‘The Masked Singer': How Sun Lived Without Getting to Sing One of Her Own Songs
(Warning: This post contains spoilers for Wednesday’s Season 4 finale of “The Masked Singer.”)
Grammy winner LeAnn Rimes, aka The Sun, was crowned the fourth-season winner of Fox’s “The Masked Singer” tonight after she and fellow finalists Crocodile (revealed to be Nick Carter) and Mushroom (Aloe Blacc) each gave one last performance. And while the “How Do I Live” singer said her final song choice was ultimately the perfect end to her time on the competition, she was initially hoping to belt out one of her own tracks as her season-closer.
The show’s producers didn’t allow that, but they did let Rimes cover her own cover: “The Story,” written by Phil Hanseroth.
“That song is so powerful. I covered it on my last record, ‘Remnants,’ and I covered it because at a point in my life, ‘The Story’ was kind of the culmination of my own personal story,” Rimes told TheWrap. “That song is so beautifully written and I was like, as a songwriter, I can’t write a song that fits the moment better for my life than this. So I thought it was a beautiful song to cover. We had discussed me possibly doing one of my own songs and we all decided it would be better if I did something that I’d covered before. I thought, as a story arc on the show, that song was this beautiful culmination of the story we were telling and my own personal story.”
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She continued: “I think it’s a beautiful, raw, powerful love song and we all have our stories that are so important to be told that connect us all. That’s really how we connect, through our stories. Right now, especially, it’s important for us to be sharing our hearts and our own stories with each other and to remind people that we’re not alone in this world at this moment.”
Rimes said she really tried to sway Fox and the “Masked Singer” team to let her do one of her own songs (potentially “Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” because she thought it would be “fun” to see the Sun sing those particular words), but they just wouldn’t go for it.
“I was trying to convince them of that. But they have yet to be convinced,” she said. “So we’ll see if they allow anybody to do it on the future episodes, which I think would be fun, actually, by the time you get to the finale. But I think we came close enough with the things that I’ve covered. We came close, for sure.”
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The country artist knows that singing one of her own songs for the finale would’ve likely given away her identity to the judges who didn’t already have her pegged — but she had actually accepted that possibility before she even joined the show.
“To be honest, I was a little apprehensive at first because I was like, people are going to know who I am from the moment I open my mouth,” Rimes said. “And then after I talked to everyone on the show and figured out my game plan of what I wanted to do and wanted to create, I thought it would be so fun to create this character and be able to perform. I haven’t been off the road since I was 13. This is the first time I’ve been in one place like this in so long, and I missed life. I think everyone does. So it was a way for me to get to play and create and to bring, honestly, life into this dark world at this moment. It was perfect timing.”
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