American Song Contest, episode 5 (Brain Academy, Propagate Content, Universal Television Alternative Studios, NBC-TV, aired April 18, 2022)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night at 8 I watched episode five of the NBC-TV series American Song Contest, the fifth and final “qualifying round” in which all 56 U.S. jurisdictions (the 50 states, five territories and Washington, D.C., which as a “federal district” is in a separate, anomalous category all its own). To some extent, I share my husband Charles’ criticism of this show that allk too many of the songs sound alike – there are a few rap songs and even fewer country songs (and most of those from the places you’d expect, the South and Southwest), but most are in the dance-pop genre that currently dominates American popular music. Charles also pointed out that there are no real differences between the states in terms of musical culture – though California was represented by Sweet Taboo, a group of three young Mexican-American girls (they really don’t look old enough to be women, even though one of them was wearing a halter top which showed off her little breasts), two of whom sing while the third one rapped. They did the inevitable Spanish-language chorus at the end of a song that is otherwise in English and is called “Keys to the Kingdom.” They were essentially the female equivalent of a “boy band” and their song was nice, pleasant and easy enough on the ears without moving or touching the heart in any way.

They played second on the program, following Justin Jesso from Illinois, who recalled that his grandfather was a lookout man for Al Capone in the 1920’s, when Chicago music actually had an edge to it. Jesso’s song was called “Lifeline,” and it was closer to the rock end of the pop-rock spectrum than most of last night’s material but still was a pretty inoffensive and bland piece. Afterwards came Andrew Sheppard from Idaho, who sand a country-folk song called “Steady Machine” that I wouldn’t have minded so much if he hadn’t been trying so hard to be the next Bob Dylan – complete with a floppy hat on his head – with bits and pieces of John Mellencamp as well. The next performer was Khalisol from New Mexico, who describes his music as “soul-hop” but in practice that means the same mixture of R&B singing and rapping a lot of young performers do – and his song, “Drop,” was once again a piece of nice, inoffensive pop music. Next up was a country singer from Missouri named Halie (pronounced “Hayley,” by the way) who did a song called “Better Things” that was a bit unusual for a country breakup song in that instead of crying in her beer (or something stronger) over her man having dumped her, she’s actually glad to be rid of him and his no-good ways. (It’s not unusual for breakup songs in other genres to take that tack, but usually country singers go for the miseries of being alone rather than the joys of being rid of someone.)

The next singer was another one-named person, Tenelle, from the U.S. territory of American Samoa – which, by the way, the Samoans themselves pronounce as “Sam’wha,” with the “o” silent, while mainland Americans not only pronounce the “o” but make the syllable containing it the most stressed: “Suh-MOW-uh.” Tenelle and his parents talked a lot about “fa’a Samoa,” the mix of rules and customs that govern life on the island, a term I’ve heard elsewhere only in tne literature on Robert and Frances Flaherty’s film Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age, filmed in 1923-24 but not released until 1926 (and not to be confused with the recent Disney computer-animated monstrosity which took the name of a classic in vain), and what he came up with in his song, “Full Circle,” was a masterpiece, full of emotion and soul and the standout track from this episode the way Rhode Island’s Hueston did from the first program, North Dakota’s Chloe Fredericks on the second, Tennessee’s Tyler Braden on the third and Arizona’s Los Marias from the fourth. It’s true that Tenelle’s music didn’t sound at all Polynesian – if I’d heard the song “blind” I’d have guessed the singer was African-American and had grown up in a Black church – but that didn’t matter. What did was the sheer power and drama Tenelle brought to the song.

The next singer was John Morgan from North Carolina, who has had at least a toehold on a major career – he’s opened for Jason Aldean and co-wrote a song with Aldean and Carrie Underwood called “If I Didn’t Love You” – and he wrote a country ballad called “Right in the Middle” that, like so much of the music on this show, was pleasant and inoffensive but also oddly lacking in soul. The next performer was Josh Panda from Vermont – his real name was Joshua Pender and his Web page stresses how hard he’s had to work to overcome a conservative upbringing and become his own person. Between that and the feminine persona he projects on stage, that would sound like the life story of a Gay man – except he has two chidren (though on the segment that introduced him, there was no sign of a significant other, either female or male) – and he sang his song, “Roller Coaster,” in a surprisingly storing falsetto. (It didn’t help that the Partridge Family, of all people, did a better song called “Roller Coaster” on their last album, The Partridge Family Bulletin Board.) The next artist was Jason J. from the island of Guam, though he moved to Los Angeles to study music in 2010 and he’s been on the mainland so long it's pretty much wiped out any specifically “Guamanian” aspects to his music. Like Sabya from the Northern Marianas Islands in episode three, Jason J. made me think, “This is what Jimmy Buffett would have sounded like if he’d been born in Polynesia.”

The next performer was Ada LeAnn from Michigan, 17-year-old daughter of an auto worker, who came up with a quite good song called “Natalie” about a young woman whose boyfriend is seeing two women at once, her and someone called Natalie with whom she feels totally unable to compete. Charles said he liked the song but wished it could have been sung by a singer with a harder-edged voice, like Janis Joplin, Grace Slick or Melanie (and the last two, at least, are still alive, though Slick is retired), but the singer Ada LeAnn reminded me of was Lesley Gore. In her teens, Gore produced a star-making hit, “It’s My Party,” which covered the same basic situation as “Natalie” but buzzed with anger at being two-timed (and later Gore made a follow-up record, “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” in which the girl who’d taken her boyfriend away got her comeuppance), whereas LeAnn’s approach seemed rather mopey and resigned by comparison. (The song also reminded me of David Bowie’s “Letter to Hermione,” especially a line that reminded me of the heart-rending line in Bowie’s song, “Does he ever call my name/Just by mistake.”) Apparently the judges on the 56-member (one from each state) panel of music professionals thought a lot more highly of her than I did, because they voted LeAnn to top place and an automatic slot in the semi-finals, which begin next week. Our final contestant was a “ringer,” a professional named Sisqó with several Grammy nominations under his belt, who performed a song called “It’s Up” with a mixture of singing and rapping that once again did little for me.