In the United States on Monday night, many Americans asked a simple question: What is the American Song Contest? NBC’s all-live music competition, which aired its two-hour premiere last night, is attempting to bring Eurovision to the US. This is not necessarily an easy task; Despite its track record abroad – you can thank Eurovision for Abba and Celine Dion – the 65-year-old annual song tournament is not widely known in the US.
While Eurovision features one artist per country and offers a web of political intrigue and often untranslatable local culture, the American version, somehow not called “Amerivision”, features original songs by 56 artists from all 50 US states, five territories (Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands) and the nation’s capital in a bracket-style showdown. The multi-stage competition will be broadcast over a period of six weeks.
The American Song Contest, hosted by Kelly Clarkson (American Idol’s first-ever winner) and Snoop Dogg, has the support of the European contest’s producers and a showrunner, Audrey Morrissey, who executive produced the highly successful NBC singing contest The Voice has led. It’s got legions of Eurovision fans curious about what exactly makes US states and territories different. It has a process that combines the votes of an expert jury with fan votes on the NBC website and on TikTok. (According to Variety, the 56 judges — one from each state/territory, including a former member of The Fray and the president of iHeartMedia — will rate each performance based on “artistic expression, hit potential, originality and visual impact.”)
And there’s a series of March Madness-style rounds that pit artists of varying levels of fame and experience against each other. Established stars like Michael Bolton (Connecticut) and Jewel (Alaska) will compete against amateurs (Michigan, for example, sends a 16-year-old high schooler).
How did the games start? The premiere packed a lot of enthusiasm and heated state rivalries into two chaotic hours. (Full Disclosure: I’m from Ohio — kudos to Macy Gray, the Grammy-winning R&B singer who represents Buckeye State — and the only ESC performance I’d seen before was the unbeatable Latvian pirate group, so I kicked pretty a confused over the concept.) Clarkson and Snoop employed their signature energies — irresistible, maternal excitement for her, slightly stoned vibes for him — in brief interstitials between the 11 performances. The (almost exclusively upbeat) performances themselves covered a cornucopia of genres, from hip-hop to Latin pop to a country-rap catchy tune called New Boot Goofin’, courtesy of Wyoming’s Ryan Charles, who appears to be responsible for TikTok (it was the clear social media winner of the night.)
The presenters only roughly explained the formula, so here’s the logistics: The first five episodes will each contain 11 performances (one has 12), one act of which advances automatically based on the jury’s vote, which will be known at the end of the evening is given. Fan votes will determine the other three acts that advance per episode, which will be announced the following week. A total of 22 acts will perform in the two semifinals with “slightly upscale” renditions of their original songs, according to NBC. Ten artists advance to the grand finale, where a combination of jury and fan votes determine the winner.
Back to the first competitors, representing areas of the country as geographically diverse as tropical Puerto Rico and frozen Wisconsin. Overall the evening was of mixed quality – to be honest it’s very difficult to sing live in a studio, especially when some of the artists haven’t performed in front of a crowd of more than a few thousand – although Clarkson was enthusiastic throughout and Snoop hopped on to everyone Song. Some of the artists explained their styles through mashups of famous stars. Pink-haired Iowa resident Alisabeth Von Presley described herself as seeing Lady Gaga and Pat Benatar collide and explode in a pile of glitter; Rhode Island’s Hueston said he’s Chris Stapleton mixed with Adele and Sons of Anarchy “but in a good way”; Wisconsin’s Jake’O, with black hair slicked back like Elvis, defined his nuvo-retro style.
Some played to their state’s expectations: Minnesota’s entry, pop-boy band Yam Haus, consisted of four very serious whites who embodied “Minnesota nice” (“Ope!”). Mississippi’s Keyone Starr, who recorded with Mark Ronson, honored the rich history of her state’s black music traditions — delta blues, gospel, rock ‘n’ roll — with a fiery performance that weighed on belting and guitar. Kelsey Lamb from Arkansas sang a fairly conventional wide-brimmed hat country ballad. Michael Bolton, very sincerely from Connecticut, sang a serious Michael Bolton song called Beautiful World.
But there have also been some conscious efforts to surprise and complicate the picture of different regions of the country and to highlight the diversity of American musical talent. AleXa, an established K-pop artist who was used to performing to crowds in South Korea (you could tell — she owned the stage and the hosts knew it), said people expected her to wear a cowboy because they are from Tulsa, Oklahoma, hat and sing country music. Her choreographed performance of Wonderland was the highlight of the evening. Indiana’s UG Skywalkin’, real name Josh Kimbowa, is an immigrant (UG stands for Uganda) who openly aspires to popularize the Indianapolis hip-hop scene. Puerto Rico entry Christian Pagán sang in English and Spanish in a leather pop-punk outfit. The evening’s judge’s winner, Rhode Island’s Hueston, challenged the state’s image of sun-kissed beaches and tourism by speaking about his hard-working-class upbringing and losing friends to addiction.
This directing of the limelight is perhaps the best argument for the American Song Contest. The performances were almost secondary to the three to five minute introductory videos, which offered a moment to connect and explain for less publicized cuts and experiences of the country. This is especially exciting for the territories that many Americans know very little about, if at all, that they are part of the United States. As chaotic and random as last night’s American Song Contest was, and likely will be, this opportunity for low-stakes exposure is a worthwhile one.
That exposure may be more limited than NBC had hoped. The premiere drew nearly 3 million viewers, fewer than the new episode of ABC’s long-running hit American Idol, which aired at the same time. So Eurovision fans probably want Americans to want that. Several NBC executives and a 56-strong panel of music industry figures want Americans to want it. But do Americans want their own Eurovision? We still have six weeks to see.