You Know Exactly What Auditions Songs are Overdone and Always Avoid Singing Them

Today marks the start to my senior year theatre season - finally! Auditions for our Christmas show start today, singing on Monday and dancing on Tuesday. I always love doing the Christmas show, it's not quite as serious as the spring musical, but it's still just as fun! But, with the show comes auditions. And, especially with the Christmas show, what song to sing. The past couple of years, our director has let us sing any Christmas song that we want for our audition, which is nice, but also can be a bit stressful. You don't want to sing something that will bore the directors (i.e. "O Holy Night"), but you still want to show off your voice. I think I'm going to stick with the classic "Let it Snow". It's upbeat and fun to sing, but it still let's me show off my range etc. a little bit.

Today has definitely got me thinking about all of the auditions i've seen through the years (10 years of theatre myself plus 4 years of helping with theatre programs and being the "director"). Then, when I was googling topics for my blog, I saw this one and was like YES because I definitely have experienced those overused songs. My number one example is "Don't Rain on my Parade" from Funny Girl. Especially since Lea Michele and Glee made the song popular it seems like everyone sings it...and often times don't sound as good as Lea Michele or Barbara Streisand. Another one is "On my Own" from Les Mis (also with a little help from Lea and Glee). People need to start singing fun songs, I don't care how good you sound on something slow and depressing, anyone would rather hear something upbeat! And finally, if you're not Adele, don't sing Adele. No explanation needed.