“The Masked Singer” has narrowed it down to its final two contestants for the season finale, but unfortunately, that meant saying goodbye to Clock on Wednesday night. And we really don’t want to leave her this way.
To kick off the semifinals, the remaining three contestants — Clock, Gumball and Goldfish — performed a group rendition of “Higher Love” by Kygo and Whitney Houston, before launching into their solo performances. In a weird way, that song ended up being a clue to the identity of Clock (though no, the two aren’t actually related. More on that momentarily).
Gumball went first, singing his heart out to One Direction’s “I Lived.” Then came Clock, who sang “Dancing In The Street,” before Goldfish sang “You Oughta Know.” To finish off the show, the three then competed in an ultimate battle royale, singing Kelly Clarkson’s “A Moment Like This.”
In the end though, it was Clock that was sent packing, sending Gumball and Goldfish to the finals. So, who was under the Clock mask? Well, as we hinted above, it was indeed a Houston — Thelma Houston.
Best known for her hit song “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” the 78-year-old was unmasked as the timepiece, and as it turns out, she’s wanted to be on “The Masked Singer” for a long time. In fact, her first reaction to getting the call was simple: “Yaaaaaaay!”
“Listen, I’ve wanted to do the show. Because to me, it just looks like so much fun,” Houston explained to TheWrap. “And the other part of it that I liked is that, the people get to do — it seemed before I did it, and that proved to be true — you do songs that you might not ordinarily do, at least with me anyway. And I like challenges. So, for me, it was all gravy.”
According to the singer, her favorite song to perform was actually during “TV Theme Songs” night, when she performed the theme to “Good Times.” And yes, she did try to disguise her voice so longtime fans wouldn’t recognize her. But, Houston says she quickly gave up on trying to do that.
“Let me tell you, after a while, you’re just trying to remember those words,” she said with a laugh. “You’re just trying to remember ‘OK, I’m supposed to be over here. OK, now the panelists’ here. Now, where’s the teleprompter?’ You’re just trying to figure things out. And so, to try to, you know, change your voice and all that, after that first time, I couldn’t. I couldn’t concentrate so much on trying to change the voice.”
“The Masked Singer” airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.