How figure skaters choose their music, explained with Adam Rippon

The 1932 Olympics was the first time
figure skating was set to music. It was live music. The skaters didn't get to
choose the songs, the orchestra just played the same one over and over. Fast
forward to today, music is very much the heart of figure skating and custom-made
for each performance.

Oh, but It wouldn't be a
figure skating competition if there was no Swan Lake, if there was no Don Quixote,
if there was no Carmen. This is Adam Rippon. He's the 2016 national champion and
2018 Olympian. He has ever competed in,
he says there was at least one skate set to Carmen.

I mean we love our Carmen what
can I say? And he's right. There was the infamous battle of the Carmens in the
1988 Olympics. German skater Katarina Witt and an
American skater Debi Thomas both performed their long program to Carmen. It's time to compare Carmens.

I've skated to Carmen so I mean like I'm guilty of
my own charge. So, what makes Carmen Carmen is an
opera written by a french composer Georges Bizet about a gypsy girl named
Carmen. So it's not just one song called Carmen, it's actually dozens of songs and
the most recognizable is probably... But you probably have heard of this one...

This one... And this one. You get the point. This is...

Carmen is often sassy and flirty and as
you can see, lots of skaters take advantage of that. But her story ends
tragically when she's stabbed to death by her rejected lover. With Carmen, Hugo and other music designers
can explore a full range of emotions. This structure allows skaters to start strong
with jumps, grabbing people's attention.

In the slower section, skaters can
show more of a vulnerable side and also save energy for the big finale For my short program I wanted to do
something that was a really upbeat that would get the crowd like on their feet,
everybody clapping. And then in the free skate I wanted to
show like a softer side, I wanted to show off my lyrical skating style. That's why operas are so popular
in figure skating. It's divided into acts with a clear story line.

We're
gluttons for punishment, because you know we'll roll our eyes at
somebody skating to Carmen and then on the complete flipside of that, every year
we'll go to our choreographer and we'll be like what do you think of this? It's Carmen. But this long era of Carmen might be coming to an end. In 2014 the International Skating Union changed the music rules to allow skaters
to skate to music with lyrics. It was an attempt to appeal to a younger audience,
so skaters like Jimmy Ma have traded in Bizet for...

Lil' John. When we were given
the option to skate to music with lyrics, it opened it up to any piece of music
you could ever want to skate to. Now with more freedom and access to all kinds of
music, they're looking for their new Carmen. Will it be Lil' Jon? You never
know.

I found throughout my whole entire
career that if you see somebody doing something that they really love to do, that really translates so much, that even if you're not a big fan of the music you
just enjoy that person enjoying what they're doing. And maybe this rule change
will spur a new era in skating, like 1932 Olympics when the sport was still new. And the official report quotes,.