‘The Masked Singer’s Mushroom on Fooling the Panel — & His Kids

Meredith Jacobs December 17, 2020, 10:30 am

The Masked Singer Season 4 Mushroom Finale Performance — Michael Becker/FOX

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Season 4 finale of The Masked Singer, “Last Mask Standing.”]

The runner-up of The Masked Singer Season 4 accomplished his goal: keeping the panel in the dark about his identity.

The December 16 finale revealed the winner and unmasked the remaining three contestants, each of whom was at least one of the panelists’ final guesses: LeAnn Rimes’ Sun took first, Aloe Blacc’s Mushroom came in second, and Nick Carter’s Crocodile walked away with third.

“I had so much fun,” Blacc, who did everything he could to confuse the panelists, from his costume to disguising his voice, tells TV Insider. “It was a wonderful opportunity to share my voice in a very, very unique way.”

Here, the singer-songwriter behind Mushroom takes us inside his Masked journey.

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What made this season the right time for you to do The Masked Singer?

Aloe Blacc: Mainly because I wasn’t going to be on the road, traveling to do a lot of things. It was just down the street from my house in Los Angeles, so that made it super convenient.

Also, I just released an album, All Love Everything, all about togetherness and connection. This particular performance and the outfit I was wearing and the concept of the show fit very well for this moment and sharing [that] idea.

The Masked Singer Season 4 Mushroom Aloe Blacc

(Michael Becker/FOX)

Was the costume an easy pick?

A very easy pick. I had the option of a few different costumes — I think I had the option of the Broccoli — but ultimately I chose the Mushroom because it just felt like it was going to be something completely different from who I would present and rather than do something that was very masculine or that was very classy like a suit and a hat. I wanted to do something that was very different to throw everyone off the trail.

The Mushroom has a stem, so the costuming lent itself to a skirt. Then I had this concept when I got on stage of playing this role, this character of my daughter, and using very feminine movements. It helped to really confuse a lot of the panel and the audience for quite some time.

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You said your daughter hadn’t known you were doing this.

There was one moment when we were watching an episode and she heard my voice, and said, “That kind of sounded like Daddy for a second.” My son whispered to my wife that he thought he heard my voice for a second as well.

Did you come into the competition with any of the songs you performed on your must-do list?

I came in thinking I wanted to do songs that were the female-power-ballad kind that would allow me to use my voice in a different way that most people wouldn’t recognize. Out of all the songs I chose, the ones that indicated who I was the most were probably the smackdown, where I sang the Donny Hathaway song, and my finale performance. I got most of the songs I wanted actually. I was pretty lucky.

Was there a specific performance that gave you the sense you’d make it far into the season?

I thought that my performance of the Maxwell version of Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” would be the song that could get me there.

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You were almost successful in fooling the panel. Looking back, is there anything you wish you’d switched up or done differently?

I’m really happy with how far I made it without them figuring it out. The show is really fun, and I did have a little bit of a competitive spirit where I wanted for the panel to be guessing all the way to the end and maybe not even figure out who I was. But in the end I was just having so much fun singing these songs that, ultimately, it didn’t matter how far I made it.

So what’s your takeaway from the overall experience?

It was just one of these moments in a difficult time in our world and our country where we all came together with music to share a moment of joy, really. I find that music is a universal language. It brings a lot of people together from many different corners of the country and the world, and The Masked Singer is helping to bring us together in a major way.