The Russian Dolls made Masked Singer history this season as the first band to ever compete on the show. The judging panel played dumb and guessed that it might be Sugarland, Boyz II Men, Barenaked Ladies, Savage Garden, or even Devo inside those wide-eyed wooden vessels… but surely Golden Ear-winning judge Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg recognized those beautiful brotherly harmonies from when the doll-faced former teen idols played unplugged on her MTV variety show in 1997.
Those instantly identifiable voices hadn’t gone through any Peter Brady-style transformation in the years since, and the trio’s diehard fans — or “Fansons,” as they are fondly known — recognized them straight away, when producers made the massive mistake of leaking one of the Russian Dolls’ performances early March. And on Wednesday’s top five episode, after host Nick Cannon struggled to unscrew the domed head off probably the heaviest and most cumbersome costume in Masked Singer history, out hatched Isaac, Taylor, and Zac Hanson, looking as adorable as they did in their TRL heyday.
