The people on the Bachelor and Bachelorette: they sing music! And not just Michael Stagliano, whose utterly remarkable “Stay Strong” is chronicled in heavy detail here, or Bachelor Bob Guiney, who I once saw performing with Band From TV (Get it? Get it?) at Mohegan Sun. And during the set, Lloyd from Entourage ran on stage and played the tambourine for like three songs solid. Yeah, we were supposed to see Janet Jackson but she had strep.
But enough about me spending my free time in rural Connecticut; back to the main point here. For example, did you know that Vampire Michael from Emily’s season can actually go outside in sunlight and see himself in mirrors, but more importantly, just released an album? Or that he wrote a pretty funny song ripping on all the other dudes on his season, that he played at the Men Tell All taping, but they suppressed for “copyright reasons”? Or that Wes from Jillian’s season even has semi-professional country videos in which he gets his face stepped on by dudes with beards?
Because you absolutely didn’t know any of those things, BatchSlap now presents a tidy list of the musical stylings of Bachelor/Bachelorette contestants. Enjoy this, but I’d love to keep building the library, so please send any other vids or downloadable/streamable songs or money to batchslap@gmail.com.
Kasey Kahl: Ali’s Season
Apparently he has a band, at least according to the YouTube post info, which says “Kasey Kahl of the Bachelorette singing in his band.” Of course the same user uploaded another video with the info “Wes getting a big dick on his forehead. Sorry dude haha.” So his validity is suspect at best.
Anyway, Kasey basically does a mean hype-up at this show that’s presumably in some community college’s quad, shouting, “c’mon everybody, everybody get up, get up, we move, we move, we move,” and seems quite upset that the audience isn’t standing, even though the band is standing, because they’re not 80 years old and named The Eagles. Despite the band playing some pretty seriously thrashing metal, Kasey’s dressed like he just came from happy hour with a bunch of the “cool” i-bankers who wear weathered jeans and loafers to close deals before drinking a bunch of Hoegaardens at a wine bar.
All that said, ultimately he’s not that bad at jumping around and screaming, until he starts actually screaming, around 2:26, which is very terrifying.
[BONUS: TMZ video of Kasey swearing he doesn't huff paint]
Wes Hayden: Jillian’s Season
The first thing I said to my buddy Blend (whose glorious Photoshops have graced these pages many times over) when I listened to Wes’s songs was “Is it mad easy to sing country or something?” He thought about it for no seconds and said “Yes.” Thought so. But whatever, I’m, still convinced: Wes is good! He claims he’s “been a musician 14 years,” and whatever that actually means, it shows.
My Life: You know this video’s gonna be good as soon as he grabs a Bud Light out of the hand of the surliest, bearded-est dude in the bar, only drinks half of it to show he doesn’t even care about refreshment and just did it to be a badass, and slams it down. This song is so perfectly country: Tattoos, drinking, babes, rule-breaking, names of southern states and cities that have no actual connection but just happen to rhyme, guns, playing concerts in dirty saloons, wifebeaters, that beard dude trying to kill him, and countless other things that actually happen in Travis Tritt’s life.
Despite all the necessary bravado, he’s got a charming humbleness to him: at the end, the bartender wakes him up, and it was all just a dream, and nobody actually came to his show! He also starts an interesting trend amongst these Bachelor songsters: showing himself in the audience of his own concert, as the other him sings on stage. More on that to come.
It Didn’t Take That Long: For this one, there’s a lot less of every single thing that goes down in the previous song, and there’s no video so you have to look at a photo of him kinda looking like Cokehead Colin from 90210 the whole time, but it’s a bit more of a slow, polished ballad, and just sounds a little more professional to me.
He’s released three official albums, including one on iTunes, so jump on the rampaging Wes Hayden bandwagon and check out his official site through here.
Ashley Willis: Prince Lorenzo’s Season
I’m not the first to tackle Ashley Willis’ musical career, nor the first who would like to tackle her as soon as she begins singing. Her, um, interesting croons to Bachelor Prince Lorenzo were documented by both Talk Soup and Chelsea Handler, whom my mom one time called a “shipwreck,” and I was like, “Mom, don’t you mean a ‘train wreck?,’” and my mom was all, “no, look at her hair and awful shirt, she looks like she’s been stranded on a desert island for eight weeks.” And she was 100% right.
In the above vid, she (Ashley, not my mom) does an interview for a TV channel that definitely doesn’t exist with a guy who may very well be Kasey’s brother. It’s weird: she’s definitely not terrible, and that’s coming from someone was once booed off karaoke while singing Girls Just Wanna Fun in falsetto. But she’s not at all good from a technical standpoint either. Everything sounds like it’s pretty strong, but just like a note or two off in all different directions all the way through. Blend pointed out that she does all those things that American Idol people do — the trills, the go-down-deep-and-get-it move — but that they all just serve to make her sound much worse, instead of much more deserving of votes over Pia Toscano.
Somehow, probably because she’s hot, she knows Jeremy Piven. And somehow, probably because she’s hot and banging at least one of them, she sang at Piven’s birthday party with him, apparent Miley Cyrus Band guitarist Jaco Caraco, and Matt Sorum, the GNR/Velvet Revolver drummer who plays guitar here because he’s just that much better at playing any instrument than any of these people. She freely admits it’s “in a key that is much too high.” She doesn’t admit whether or not she is even capable of fixing that. Somehow, this amazing find only has 87 views, at least 15 of which are mine.
The Bottom: While not nearly as rewarding as the above, this pro-ish music video with heavily produced vocals is still pretty fun because she shows off her own bottom quite a bit and pretends to play the guitar. While I personally find the song itself fairly grating, she really doesn’t sound bad at all.
And here’s what started all the furor, along with Joel McHale/that shipwreck Chelsea Lately tearing her up, if you haven’t seen it.
Michael Nance: Hot Emily’s Season
Vampire Michael is also good! I think he’s got a little Jack Johnson thing going on, while a bunch of YouTube commenters think he has a little Jason Mraz think going on, which I’m sure I’d totally agree with if I knew who that was. In addition to an album of some sort that just came out called Roll With the Punches, he’s got a shitload of YouTube vids, and while most of them feature him with his shirt off, I dug deep enough to find a couple that didn’t.
The Heezy: Lower budget than Wes’s, with a hotter chick who kinda kinda looks like a poor man’s Frieda Pinto. Yes, I realize the dude from Slumdog was about as poor as people get, but it’s just something people say. At first I thought he was playing a mandolin, then I realized it was just a little toy guitar for kids. That said, he plays it pretty well. He reprises the Wes move of walking through his own concert, although this one is far less Back to the Future II-quality. In case you didn’t know, “heezy” is how the cool people say “house.”
The Men Tell All Call Me Maybe Parody: So this is the one in which he makes fun of the other dudes to the tune of that song Ryan Lochte likes. He gets in some decent shots at Doug, Talon, and Football Ryan, and unless I’m hearing it wrong, he also implies that Emily dated Alessandro’s cousin, who may or may not be Alejandro. He also says that there’s a vampire in the house, proving I was right about him the whole time.
Sunshine: This video’s weird because it’s just a black and white photo of him wearing lipstick that changes colors every few seconds. Decent song though, you can’t deny that he knows how to make the shit catchy.
Check out Michael’s website here for streaming tracks and more videos and photos of him with his shirt off.
Ty Brown: Ali’s Season
“Wanna tie me up with some of your ties, Ty?” That’s what some totally awesome chick who knows all the lines from Caddyshack probably said to Ty after one of his shows, because he’s pretty good too! Another country boy, he doesn’t have any music videos aside from the above-type stuff with him singing in the studio while wearing sweet headphones, but he does have a song on iTunes (it’s also streamable from his website) called Wanted Man, which outlines how he’s not actually a criminal, but that this woman makes him feel like said wanted man, either because she’s framing him for felonies, or because it’s clever wordplay, and she just “wants” him and he’s a man.
He’s honestly not terrible at rapping either, although this might be a different Ty Brown.
Phil Costello: No Season, Doesn’t Need One
And while he’s never been on the Bachelorette to his knowledge, Phil Costello is definitely the best singer of this or any bunch.
This is probably the best roundup of singing Bachelors and Bachelorettes since that 1950s musical where a bunch of bachelors and bachelorettes did a lot of singing.
Oh, Cats? Yep, totally agree.