There is a huge variety of television karaoke projects. Some, like Carpool Karaoke, gather audiences of millions thanks to celebrity guests. Others have stepped beyond the format of a regular show and become true talent forges. Since the mid-1960s, it seems no one could be surprised by various idol factories and music programs anymore. That was until 2012, when a new, entirely different show appeared on the cable channel truTV (USA) — Karaoke Killer (Killer Karaoke).
By “entirely different” we mean an absolutely crazy show where participants were asked to sing a karaoke song in, to put it mildly, extreme conditions. Just imagine that instead of a cozy stage, you are forced to sing in an aquarium packed with snakes or full of toads.
The showrunners were Steve-O — a professional stuntman and star of the cult show Jackass — and Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath, who replaced Steve after he left the program. It must be said that the hosts had a lot of fun at the participants’ expense. From the huge list of tortures they applied to the show’s guests, the most memorable were:
– The Big Stink. The participant has to sing sandwiched between two heavily sweating sumo wrestlers.
– Trimming the Fur. The participant (usually a man) was placed in a chair and subjected to a full or partial body wax.
– Swamp Song. The participant was dunked into reptile-infested water on a special swing.
Can you imagine the level of emotional intensity during such trials? Very few managed to stay calm and not break into shouts or screams.
Equally fun was the elimination finale, where finalists were placed on a spinning disk that gradually gained speed. The winner was the one who managed to hold on the longest without stopping singing.
The show lasted for two seasons and was canceled partly due to declining viewer interest, and partly because of increased criticism from animal rights activists who disagreed that squids should have to endure all this.
However, almost immediately after its appearance on American TV, the Karaoke Killer franchise was launched in Thailand, the Philippines, and Korea, and it continues to air successfully to this day. The Asian market is more tolerant of such TV projects, where guests have to go through the nine circles of hell for a coveted prize.
Although the Asian clones have fully adopted the experience of their older brother, and in some places even surpassed it in the madness of torturing (what else to call it?) the participants, overall, there is less soul and inventiveness in the show. And the guests themselves, it sometimes seems, no longer react so emotionally to various creepy-crawlies moving on their heads during a performance.
