The X Factor takes over saturday night viewing in our house and to be honest its getting to a point now with six "performers" left where the cream is rising to the top and the dross is struggling - or at least that is the theory.On Saturday night there were two outstanding acts, Leona who has been consistently the best singer bar none right through the rounds, and Robert who has been very shaky some weeks and twice has had to sing for his supper at the end.
They were both head and shoulders above the rest and were both rightly voted through to the next round but all six of the acts are now showing themselves to be fairly un-versatile one trick ponies, even Leona who should be declared winner right now has not performed in anything other than a Whitney/Maria clone stylee.
The rest of them are just the best of a poor bunch.
Raymond, the twelve year old with a seventy year old's love of swing music will struggle to perform in any other genre, I predict that he may be the next one to go if Simon Cowell persists in introducing a big band element into his performance next week - he will then tour the UK's nursing homes performing for old ladies would will pinch his cheeks and tell him what a lovely little boy he is.
Robert can belt out a soul song as he showed on saturday, but as he has also shown, when he performs a song that is outside his skill level he wallows in complete confusion and embarrasment and he also sounds far too much like Frank Bruno to ever be taken seriously by an audience, he will not make the final and will disappear from the TV radar , appearing in panto as a Frank substitute.
Ben is starting to annoy me now, I wish he would stand upright when he sings instead of bending double on stage as if trying to force out a particularly wide and nobbly turd. His voice is suitable only for a "stadium soft rock" band of the sort favoured by mid-american college students, but he is twenty years too late in his application form, a return to a career erecting marquees while singing to himself is what he should be focussing upon.
And then we come to Louis Walsh's two groups, and deary me are these two scraping the bottom of the talent barrell.
Eton Road are right up Louis Walsh's street, another poor impression of a boy band, several years after the last of the boy bands were thrown on the scrap heap of pop stardom by the twelve year old girls who once worshipped them. The big difference between Eton road and (for instance) Westlife is of course that Eton Road are crap but dear old Louis can't see it - he chose the Beatles song "From me to you" on saturday for them and it was quite frankly appalling, a terrible choice of a song in the "love" genre where he could have chosen anything. When The Beatles had a hit with the song in '63 it was new and fresh and only two minutes long, on Saturday it was corny and badly delivered by a group of young boys who had no idea of what they were doing - they could well be the next ones to go if Louis makes another terrible decision like last saturdays.
And finally, the McDonald Brothers. Words fail me. Prior to X Factor they were making a few quid every weekend singing at weddings and their ambitions should have stopped right there, where drunken guests never actually listen to them and would dance to a screaming cat when they've drunk the bar dry. The Scottish vote has kept them in the competition so far and will continue to do so right through (I fear) to the final and if that happens then they could actually win the competition - this is not as stupid as it sounds, remember Michelle Mcmanus the zeppelin sized scottish bird who won X Factor a couple of years ago ? No ? Well its not suprising really, the Scottish vote won her the competition then, and she sunk without trace, which isn't that difficult to do when you're 35 stone.
The competition should be about talent, there is one talented singer in there at the moment, but now its about young girls and old ladies voting for the act that they'd like to meet in a shopping mall or in the common room of their residential home.
It'll be worth the Wedding SIngers winning it just to watch Simon Cowell storm off stage in the final though.
2 comments:
Louis Walsh represents everything I hate about modern mainstream music. He simply does not have a clue about music. But he does know what he can sell to the masses.
I think that is all that is left of "mainstream music" now - "what can we sell to 12 year olds ?"
If you put a gun to my head I could not tell you the name of an act who had appeared in the charts this year but I'd have a stab at one of Louis Walsh's prefab "bands" being there.
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