As the BBC launches The Voice, host Reggie Yates insists it's different to other TV singing contests, while veteran DJ Paul Gambaccini argues that the format is dead
Tonight the BBC's new singing contest The Voice goes head to head with Simon Cowell's Britain's Got Talent on ITV. Veteran DJ Paul Gambaccini – aka The Professor of Pop – believes the format has run its course, while The Voice presenter Reggie Yates insists his show is doing something new. Interview by Susanna Rustin.
Paul Gambaccini: I wish Reggie very well and I acknowledge that The Voice is a juggernaut – just two years ago it started as The Voice of Holland. It's tied in with Universal, the biggest record company in the world, so this is more than just a BBC programmer thinking, 'Gee wouldn't it be nice to do a singing show?' It has already been very successful in the US and it was the first show to put a furrow in Simon Cowell's brow. The X Factor didn't work quite as well in the US as he had predicted, and American Idol isn't, for Simon Fuller, quite the juggernaut is used to be. So the question is, is this the tiring of the two Simons after a decade? Or is it the end of the talent show?
Reggie Yates: Tom Jones, who is one of the coaches on The Voice, said earlier this week that Adele wouldn't have made it through on any other TV talent show. On The Voice she would have done well. This show is about how good your voice is.
PG: But she co-writes her own material, which these contestants mostly don't. In the US, the people who did the best out of this show were the judges. Christina Aguilera and Adam Levine had a huge hit, rejuvenating their careers, while the poor fellow who won didn't really get anywhere. The question is – bearing in mind that here is Tom Jones, great artist, who is signed to Universal, which is behind the show – is the UK version also going to do more for the judges than it does for the contestants?
RY: It would be naive to say that everyone connected with this show is not going to do well. But the thing that's interesting about this format is that it's not looking for a pop star, it's looking for someone who can actually do it – connect with a song. It's the first show where that's the most important thing.
Susanna Rustin: Does it matter if the coaches get most out of it?
PG: The Idol and X Factor formats did more for the two Simons than for anyone else. The other thing is about the audience. The shows reflect the changing literacies of the younger generation, and in the last 10-15 years we've had increased technical literacy and reduced verbal literacy – the lyrics of songs are approached in a different way. Also, there's been a decline in musical literacy in terms of playing instruments and an increase of making music out of computers. The greatest stars who emerged from the early talent shows – Frank Sinatra, Gladys Knight, Tony Bennett – were artists with long careers. New Faces was big in the 1970s and 80s, and gave us Lenny Henry, Michael Barrymore and Victoria Wood. Nowadays, with the marketing of the Syco [Cowell's production company] acts, you have the one-year wonder.
RY: It's a different type of talent.
PG: We have to separate the TV show from the recorded result, and there's no doubt the biggest prize for Cowell from his television formats was his own emergence as the world's biggest music producer. He didn't see that coming at all. So what are the unintended consequences of The Voice going to be? The audience reacts in a weird way. Look at One Direction, that is the classic case. They lose in the boys' category on The X Factor, then they get put together as a group, they do well here, then the use of social media in the US propels them to No 1!
RY: I don't think social media is what made them No 1, I think the fact there is no competition made them No 1. Thirteen-year-old girls need someone to scream for.
PG: What Reggie says about a gap in the market is always true. Look at Will Young. There were no male soloists around when he came along. He sold nearly 2m copies of his first single.
RY: That was a very different time. I think music is more interesting now than it ever has been, particularly in the UK. The people I started out with on pirate radio are now huge, you've got a massive dubstep and drum'n'bass presence, you've got singer-songwriters and the manufactured stuff all co-existing in the Top 10. That's not happened before.
PG: That's absolutely charming. I've seen the swings and roundabouts and it's true, now is better than it was a couple of years ago.
SR: Didn't people say talent shows such as The X Factor would stop other acts coming through?
PG: The ratings on Idol and The X Factor are down, and there are now more artists coming through, which of course is good for music as a whole.
RY: The point of The Voice is everyone in the show can do it. We don't start with 1,000 people in a car park; we start with 100. And everything is performed with a live band.
SR: Is there a talent show format that could produce a talent like Frank Sinatra today?
PG: It depends on the motivation of the artists. Do they have the self-belief Ed Sheeran had? The main problem with The X Factor, from the musical point of view, is that it's not designed to give exposure to artists, it's designed to give exposure to wannabes. These are people who want to have makeovers, they want to be told what to sing and how to look, and in that kind of environment, you're not going to get obsessive creators like the Beatles or Stevie Wonder. Music needs the kind of people who are going to do it regardless of what other people think, and then the other people say, wait a minute, this guy is really good! This has been the first 10-year cycle in which the most important person in popular music has not been an artist, and from the point of view of music, that is incredibly discouraging. It's time for the artist to be more powerful again.
RY: I think music is changing and the way we consume music is changing. Young audiences are much broader in their tastes. If you're a teenager now and you share iTunes with your parents, you're listening to their collection and yours and you're not batting an eyelid.