If you’ve been keeping up with the 2018 Winter Olympics, you know the event is as exciting as ever. The Pyeongchang location is putting extra attention on the Olympics, for one thing. It’s not every day that North and South Korean officials shake hands! But when it comes down to it, the incredible athletes and exciting completions are what keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

Skating events are always a big draw, and they’re making history this time around. For instance, Mirai Nagasu became the American female skater — and only third woman from any country — to perform the notoriously difficult triple axel at the Olympics. Amazing!

If you’re a really good listener, you’ll notice another history-making change during figure skating events: songs with words. That’s right, 2018 is the first Olympics where figure skaters are allowed to perform their routines set to music that includes singing.

Classical instrumental music pieces like Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Bizet’s Carmen have long been popular as background accompaniment to figure skating. But now, the athletes are no longer limited to soft strings or tinkling piano music. The sky’s the limit!

Change is nothing new for figure skating. The sport is associated with great female athletes like Michelle Kwan and Tonya Harding, and now Nagasu. But according to the Smithsonian Institution, it started out as more of a men’s activity. When the International Skating Union (founded in 1892) hosted the first world championship in 1896, only men competed.

The first woman, Madge Syers, competed in 1902 only because of a technicality — the rules at that time didn’t specifically bar women. The ISU quickly made that restriction official. But when the Winter Olympics began in 1924, women’s skating was included. In fact, it was the only women’s Winter Olympic sport until 1936.

Figure skating also used to be more about actual figures — as in scratching pictures into the ice. Early competitions features skaters producing “ice drawings,” like hearts and spirals. Overall, the emphasis was on art more than athletics, at first.

Here we are in 2018. A lot has changed in the sport of figure skating! The addition of music with vocals definitely adds a modern touch to figure skating competitions, but it’s surprising to see how much overlap there is in the song choices. Several competitors are using the same or related songs. Why the overlap? It’s partly because everything is planned so far ahead of time. If it turns out your competition is using the same music, it’s just too late to change.

Keeping it a little conservative is probably a good idea from the judge’s standpoint. If the music’s too distracting, it can take away from how a skater’s performance is perceived. But if two competitors do end up using the same music, any flaws in the performance will be even more noticeable because of the inevitable comparison.

So, the musical options may have expanded, but the competition is as fierce as ever. To find out the most popular song choices to accompany figure skating this year, check out the video below! If you’ve been watching the skating events, what kind of an impact do you think the new music has on the competitions?