America’s Got Talent: Why singers often dominate live-show voting

Is it America’s Got Talent, or America’s Got Singers? We’ve certainly referred to the NBC show by the latter name often over the years, mostly because the voting public has shown a huge affinity for singing acts over time.

The proof of this is in the result so far — of the 21 acts currently in the live shows (presumably one wild card is coming), 12 of them are singers in some form! That’s more than half, even when you factor in the wild card and assume that they are not a singer. (Check out some of our wild-card contenders over here.)

So why does this happen to such a high degree, especially when there’s a pretty clear pattern of singing acts (for the first part) failing to find big careers after the show? We think a lot of it starts with accessibility. Viewers vote for what is familiar to them. People know singers and are emotionally attached to music. They hear a song and it may bring back memories or happy emotions for them. It’s something that they can latch onto easy, especially if we get to her a personal backstory as well. Singers tend to be more willing to be vulnerable on camera than other acts, and we’ve certainly seen that emotional stories can dramatically help an act’s ability to move forward to the next round. It’s even helped non-singing acts like Brian King Joseph and Duo Transcend.

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Also, placement in certain shows matters. If your act airs at the end of the night, you’re going to be the most-remembered almost by default. Singers dominated this spot through most of the audition rounds and Michael Ketterer and Courtney Hadwin each got the same treatment in the live shows. If producers are signaling to viewers that these acts are the best, obviously they are going to follow suit. That just feels inevitable when thinking about this show and its history.

The other factor that you have to think about the most here is the demographic of people watching: Many of them are families who don’t want to watch anything too edgy, dangerous, or scary. That’s why danger / freakshow acts have a hard time and why The Sacred Riana was pushed aside. The majority of AGT viewers are not even represented online.

Is there a way to change this pattern?

Sure, but it requires America’s Got Talent emphasizing more variety, not having the judges critique danger acts as harshly, and give them better placement in the show. While we like a lot of things about the Simon Cowell era, we like how Howard Stern really tried to embrace the variety of the show when he was a judge. It was less about singers during the time he was around.

Do you think that singers are given too much love on America’s Got Talent? Share right now in the comments!

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