Kesha Just Joined the Weirdest Show

Would you like another singing competition to watch this summer? Of course you would! What else will fill your power ballad void? But what if I told you there was a new singing competition coming to ABC with the most random amalgam of judges ever? That's right: Rising Star will feature Kesha, Ludacris, and Brad Paisley as judges. Your host is the angel-voiced Josh Groban. Your eyes are not deceiving you. This is coming to your television on June 22.

The show comes to you from Israel's Keshet and Dick Clark Productions' partnership, Keshet DCP, which is the same group that's bringing you the appropriately-titled Boom! , which in case you forgot, is like the Hurt Locker-24 game show with bombs. Fun for the whole family! While Rising Star surely sounds more promising, it seems like it's ABC's attempt to get a grip on the singing competition genre; FOX has the musical behemoth known as American Idol and NBC has The Voice. There's nothing yet that clearly sets Rising Star apart from these other shows, except that we get the privilege of banding together Kesha, Ludacris, Brad Paisley, and Josh Groban for ONE COMMON GOAL: REALITY TELEVISION. (I salute you, ABC.)

While these folks may seem like odd choices, they're actually no strangers to television. Kesha had her MTV show Kesha: My Crazy Beautiful Life , Brad Paisley has co-hosted The Country Music Awards, and Ludacris is about to host the Billboard Music Awards. Groban was tapped to replace Regis Philbin for a period of time, because when you think "contemporary adult opera music" you also think "talk show with Kelly Ripa."

But there's something we need to briefly address: does anyone else notice this pattern? An edgy blonde singer who occasionally puts random colors in her hair, a hip-hop/R&B mainstay, and a country singer? I think I've seen this before... on The Voice...

Anyway, if Rising Star just gives us a handful of awesome power ballads, there's no doubt that this will be an easy guilty pleasure for the summer, but there's always the other less optimistic option: that it fades away like ABC's ill-fated Duets (shudders with memories).

We'll have to see come June 22.