{"id":621405,"date":"2026-09-11T12:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621405\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T12:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:50:12","slug":"how-the-music-for-dancing-with-the-stars-comes-together-every-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621405\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Music for ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Comes Together Every Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOne of America\u2019s most beloved and long-running competition shows, Dancing With the Stars<\/a>, begins its 35th season on Sept. 15 and 16 on ABC and Disney +. Though every season brings a new slate of stars \u2014 including Ciara Miller, Julia Stiles, Amber Glenn and Jenna Dewan for this fall\u2019s cast \u2014 Dancing With the Stars has had one constant over the last 17 seasons: music director Ray Chew.<\/p>\n

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\n\tChew, leading a 14 piece band, has played an instrumental role in modernizing the music of the show, taking it from a classic ballroom feel to one that reacts in real time to pop culture trends. He\u2019s led his crew of musicians through a recreation of hit Broadway musical Wicked, a night of TikTok viral hits and just about every genre, tempo and style.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo pull it off is no easy feat. DWTS is shot in real time, and the music director tells Billboard his average show day begins at 3:30 AM, and doesn\u2019t end until the show wraps that evening. Throughout the week, his team is also racing against the clock to create arrangements for songs the choreographers are picking in real time, a process he lovingly refers to as \u201cunbaking the cake,\u201d or trying to sleuth out each element of the song so that his musicians can rework it in a matter of days. <\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, the show\u2019s music supervisor, Nancy Severinsen, is working to clear the rights for the songs, which, as Chew explains, doesn\u2019t always work. \u201cTo clear one song, it could have two writers, [or] it could even have seven publishers,\u201d Chew explains. \u201cYou got to contact everybody, and everybody\u2019s not waiting around on their phone to be contacted. Some of the music clearance happen right up until the last minute.\u201d He notes that even on the Wicked night they have to rework their original plans to satisfy the vision of the original rights holders of the music. <\/p>\n

\n\tStill, Chew takes it all stride \u2014 he knows how to work under the pressure of live TV. He got his start in the band for Saturday Night Live<\/a> back in the 1980s, and then has gone on to music direct everything from the Grammy Awards, Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Miss Universe, the Emmys, the BET Awards, American Idol, Showtime at the Apollo and more. Dancing With the Stars, however, he says is like a \u201cunicorn\u201d for live TV.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs using live musicians becomes increasingly less common, the dance competition is a bright spot, which one of the largest, if not the largest, live bands on screen today. \u201cIt\u2019s a blessing,\u201d Chew says. \u201cIt\u2019s a blessing.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tTo discuss how the show comes together every week, and the important, but little understood, role that music directors hold, Chew joined Billboard\u2019s music industry podcast On the Record.<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the episode on YouTube, or read an condensed and edited version of the conversation below.<\/p>\n

\n\tBillboard: Can you walk me through the timeline of a week on Dancing With the Stars?<\/p>\n

\n\tRay Chew: Our show day is Tuesday. Wednesday is when we get our assignments. Now, it would be great if we could get in front of this a lot more, but we can\u2019t because it\u2019s a contest. We don\u2019t know who may or may not be on the show. So, yes, they may know what they want to do, but we may not know that they\u2019re going to do it. So Wednesday, I get the assignment. I take a song, a very popular song, and I have to deconstruct it. The process I actually call \u201cunbake the cake.\u201d I have to figure out what\u2019s in that sauce, what\u2019s in that gravy, what makes that really move and tick. Why do people love it? What\u2019s that signature sound that you can\u2019t be without? Nobody\u2019s handing us these ingredients. We have to go in and figure out what\u2019s in that song. Is there a special sound in there? A special synthesizer? What\u2019s happening? And in particular, the vocal. So for the vocalist, we have to do what we call vocal shaping. All right, so if we have a song that is very popular, you don\u2019t want to be out of character. You\u2019ve got to meet the character. Sometimes it\u2019s in all the nuance.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo my prep week starts on Wednesday. We get the song list on Wednesday. At the same time, we have to deconstruct the song. So, 16 songs, right? You have to go through them one by one. That takes hours and hours of work, just trying to take one song and figure out what\u2019s going on in there. Now we have to start doing arrangements for those songs, and that takes days. So we have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to prepare everything we need to do, and then Saturday we have a full-band rehearsal.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Saturday we have our band\u2014the singers, musicians, everybody\u2014assembled in the ballroom. We have to go through all the songs and make sure that everything is correct. We also have to make sure our audio team hears all the things, because a Frank Sinatra song is not going to sound the same as a Katy Perry song.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow have you seen the show evolve since you got started with it?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, the audience has certainly gotten a lot younger and a lot more engaged. I think when I started with the show, it had already been running for 10 years, so it had a very established audience, and it was really a ballroom-type sound with a very traditional presentation. When I came in, I think it was at a turning point where they really wanted to contemporize this stuff. We had to say, \u201cHey, man, we\u2019ve got to talk to a younger audience. We\u2019ve got to do some songs that are younger and bouncier and have a different thing.\u201d And we\u2019ve evolved into that completely now.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou guys are now also airing Dancing With the Stars on streaming services. Does that impact how the run of show goes on the day of?<\/p>\n

\n\tNot for us. But two seasons ago \u2014 or three seasons ago, during the pandemic \u2014 we had to reconfigure everything just to get the show presented at all, because everybody had to be in different quadrants. We couldn\u2019t be in the same space. It was a lot, even just trying to get the show going. That\u2019s when they started doing the streaming. Now that we have a dual package to present, the streaming doesn\u2019t necessarily impact what we do. We do what we do, and then they stream it.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the day of the performance, what is that timeline like for you? <\/p>\n

\n\tWell, it starts with the night before. I have to go to bed at 9 o\u2019clock, which is totally against my whole body. But it\u2019s because I have to get up at 3:30. Then we have to be on set at 5 or 5:30 sometimes, I have to allow time because you never know. You\u2019re expecting no traffic at 4 in the morning, but you never know. We have our entire music team, which is 14 musicians and singers, and we\u2019re expected to be on. When I say \u201con,\u201d I mean it has to sound as live and as great as it can. You can\u2019t say, \u201cwell, we\u2019re waking up and we know we\u2019re going to get it going.\u201d No, you get it going. You\u2019re going at 5:30.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe start at 5:30. We do a rehearsal of some of the revisions they may have wanted. They\u2019ll tell us, \u201cHey, I need a little of this over the weekend,\u201d so we have notes, and we\u2019ll start with that. Then the dance teams come in at 7. We\u2019ll do a camera block with them until about 12, and then at 12 we take a lunch break. We do a dress rehearsal from 1 to 4:30, and then we go on air live at 5:30.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt seems like a luxury in TV today to get to work with 14 musicians \u2014 live musicians \u2014 week after week. I could imagine some productions just wanting to cut costs and be like, \u201cwell, a master recording is good enough. We\u2019ll just license that.\u201d Have you seen TV shows change over time in their willingness to hire live musicians?<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is the dinosaur. Well, I don\u2019t want to say dinosaur \u2014 It\u2019s a unicorn. We\u2019re a unicorn because I don\u2019t see any other show that do this. Some of the other shows continue to have live music, but it\u2019s not 14 musicians. All credit goes to the fact that there\u2019s an appetite for this sound. The audience is loving it. When I went to the Dancing With the Stars convention, the fans were coming up to me. I was like, \u201cwow, this is beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comment I got most was, \u201cWe love what you do,\u201d because anybody can play a master recording. We hear that all the time. We\u2019re bringing a different life to the song.<\/p>\n

\n\tHave you ever had a musician who you\u2019ve covered on the show reach out to you and say thanks, or that they loved the cover you performed on the show?<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, I\u2019ve had that a lot. We did Janet Jackson<\/a> week, and Janet Jackson also made a video appearance, but the producers of that project are Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. They\u2019re very special. I know these guys, and I was like, I am not going to not make \u2014 by the way, I give the same attention to everything, but I was like, \u201cyou know what? I know these guys are watching, so let me make sure every little thing that I can think of is as good as possible.\u201d The good news is that they contacted me afterward. Jimmy Jam said, \u201cHey man, you did us right on that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of America\u2019s most beloved and long-running competition shows, Dancing With the Stars, begins its 35th season on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[13724,21183,93,61,60,90996,5195,282],"class_list":["post-621405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bbnews","tag-dancing-with-the-stars","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade","tag-saturday-night-live","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}