In the case of The Voice’s “Battle Rounds,” where two contestants alternate singing the same number, songs were only counted once, and on behalf of the winner. Also, group numbers aren’t included in our tally furthermore, if the song was part of a medley, we counted each song in the medley as an individual performance.
Diddy’s Starmaker, The Next Great American Band, The Winner Is, High School Musical: Get in the Picture, The Pussycat Dolls present: Girlicious, and American Juniors, with the wrinkle that not all musical performances from America’s Got Talent could be tracked down. Research note: Results were tabulated using data from twelve different American reality singing competitions: American Idol, The Voice, America’s Got Talent, The X Factor, The Sing-Off, The Glee Project, Rock Star, P. Other fun facts: The most contemporary song on our list is British singer Duffy’s Grammy-winning 2008 single “Mercy,” and the song most commonly sung by the different shows’ overall winners is Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” So perhaps after a dozen years of watching, studying, and analyzing these singing competitions we don’t, in fact, have them figured out after all? And while the artist whose songs are chosen most often isn’t too surprising (Stevie Wonder by a wide margin), the most commonly performed songs by some of the names on the list aren’t always what we expected (Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy,” for example) and only one musician’s songs appear twice in the top twenty (and it’s not Whitney Houston). The biggest revelation: The number of times any one song has been performed on a television competition is much lower than we anticipated, with the top tune appearing only seventeen times. So with American Idol kicking off its thirteenth season tonight, it had us wondering: Which songs have become go-to choices for the contestants competing on these programs over the years?Īfter a trip down a deep rabbit hole to research the song selections on twelve different American reality singing competitions (see our helpful note on how we compiled our data below), we discovered a lot of our previous theories about song choice were wrong. The right take on a well-known tune can win over with the judges - and the viewers - while a wrong note will send your reality-TV dreams home in a Ford-sponsored body bag. Anyone who’s watched even five minutes of a reality singing competition since American Idol first became a phenomenon in 2002 knows that song choice is everything.