, Jonah Stern.” A man with so much bronzer on his face, his arms look like bone in comparison. “Emma Jake, eighties pop icon.” She still looks youthful, with a furry edge of false eyelashes shadowing her eye sockets and high cheekbones emphasized further with rosy blush. “Thomas Reilly, voice coach who has been working tirelessly with these contestants on honing their craft.” A man in tweed who smiles at the audience. “And finally, tonight’s guest judge, Marsha Campbell, from Big Disc Records, who will personally offer a record contract to our lucky winner. Hello, judges!”
“Great to be here,” offers Marsha into the microphone. Her hair is a tossed salad of brown and red and gold. She looks young, maybe in her mid-thirties, and is wearing a pair of glasses with bright red frames.
“It’s wonderful to have you all here again for this momentous occasion,” Matilda says, smiling. “But first, let’s recap our contestants’ stories.” She turns toward a large screen on the side of the stage as the prerecorded medley begins.
It’s our journeys from the audition to this night—five months of our hearts in our throats, of not sleeping enough, of being crammed into hotels, of eating craft services. Of Nikki and Gary controlling my hair and fashion choices. Of waking up early for our lessons with Thomas Reilly—at first all of us together, then whittled down to individual sessions.
Anna’s is first. From her audition in Minneapolis, where she showed up giggling and wearing a clear plastic rain parka over her clothes, to the warm-up lessons with Thomas in crop tops and bootleg jeans (an impressive scatting session with Thomas on the piano, her standing next to him emoting with her eyes closed, hands in the air, was used for this clip), to a smattering of her best performances so far on the show; glittery dress after glittery mini-dress; her five months with Sing It, America! summarized into a few minutes of visual poetry. After a particularly beautiful clip of her last week’s performance, the medley shows Anna at her audition again: her hair is a less radiant burgundy, her lips are pale pink instead of fuchsia, but she’s giggling and laughing as the judges ask: “Why do you want to win this competition, Anna Williams?”
“Because,” she said, “I’m young; I’m passionate; I’m driven.” Every word is punctuated with her clapping her small hands together. “I have the chops and I’m gonna blow you all away!” And there’s no doubt in my mind that she is all of those things. I glance over at Anna, who is standing off to my side. Her hands are on her hips, her eyes are closed, and instead of preoccupying herself with her screen time, she’s warming up.
The screen transitions and it’s Stephen’s turn. He had attended the call in Atlanta, Georgia. He’d worn cowboy boots to his audition and the judges poked fun at him. “You ride?” Jonah Stern had asked.
“If you count my sixty-five Mustang,” Stephen had replied with a suave smirk.
The clips continue: Stephen guffawing in disbelief when he was asked to move on to the next round. Stephen with a few of the now-axed contestants he’d become friends with, sharing laughs over a card game. A homemade video that he’d submitted at some point: a grade-school Stephen singing the national anthem at a local baseball game.
He is amazing. In all the weeks leading up to this competition finale, I’ve never seen him misstep.
Stephen’s video ends with his performance from the first airing, when he blew the doors off with “Unchained Melody.” The clip shows Emma Jake’s wide-open mouth at the judge’s table, and Thomas Reilly pumping his fist in the air. Quick cut: “That was magnificent,” says the prerecorded Jenna Kaulfield. “America is going to have to look out for you.”
Fade.
My medley is the final one. Here comes Sassy Cassidy, rhinestone shirt and all, at the Houston audition. The line had wormed its way through the convention center parking lot in the middle of a Texas June; the hair I’d painstakingly blow-dried fluffed out to a horrible mess due to the humidity. At the last minute I pulled it back into a simple ponytail and skittered up to the stage with the number 1438 pinned to my shoulder.
Suddenly, a fluffy black makeup brush obscures the screen. Nikki is whisking dry powder on my skin; “I could see you sweating from all the way over there,” she says, jerking her head to the side. “Get it together, girl.”
She is spraying a cloud of hairspray now, shellacking my head. As the mist settles, Matilda is back on the screen, smiling her wide smile and offering us a moment to enjoy these ads from our sponsors.
“Two minutes,” a PA announces. We’re brought into a smaller room to wait for our respective turns. A small, lit television is on the wall, and a table in the middle holds several bottles of water. I perch on the edge of an orange sofa with my damp hands lightly touching my knees. The waistband of my tights is cutting into my belly button. Stephen, on my left, is so close that his knee is inches from one of mine. I slide my gaze from my lap to his, and I see that he’s clasped his hands tightly there: pink fingers, white knuckles, crescent-moon nail beds.
The television is muted, but Stephen half-stands, finds the remote, turns the sound on low, and sinks back down into the couch. A waft of warm cologne and oranges trails across my body. An advertisement for a truck, shampoo, and a sitcom flicker across the screen. Then Sing It, America!’s logo appears again, and the camera pans across the hundreds of viewers in darkened auditorium seats. The judge’s panel is illuminated in the very front, and the camera cuts to Matilda once again.
A head pokes into the room. “St. James,” the PA says, not looking at any of us. I feel the couch shift as Stephen gets to his feet. The back of his neck looks flushed and I can tell that he’s perspiring too.
“Hey,” says Anna, a specter in the chair to my right. Her voice is small and her body seems to take up no space at all. “Break a leg, Stephen.”
His eyelashes flick toward her once, and he smiles with his lips closed—I’d never seen him smile that grimly before—and he walks out the door.
*
Wednesday
Rose