The Sing-Off

The Sing-Off

I'm not normally one for reality shows, but I had to get sucked into The Sing-Off because Ben Folds is one of the judges. I would preorder the deluxe audiobook of Ben Folds reading the phone book. I was delightfully surprised by the show, though. Kind of like the movie Deathrace, it was a healthy mix of genuinely good parts and so-bad-they're-good parts.

The premise is much like any of the musical competition shows, and the gimmick is that every group is a capella. Hosted by the ever-awkward Nich Lachey and judged by Folds, Boyz-II-Men's Shawn Stockman, and Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls. And good lord, is Nicole a mess. Idol missed the boat when they replaced Paula with Ellen. She uses the adjective "dope" a lot, pronounced ukulele as "ookoleele," and has a zen-like stream-of-conscious Michael Scott way with finishing sentences very far from where she started.

As for the contestents themselves, it's a mixed bag. Sure, you've got your "kooky white college boys" that come to mind when you think of college a capella (the Beelzebubs, a crowd favorite and actually one of my frontrunners) and your Glee-tastic happy kids (the SoCals), but they're not representative of all the groups, which is pretty cool. My favorite so far is a female soccer mom barbershop quartet called Maxx Factor, who rocked it out barbershop style to ABBA's "Dancing Queen."

So far the crowd's faves have been Faces, a rock-apella band of bouncers and Cold Stone Creamery lackeys that got sent home early, and Noteworthy, an all-girl Mormon group from BYU with a fauxhawked lead singer. Then there's the band Solo, who tried to stack the deck in their favor by continually saying that they "had nothing to go home to." Wow. Way to make everyone look like dicks when you got voted off, guys.

The show lasts this week, I'm guessing to pull in those mythological Christmas ratings. For now I've got a guilty pleasure show and Ben Folds has an extra paycheck and some new fans. (Ben Folds was #1 on the Google Hot 100 search terms list last night, and I found out via Facebook that my high school Spanish teacher is now a fan for life. )

What more can a gal ask for?