WHO ARE YOU?: The Masked Singer Returns to Fox

 WHO ARE YOU?: The Masked Singer returns to Fox*

*spoilers ahead

by: Raine T. Riley, September 27, 2020

If you are like me, Wednesday, September 23 was a night of celebration as the hit mystery-singer-competition show The Masked Singer returned to Fox for its fourth season. For those who are unfamiliar, The Masked Singer is a singing competition in which some of your favorite, and most surprising, celebrities dress up in costumes and show off their pipes with total anonymity. Past seasons have seen the likes of Gladys Knight, Donny Osmond, T-Pain, Terry Bradshaw, Patti Labelle, Victor Oladipo, Seal, Wayne Brady, Lil Wayne, Chaka Khan, Tony Hawk, and even Sarah Palin. The premise of the show is, admittedly, extremely bizarre; but pushing aside the oddness and getting into the spirit of the thing can provide some of the most fun one can have while watching a television show.

I was not alone in my excitement. Over just two days (Wednesday and Thursday), we saw over 17k engagements from Twitter (65%) and YouTube (31%) to fan forums, forum replies, mainstream news and Facebook (3% combined) – a jump of 264% from the previous period. Peaks of conversation hit between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. EST (the time of the show’s airing) on Twitter, and YouTube peak engagement occurred between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. EST.

The top demographic of people discussing The Masked Singer were females aged 25-34. The overall sentiment was positive (67%), with judge Ken Jeong getting a lot of positive attention for both The Masked Singer and his new show I Can See Your Voice, which premiered immediately following The Masked Singer. A lot of the negative sentiment (33%) comes from people’s disdain for Nick Cannon, who was recently booted from his job as host of MTV’s Wild N’ Out for anti-Semitic comments on his podcast, which has since been deleted. Many people believe that Cannon should have not been allowed to host The Masked Singer following his awful comments.

Other negative sentiments surrounded the outcome of the evening. *This is where our spoilers lie ahead.*

Dragon was the first contestant to get voted off of the show. After his great performance, people were shocked and upset that he was first to go. Many people posited that Giraffe should have been the first voted off. When he was voted off, we learned the true identity of Dragon – the one and only Busta Rhymes. This was not a surprise to most, however, as Busta was already trending prior to his reveal.

Top words of the night included the names of the costumes and characters as well as people’s guesses of who is behind each mask.

The green highlighted words relate to the top guesses for each character’s identity. The top guesses include Leann Rimes, Demi Lovato, Christina Aguilera as Sun, Tina Turner as Popcorn, Clint & Lisa Hartman Black as Snow Owls, Vanilla Ice as Giraffe. Other guesses include:

§  Angela Bassett, Tiffany Pollard, Anita Baker, Taylor Dayne, or Fantasia as Popcorn

§  Derek and Julianne Hough, Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal, Donny and Marie Osmond, or Chip and Joanna Gaines as Snow Owls

§  Aaron Carter, Brian Austin Green, Lin Manuel Miranda, Kevin Hart, or even Macklemore as Giraffe.

BTS star Jimin was a hot topic of conversation, as many of his fans believe (or at least hope) that he will be on the US version of The Masked Singer. Jimin has reportedly been contacted to be on the show multiple times in the past, so many fans believe this to be the year. As well, a video of Nicole Scherzinger stating that she would love to invite Jimin on the show circulated in both Korean and English Tweets.

This was only the first week with the first group of contestants and it was an interesting start to the season, for sure! I am certainly looking forward to seeing everything unfold as we are introduced to more characters, get more clues, and power through Ken’s awful guesses. Though COVID-19 makes things look a little different – with a virtual and CGI audience – the production value of the show has only improved, as has the talent of the contestants. I, for one, believe that the slower pace of a pandemic world will allow for a season full of big stars and even bigger surprises.