Music

The First Trailer For ‘Masked Singer Australia’ Is Here, And Hoo Boy This Thing’s A Fever Dream

The horror... The horror...

by Joseph Earp  16 August 2019
The Masked Singer Australia

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I am so legitimately baffled by the Masked Singer, a reality TV show that originated in South Korea and is now making its way down to Australia, that I don’t have a funny introduction to this article. So, sorry, but we’re not going to slide into this fever dream slowly — we’re just gonna jump straight the fuck in.

Put as simply as possible, the Masked Singer sees a series of celebrities that have been dressed head to toe in elaborate and bizarre costumes sing songs for the benefit of a panel of judges who must guess who they are. But to be honest, we’ve already lost something, because ‘elaborate and bizarre costumes’ does not cover the sheer, Lynchian horror of these outfits.

Take a look, for instance, at some of the costumes worn on the American version of the show.

Here is Egg, a hideous, grinning night terror:

And here is Monster, a glaring green hipster who wants to corner you and talk about the new Bon Iver record for three hours:

I also take significant umbrage with the central conceit of the show. The judges are drip-fed clues over the course of the season to help them in their quest to uncover the true identity of the masked singers. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that it could be literally anybody under those masks.

There’s simply no rhyme or reason to it: contestants on the first season of the American version included Rumer Willis (daughter of Bruce Willis and supposed ‘actor’), stoner comedian Tommy Chong, former teen idol Donny Osmond, and rapper T-Pain. Judges are forced to guess identities from the widest pool imaginable — ‘famous people’ — with only the vaguest of hints. It’s a little like if I came up to you with my hands behind my back and asked you to guess what I had in them. Sure, you could guess for a long, long time. But would it be fun?

I do not think it would be fun.

Anyway, Masked Singer is coming to our shores whether we like it or not. There’s no point fighting the inevitable. Just watch the trailer below, and try to guess whether that hideous spider creature is Kylie Minogue, Julia Gillard or Dawn Fraser.