You might think that joining a singing competition is always for the experience. Society has been celebrating the bright side of it as the idea behind includes improving your repertoire, getting more exposure and fame, training on high performance despite the stress, controlling stage fear, and boosting self-confidence.
While it’s an unavoidable fact that singing competition does bring you growth, there is the other side of its spectrum that’s worth unearthing.
The genuinity towards this initiative is good, but overdoing it could cause more damage than expected. I was born in a musical family where most of my relatives sing on stage. My grandpa was an album singer in the 1950s and worked himself out as a panelist in numerous singing competitions in my hometown. My dad, on the other hand, was active in many singing contests and won several trophies from there. Growing up in an environment where singing becomes a tradition, I also ended up following my dad’s footsteps into becoming a singer who’s enthusiastic about singing competitions.
I remember being head-on cloud nine when I was little and full of certainty that I’ll walk back home with a Champion and the sum of 1500 bucks worth prizes from a singing competition. The result, however, didn’t work in my favour, so I just returned home with a consolation trophy and spent the whole night crying instead. My dad told me something that’s eventually ingrained in my mind until today, “If you cry over failure, maybe you aren’t suitable for the competition because you will lose more than you win.”
This line, as simple yet impactful as it is, hit me like a giant truck. It’s a wake-up call, it’s definitely a reckoning to my child ego. Ever since then, I began joining as many competitions as I can to acquire experience. It was a fun journey, but neither did I feel happy nor disappointed regardless of the results that were given to me. I became numb. Since when does joining a competition has become a routine that I stop enjoying anymore?
Occasionally, I spend a lot of time questioning whether those other singers feel the same as I do, or how did they find motivations to persevere in the singing industry and competitions for so many years. This billion-dollar question remains unresolved today. All I know is the passion, but does it justified? Does it even worth our time to keep repeating the same activity that wouldn’t guarantee a victory? What’s the difference between a contest and gambling?
I talked to many singers about this and most people don’t find fascination in my perception. They usually shrugged me off as someone who overthinks. Am I though?
In 2015, I was in my undergraduate degree studies. Snowed under the piles of priorities in my checklist- assignments, church ministry services, networking events, volunteerism, freelance singing job, and family errands to juggle- I started feeling overwhelmed and dislike the norm of joining singing competitions concurrently just so that I lose the majority of them again. There are far greater things in life to pursue than just keeping oneself in the loop of frustrations. That’s the turning point in my life where I broke the addiction and join only one or two competitions a year, or sometimes totally zero for over five quarters.
This transition has been, indeed, a mind-blowing testimony to many of my friends, but it enables me to open up my heart to other things- things that aren’t musical but can be magical too. For instance, my pursuit in journalism and content writing field.
You may comment, “You are bitter because you aren’t good enough.” I don’t deny that. We’re humans, we’ll never be good enough, and that makes our life lessons much more precious than winning. I was a champion in many competitions. I was even on two tv programs and won quite a satisfying reputation from there, but they never excused me from failure.
It’s necessary to take the fall and rise again at times, but when it happens frequently, and you find your mental health getting affected bit by bit, perhaps it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate your goals. Since the popular idea is to focus on the advantages of the singing competition and work on ourselves, it’s also practical to identify its disadvantages and ease up self-blaming. With that, here are the five reasons why singing competition can be destructive to you, all based on my experience.
1. The champions aren’t the best; The losers aren’t the worst!
First of all, I have to clarify that everyone’s born with talents. You are a great singer, that’s amazing! Still, so what? Many contestants are fighting for the same title, fame, and probably the money that comes along with this recognition, but there’s always just one champion. What makes you outstanding than the rest?
It’s a tricky question to ask yourself, and you’ll never find the answer to it. Remember the whole “you shouldn’t cry when you lose because you’ll lose more than you win” talk that my dad brutally conveyed to my end when I was little? We’re hitting different occasions with juries of various preferences. Not to forget to mention that there are other environmental factors to consider, such as the sound system, stage width, audience, song selections, timing, and more. How do you ensure that you survive all these items perfectly without hiccups? Even if you succeed, that only justifies your strategy and luck above your singing skills.
You may shine as bright as you are to win the first prize in a competition and still get eliminated at the other match with the same performance. Thus, there’s no fine line to draw between good or bad singers when things are pretty subjective.
2. It shatters contestants’ self-esteem!
Everyone can relate to this. We all have experienced failure before. Imagine exhausting yourself in whatever ways for something but are return with an upright turndown instead simply because people don’t value you as much as you deserve. If this sounds familiar to you, you have seen the reality, and this reality is, nevertheless, a constant occurrence that one has to endure in singing competitions.
As mentioned, there’s only a champion, which means that your possibility of winning is extremely slim. We’re engineered to embrace failure as a lesson to improve ourselves. Often time, the social stigma is giving us an idea that it’s okay to carry fallbacks on our chest. BUT, if you have taken more than you can chew, that’s where you tend to lose your confidence.
It’s not your fault that these obstacles are affecting you, it’s just human nature. And I want you to be human for once just so that you can allow yourself to be in touch with your emotions. Are they overwhelming you? If so, it’s time to prioritize your mental health over achievement.
My usual coping mechanism is to take a break as long as I deem appropriate and practice skills enhancement simultaneously, and it helps! Remember, everyone’s playing their role for self-satisfactory- organizers to make money, juries to make a judgment based on proclivity, and contestants to fight for the place. Thus, NONE of these are worthy of your energy at all. Learn to move on as quickly as your possibly can, you’ll feel much relieved.
3. Instead of self-transcendence, people become highly competitive
The original concept of a competition is to foster growth, share goals among one another, encourage networking, and inspire self-improvement. However, most of the time, people are just there to win and take whatever it means to beat their opponents.
I remember winning a double-material championship in a singing competition a few years ago. Everyone congratulated me and encouraged me to enjoy my victory for a night, but the outcome was contradictory unpleasant. One of my singing nemeses turned sulky and went around about a fabricated rumour that involved me. Consequently, it affected my reputation and even caused many talent agents to cancel my shows. The spiraling wildfire drama forced me to face those challenges and spent three days settling them, all of these because I won a championship.
We’re expected to accept the end results (as painful as it could be) whenever we sign up for a competition, but not many individuals take this concept positively. While thinking of scoring your performance, there are also human relationship issues that should be taken into account, which makes participating in a singing competition to be dreadful sometimes.
I always question these people. Why can’t they just focus on improving themselves than fixating on the idea of rivalry? Singers usually share this common excuse, “Because we need the popularity to be famous”. I’m not here to judge anyone. Obviously, we’re entitled to practice any mindset that we want for ourselves, but I need to let you all know that there are certainly other ways to succeed in music.
Famous vocal artists such as Melanie Martinez, One Direction, and Jennifer Hudson didn’t win the talent shows that they joined in their early-stage life, but still being successful today. So what makes a champion essential when all you need is just “talent”?
I think what’s more important is to go beyond ourselves. It takes a talented singer to be seen, and it takes someone who possesses this mindset to be recognized.
4. It involves social issues that should be unraveled
Let’s think of any social issues that we see in the world today- capitalism, gender stereotypes, colourism, and probably more. You may be familiar with them as they are happening everywhere, and they become significantly substantial in the singing industry where all sorts of conflicts are bound to occur.
If you watch the singing programs on the television, you’ll see a lot of aspiring artists from all over the place joining the competition to fulfill their celebrity dream. The producer from behind-the-scene will always run through the promising talk of viewership, exposure and popularity, contracts with notable agencies, and other boasting speeches to stir participants’ excitement and the willingness to play by their instructions. However, the hard truth is, these genuine artists are being used as human trafficking for the media company to make revenue from advertising, sponsorship, public votes, subscriptions, and ratings.
The same phenomenon appears in the usual singing competitions as well. I used to participate in a contest that bragged about how they wanted to train local artists and why contestants were mandated to do live streaming for the paid voting system. Everyone did that to abide by the contest rules despite the far-fetched request from the organizer. As a result, the winner turned out to be someone with the lowest vote and intermediate stage performance (rumours claimed that her parents had connections with the event sponsor). If this isn’t the product of capitalism, then what it is?
Besides money, the event coordinators are always seeking interesting subjects within a competition to escalate the “wow-effect”. It becomes a pattern where they tend to sort people based on different skin colours, disabilities, or with some unique background stories to portray the diversity of their program. All of these are utilized for branding purposes but aren’t really to train those with prominent singing skills.
So, why allowing these people who clearly have no clue about arts to weaponize marketing strategies onto us and downgrade our dignity as a singer?
5. It doesn’t address the value of art but disparages it
Here’s a question to ask yourself. Music is a passion, but should we make it a competition? When people stop exchanging knowledge or collaborating with others through music, but all for benefits and competitions, that’s where it loses the value of arts.
Singing competitions, oftentimes, tend to mix rounds of challenges and themes to accelerate the excitement of audiences. This, however, doesn’t cultivate the genuine appreciation of the public towards music, and it only sways social perception in the wrong direction (finding fascination in the variety of games instead of the singing skills).
Additionally, singers are typically encouraged to select a song that allows them to sing in a high pitch note just so that they can “show off” their vocals and win judges’ eyes. While the concept is valid, many have neglected that vocal genres and ranges are solely based on the individual. Some artists are good at sentimental songs, some fast; some can sing as high as they go, whereas some can croon bass beautifully too. So how are we going to determine whether who’s a more deserving winner than whom?
If just being masterful in music is your goal, you should pick up the mindset that you can still live off your singing life as successfully as you wish without owning trophies or being famous.
Learning is a lifelong adventure. I’m still joining competitions on rare occasions whenever it deems fit, and I’m certainly not discouraging anyone from taking part in singing contests by narrating all the disadvantages above. Nonetheless, my place was to help you understand its nature so that you can evaluate your motive behind singing more rationally than before.
Comprehensively, everyone’s entitled to decide their involvement in singing competitions. If it isn’t a thing for you, here’s an assurance from me to you that you are still an amazing star; If singing competition is something that would help you with self-development, by all means, sign the form, but my advice is to participate responsibly and set the right mentality along the way.
I have also written an article on the techniques to prepare yourself before singing. You may read on them in hope that they escalate your overall performance in a singing competition if you enter any.
