Just recently I became deeply interested in the bizarre yet wonderful world that is Chinese television. While a surprising number of people in China have experienced American television and film, few Americans have tapped into the chaos of Chinese entertainment. Americans are missing out, though.
I’ve watched a fair deal of "The Voice," "American Idol," The Sing-Off" and "America’s Got Talent," and while I’ve enjoyed them a great deal, they could probably learn something from China’s "I Am a Singer." The show was adapted from a Korean show by the same name, so I suppose the credit really goes to South Korea. Still, the Eastern style of the show brings out elements that none of the American shows I’ve seen have been able to do. That means Americans shows have something to learn from Chinese shows.
When singers on these American shows are picking songs, they think mostly about what people want to hear. Most of the time they choose recent songs that everyone hears on the radio and on Spotify. This shuts off a whole world of opportunity for these singers. They compete against one another to pick the song that people will like most at that time, and really that’s all they do. Of course they consider their style and what will sound best for their particular voices, but it could be better for these artists if they had the liberty to choose whatever song they wanted without the fear that it would be so obscure that audiences won’t appreciate it. Chinese shows adjust this issue in favor of the artists by allowing them to use whatever resources they need, including backup dancers, singers and light shows to capture the attention of the audience. This makes it easier for them to sing songs that fit their styles, and besides it’s much more exciting at the base level.
The same solution stands for a second issue: language favoritism. American singing shows feature two languages at most. English and Spanish are all you will hear on a regular basis, which is a real shame. Chinese shows encourage songs in other languages, including English, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Russian and the countless dialects of Chinese present in China. Not only does this help singers branch out toward new melodies, but also it mixes up what the audiences of these shows are exposed to. Hearing top competitors bust out in a perfect rendition of an Albanian song most have never heard before can be quite a refreshing experience.
The last two main disparities are somewhat related. The voting system and the elimination system are now outdated. Every American singing show starts by establishing a group of people who will compete with one another over the course of many episodes, and each week at least one person is eliminated until it all comes down to only a few people and finally a victor. The build over the course of each season can be very exciting, but everyone knows who will end up in the final few shows as soon as the assembly of the initial group is over. I recall thinking that Javier Colon was going to win the first season of "The Voice" the minute I heard him sing. Quite frankly, that ruined it for me. Yes he was good, but there was no build-up. China’s “I Am a Singer” fixes this with its voting system and its odd variation of elimination.
The show starts out with a group of seven experienced singers and maintains seven singers throughout the season. The singers each prepare a song every week, using whatever resources they need to put on a great performance, and the person who is voted best performance least by the audience is put at risk of leaving the show. The next week, a challenger singer is introduced to the group, and if the challenger finishes higher than fourth, the least voted-for singer across the two weeks is eliminated. Here’s the kicker, though. Following the undesirable voting system that one of this show’s Chinese predecessors copied from American shows, “I Am a Singer” only allows the live audience to vote. That means you can’t vote at home, but it also means that the performance is evaluated by the people actually experiencing it firsthand.
For the viewers at home, maintaining a certain number of singers and cycling through new competitors means that over time, the best of the best get to stay while still hearing refreshing new styles on a regular basis. There is still more to be learned from Chinese singing shows, but they might not play out so well on American television. Just as an example, Chinese shows use a lot of flashy animations and sound effects to exaggerate emotion, the singers sometimes host the shows, the competitors are made to mingle on a daily basis and the voting system is not the most democratic system. Still, the production values and concept richness of Eastern competition shows would be a blessing to the now-fading American singing competition scene.
