SOCHI, Russia — The music you hear during the figure skating competition this week is the sound of an era ending.
Next season, new rules will allow men, women and pairs skaters to use vocal music with lyrics in their programs. That could mean arias, rap, Springsteen ballads, Adele love songs, Daft Punk incantations, whatever.
The move, designed in large part to appeal to a younger audience, may seem overdue to anyone who has noticed figure skating’s popularity decline sharply in recent years. Less “Moonlight Sonata,” the thinking goes, and more “Call Me Maybe.”
“We have to innovate,” said Katia Krier, a coach with France’s figure skating team. “Our sport is already losing viewers, but we have to give people the desire to watch us. I think this could help.
Continue reading the main story“It’s a double-edged sword, of course. We have to be careful not to go over the top, but if music with lyrics is used well, it can really bring something more.”
Ice dancing, the fourth of the Olympic figure skating disciplines, has allowed music with lyrics since the late 1990s, in part because coaches found it difficult to find suitable music without words for certain genres. Synchronized skating, which is not in the Olympics, also permits it. Now the sport’s traditional disciplines will have a new set of musical standards, although there will be no obligation for skaters to choose vocal music. The new rule simply gives them the option, but there is still resistance to the change.
There is concern about conflating competitive skating with exhibition skating, which has long used popular music with lyrics in abundance. There is concern about alienating the established fan base and about controlling the content in an era with plenty of explicit lyrics.
“It’s still a family sport, and we do have to be careful with what music we use,” said Jason Dungjen, coach of the United States team.
The sport’s world governing body, the International Skating Union, has a code of ethics that could be applied to skaters who push past the boundaries. But there is also the worry that the new music choices will damage the sport’s credibility.
“I am not a person who is elitist in any way,” said Kori Ade, who coaches Jason Brown, the American skater who finished ninth in the Sochi Games last week. “I’m all about inclusion, and all about diversity, and all about hip-hop. I mean, that’s me. But I think that there is something so regal about skating that might not carry with Top 40.
“I think it’s not going to come off well. I think it’s going to come off really corny. And even though people don’t have to do it, I’m afraid people are going to attempt it poorly, and then it will make the sport look even stupider.”
With instrumental pieces, skaters are essentially providing the narrative with their routine. Now it might become more complicated as skaters must decide how to or whether to act to the words. Occasional kitsch is a certainty, but as Krier points out, “There’s already kitsch without lyrics.”
Kurt Browning, the former world champion from Canada, said he thought the potential rewards and risks would be magnified.
“Lyrics and words artistically are an opportunity,” Browning said. “But it’s also a bigger chance to screw up. So we’ll have to see how smart some of them are. I think some of the lower guys can really bring some attention to themselves, and the top guys have to be careful.”
Some of the lower-ranked skaters are resistant, too. Jorik Hendrickx, 21, from Belgium, skated his free program on Friday to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” a classic piece of instrumental music that has been done, and done, and then done some more in figure skating. But Hendrickx said that even with the lyrics option, he would like to stick with Gershwin.
“I love it, but if everyone is doing something special and I’m still doing ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ I’m not sure I will get the same scores,” he said. “This rule change is a big change, and I think a lot of skaters don’t like it.
“I mean, skating will be skating. It’s still jumping and spinning even if the music is different. They are trying to get more people and audience in it, but I think if you don’t like it without vocals, you’re not liking it with vocals, either.”
Perhaps not, but at this stage, skating happily onward to the sound of the status quo does not seem reasonable. Figure skating is suffering in North America and Europe and has an aging audience. One of its few thriving major markets is in Japan.
Fabio Bianchetti, an International Skating Union official, said the sport’s governing body had rejected previous attempts to approve lyrics for singles and pairs. But in 2012 it changed tack, approving the rule change by a two-thirds majority at its congress, to go into effect after this Olympic season. The move was also motivated, Bianchetti said, by the desire to encourage participation in the sport.
“The young people requested to have vocal music with lyrics because it is more connected to the music of today, and they like to skate to the music they are hearing,” said Bianchetti, a member of the governing body’s technical committee for singles and pairs skating.
Lili Gataullina, a 19-year-old from Kazan, Russia, who attended the ice dance on Monday night in Sochi, is part of the I.S.U.’s target audience. “Why not?” she said of the rule change. “I think if there are words they can be like a story, and the skaters can express their emotions even more. So I think that’s a good idea, and tonight, I liked the ones who were dancing with music with lyrics.”
Laura Sciarrillo, a 24-year-old spectator from Milan, said that she was often distracted when skaters used instrumental versions of popular songs.
“Sometimes, I think if they would have used the real version of the song, it would have been way better,” she said. “So I think it will be a good thing to make it younger. Because right now, it’s not old, but there are some pretty settled ideas.”
A few rebels have tested the rules in the past. Browning said that in 1988, he kept the word “Tequila” in place when he skated one of his programs to the otherwise instrumental song of the same name.
“I never got a deduction from the judges,” he said.
Florent Amodio, the flamboyant French skater now coached by Krier, performed a Michael Jackson medley — words included — during the 2011-12 season and happily lived with the automatic deduction for the sake of his art.
But such bold gestures have been the exception. On Friday night, there was a Beatles medley performed by Daisuke Takahashi of Japan that had no Beatles voices to accompany it.
Such Muzak moments, presumably, are ending, and though figure skating has other problems — garish costumes, affordability and ferocious competition from traditional and emerging sports — its leaders are betting that it is worth the risk to give teenagers and teenagers at heart what they seem to want.
After all, guess what was playing at the Iceberg Skating Palace to entertain the crowd as the ice was cleaned during intermissions at the men’s free skate?
Music with lyrics.
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