The X Factor (Series 14)

So The X Factor continues to… well, continue.

The X Factor (Series 13)

Remember all those big changes The X Factor made last year? Well, they’d prefer it if you didn’t! 2015’s X Factor was very glossy and trying to be epic. This time they were downsizing, scaling back, going back to basics, retconning all the changes last year and getting rid of arena auditions in favour of the 4 judges in a small room.

Last year’s judges panel was focused on youth, attractiveness and relevance. This year the focus was more on nostalgia, familiarity and senescence. To be fair, it does seem to be where things are heading generally. The E.U Referendum showed that it was no empty threat when old people said “I want my country back!”. That’s only going to be phase one. Next they’ll be voting to pass a law to impose a curfew on anyone under 70 being on the streets after sunset like Grampa Simpson and his friends in ‘Wild Barts Can’t Be Broken’. Phase three will be launching an army of zombie grannies to break into those homes like the ones in the Father Ted episode ‘Night Of The Nearly Dead’. The future’s grey folks, the future’s grey.

The judges panel went back to its original line-up from the first 3 series, with Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne, but they still kept 4 judges rather than going back to 3, and the 4th one was series 9-10 judge Nicole Scherzinger. She ditched performing as Grizabella in Cats on Broadway for this. (Ironically, her replacement in that was Leona Lewis!)

Nicole was the least awful of the judges. She sang a diva medley in one of the live shows and was seen at a pub gig for one her acts. She pulled pints and threw packets of pork scratchings for everyone! She could be irritating at times though, with her “Scheramazing” and “Scheramazeballs” nonsense.

The panel were like a family in a way. Simon was like the pompous elder, smugly sat holding court in a tatty arm chair with tape on it and fluff coming out as if it’s a throne. Sharon was like a tetchy great aunt who can’t remember how old everyone is or who they are, and couldn’t care less anyway. Louis was like a dead family dog that has been sent to the taxidermist and is now being used as a coffee table. Nicole was like a drunken in-law who insists on making a scene and everyone’s mortified and tries to ignore it and not say anything.

Dermot O’Leary was back as the presenter, which I think is the best reversal. Olly Murs and Caroline Flack were a bit of a disaster, and Dermot O’Leary is definitely a safe pair of hands.

A highlight of the series came in the audtion stages, with Sada Vidoo, a “living doll”. She wears white make-up, long eyelashes and a ballgown. She has a great voice and gave a striking performance of Pat Benatar’s ‘Love Is A Battlefield’. It was her own arrangment of it too, as she is a professional musician. She got 4 Yes’s from the judges, but I’m not surprised she didn’t make it as far as the live shows. I could be wrong, but I suspect from her point of view it was just for publicity and from the shows point of view it was for entertaining tv. I don’t think either particularly wanted her to be a live show contestant. It’s not clear how she’d fit in for a start. They’d make her compromise on her image. I’m glad the show introduced a wider audience to her though.

The audition stages are a bit of a blur now, but there were too many lowlights to list, mostly involving the 6 Chair Challenge. The X Factor in general tends to play with the contestants emotions and humiliate them for a few minutes of OMG!CONTROVERSIAL!1 telly, but the 6 Chair Challenge really is the worst of it. One example was girlgroup Girl Next Door who were voted off, then bought back just to be voted off again.

Speaking of X Factor groups, aren’t X Factor group names awful? Two which didn’t make it to the live shows include girlgroup Skarl3t, a spelling which just screams “Username ‘Scarlet’ is already in use” doesn’t it? Then there’s boyband Yes Lad. I think that name was meant to invoke a “top ladz bantz” sort of image, which is a bit obnoxious in itself. But, being from Yorkshire, the name “Yes Lad” mostly makes me think of old men telling you that you are correct, but in quite a stern way.

No surprise that every group of the initial final 12 line-up changed their names (though what they changed to wasn’t any better).

In some ways, the final 12 looked like it was chosen as a way of redressing some balances. They had all male groups and all female Over 25s. Considering the rather aged judges panel, it was a young final 12. Obviously the Boys and Girls were going to be 16-24, but the groups usually have some people in their late 20s, and this time they were all 16-24. Even the Over 25s were still technically Millenials this year! The oldest finalist was Honey G, and at 35 she was still younger than the youngest judge, Nicole.

Brooks Way (formerly just The Brooks) were kicked off before the first live show. There were allegations made about one of them, so it was decided to remove them. The first set of twin finalists since Jedward, and they ended up performing even worse than they did!

Speaking of Jedward, it’s easy to forget now, but they weren’t officially called that when they were on the show. They were John & Edward, but the Jedward nickname stuck. They tried something similar with a duo getting the joke act role, Bradley & Ottavio who became Brattavio for the live shows. That name didn’t stick, and neither did they. They were out first. So they didn’t do as well as Jedward either!

Brattavio were hard to ignore in the audition stages. One reason was their costumes. Ottavio was dressed like a dicator crossed with an ice cream man, like some bizarre sci-fi villain that would be in late ’80s Doctor Who. Bradley looked like he’d tripped and fell over in a stationery cupboard and came out covered in gold star stickers, glitter and cellotape. The other reason was that the show devoted screentime to them relaying some argument they’d had about uncooked chicken. It was just… stupid, and went on and on.

Their performance on the first live show was the worst of the night, and rightly finished dead last in the first vote. To be completely fair to them, it’s not entirely their fault. Not entirely. I think the show saw them as having served their purpose so only wanted them as generic first week elimination. They were given neon safari staging, which had nothing really to do with either song in their medley ‘Boom Boom Boom Boom’ and ‘Barbie Girl’. If anything, it was similar to staging given to another X Factor duo who were eliminated first, Blonde Electra in series 11. It was also unhelpful as while Brattavio’s gaudy outfits stand out against most backgrounds, on that they blended into the overall mess, meaning the audience had even less chance of relating to them than ever. The overall effect of that performance was colour vomit. It hurt my eyes so much, it almost gave me a migraine watching it!

There’s really only room for one joke act per series on The X Factor, and if you contrast the treatment Honey G got (The pimp slot at the end of the show, her name in big letters in the background and a performance which mostly consisted of her spelling out her name), it couldn’t be any clearer which joke act the show wanted to sell. So Brattavio were out first, but they were always more reality TV types than potential popstars anyway. They’d been on Judge Rinder and Coach Trip before, and said they wanted to go on Celebrity Big Brother next.

Week 2’s eliminated contestant was Freddy Parker. As a contestant, he did a boring performance of ‘Killing Me Softly’ on the piano. I somewhat liked his performance of ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ though, even if it was the week he was eliminated. It was one of the most disheartening sing-off shows of the series. Saara finding herself there for the second week in a row looked like her spirit had been well and truly broken. The result went to deadlock, and Freddy went. It looks like he was very well liked among the contestants, many of them said how sad they were to see him go. I quite liked him. He works in a kennels, I used to work in a cattery, so maybe that’s one reason. But my highlight of his whole time on The X Factor came when he was in the bottom 3 in the week he went they cut to an advert break before annoucing who’d been saved by the lifeline vote. Freddy’s facial expression and eye rolling showed how aware he was at what an obvious attempt it was for the show to build up tension.

Birmingham singer Relley C had pretty much zero screentime before the live shows, but she gave my favourite performance in week 1 where she did a fantastic version of ‘Shackles (Praise You)’ by Mary Mary. It was nice to hear that song again! She showed her brilliant voice and I liked the gold staging it got too. But for the rest of her time on The X Factor she was styled as a old fashioned, competent soul diva singing old standards and ballads, so she probably got lost in the shuffle and was eliminated in week 3. It was a shame she went so early, she was one of the most talented vocalists this year. It is quite frustrating that she could have lasted at least an extra week, as not only would she have survived if it had gone to deadlock, she was very close to topping the lifeline vote in the week she went!

Gifty Louise had one of the weirdest X Factor arcs ever. She looked, sounded and already had the image of a ready-made popstar. In week 1 she performed ‘That’s My Girl’ by Fifth Harmony, which was an upcoming release at the time, similar to in series 11 when Fleur East performed ‘Uptown Funk’ before it had been offcially released in the UK. Then, in week 2 Gifty was given ‘Rockin’ Robin’, which is kind of kiddie novelty song isn’t it? In week 3 she sang a weepy Sam Smith ballad ‘Lay Me Down’ dressed in white and wearing a long blonde wig. If the intention was to make her look angelic, then I kind of love her for messing that up by dropping an F bomb live on TV while the results were announced.

In Halloween Week (sorry, “Fright Night”), she performed in the graveyard slot, performing first while Strictly Come Dancing (which was thrashing this series in the ratings) was still on BBC 1. She had another Fifth Harmony song, which was even more unknown than the last, ‘I’m In Love With A Monster’. It was actually my favourite performance of her’s, she did it well and I liked the whole creepy hotel staging with every door having number 13, gothic maids and apparently the Phantom of the Opera staying in each room.

But it landed Gifty in the bottom 3, and was the most shocking elimination in ages! She was always likely to end up the sing-off fairly early, as despite being a ready-made popstar, there isn’t much crossover with the sort of people who vote on The X Factor and the sort of people who buy pop music, and the producers surely know that. She was always quite low in the public vote, and her position didn’t seem to change much regardless of the very different sorts of songs they picked for her.

However, when Gifty ended up in the bottom 2, most of the judges voted to get rid of her, despite a clearly stronger vocal than her sing-off oponents 4 of Diamonds. The girlgroup would have been eliminated if the result had gone to deadlock. Gifty’s mentor Simon saved her, but at first he said Gifty as the one he wanted to eliminate! Freudian slip? There has been lots of speculation with this, that it might well have been something going on behind the scenes. Gifty later said she knew she was going on Sunday because of what someone told her on Saturday. I suppose she’s yet another cautionary tale for potential X Factor contestants.

4 Of Diamonds had been popular in the audtion stages, so were bought back as a replacement for Brooks Way. (Not to mention that 4 Of Diamonds were the only group with a decent name. They didn’t even have to change it when they made the live shows!). However, aside from goodwill from their big comeback, they were never popular in the vote, ending up in the bottom 3 for 3 weeks in a row. They might look good compared to the general low standard of X Factor groups, but seen by themselves they look very average. All of their performances were forgettable even before the show had ended, and even though they usually had a late slot in the running order. The most notable was a medley of ‘Lady Marmalade’ and ‘Bang Bang’. I can see why you’d connect those two songs. One had 2000s pop divas (Christina Aguilera, Mya, Pink and Lil Kim), one 2010s pop divas (Jessie J, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande). But a medley of them was never going to be coherent, not helped with the sailor and playing cards staging. I’d say it was a random mess, but a random mess would have been more interesting than what their performance was. They had no charisma or identity really, they were like cardboard scenery of a crowd of people used in an amateur dramatics play. They were just ‘there’ occupying space. In fact, that is their X Factor time isn’t it? A vacant space came up when Brooks Way were axed, so 4 Of Diamonds came along and filled it. I suppose what is quite interesting is the irony of the fact that in their first two sing-off appearances which they survived, they were bottom of the vote, but in the week they went, they weren’t bottom of the vote!

Everyone noticed that Sam Lavery‘s name could be written as S.Lavery. They say The X Factor is beyond parody these days, and a contestant named S.Lavery is the sort of name someone writing an X Factor satire would come up with. Sam had her fans, but I wasn’t one of them. I found her voice grating. It was tuneless and SHOUTY most of the time. It was like the sound of a car being chainsawed delivered at the volume of a foghorn. Her time in The X Factor seemed like it could be in an X Factor spoof too. Weeks of the judges heaping praise on her, then she fell in the bottom 3 and after that she was given a slow motion verion of ‘I Will Survive’ to sing, just to remind everyone she was in the bottom 3 last week. Then the annoucement of who was in the sing-off next week was dragged out with commercial breaks and guest star performances before they announced it so they could milk DRAMA at the possibility of girlfriend and boyfriend Emily and Ryan being in a sing-off together.

Sam’s elimination saw Sharon getting the deciding vote and suddenly changing her mind from Ryan to Sam. Had she accidentally took it to deadlock when she was supposed to send Ryan home, or was a producer shouting in her earpiece to vote for Sam when she had clearly been heading for voting Ryan out “because he’s been in the bottom 3” too many times? Either way, I felt sorry for Sam having to put up with all that even though I didn’t care for her voice, but she seemed to take it all well.

Ryan Lawrie had audtioned as a solo act, then was put in a boyband, then cut out again, then not put through, then bought back as one of the wildcards, but it seemed mainly as “Emily’s boyfriend”, as he and Emily were going out so the programme could use that as a storyline. I really don’t think they had much idea of how to use him other than that. I know he’s Scottish, but why in the pre-credits intros did they have him dressed as the other kind of jock, with that American high school sports jacket? They tried to have him as a sort of one boy One Direction at first, but that didn’t last. It became clear they saw him as expendable, shoving him on early in the running order and him getting an onslaught of negative comments from the judges. Ryan was in the bottom 3 for 3 weeks in a row, and saved by the lifeline vote each time, which seemed predictable as he was the one most likely to be fancied by teenage girls. Ryan seemed well aware of both of that the producers didn’t want him around and what his lifeline vote survival was seen as, and just looked resigned, so him lasting until week 7 and in the bottom 3 for 5 of those weeks was mildly depressing really. Ryan improved, but he was never really more than “OK”. He’d be alright as part of a bog standard indie rock band you’d probably get at a pub or a wedding reception, but not much more than that. In a strange way though, he was a bit unlucky to be in a series which had the lifeline vote. It meant there was a bottom 3 rather than a bottom 2 like most times, and he was only ever bottom 2 three times, and he was never last in the vote.

Every series needs a joke act. Every series we get a lot of indignation that they keep staying in, and what a farce it will be if they win, and a lot of smug, disingenuous hyperbole on how they are the saviour of Saturday night TV and what how it will totally stick it to Simon Cowell if one wins. And every series, it always turns out they never had any real chance of winning. This time it was Honey G. She was hyped up as gaining momentum each week and that she was growing on people. But in the public vote itself it was the opposite if anything. She was 4th place in week one, then dropped down the vote each week, just about avoiding the sing-off on some occasions.

She was essentially an attempt at a Distaff Counterpart to Ali G 15 years too late. Her real name is Anna Gilford, and she’s a 35 year old IT consultant and recruitment firm owner. That fact was well publicised, and in a way to make it look like it was exposing some big secret. What was less well publicised is that she’s been doing the Honey G persona for quite some time and she has a long background in club and radio DJing as Honey G, but that would spoil the joke wouldn’t it? The joke itself wasn’t funny to begin with. But the show sure as hell put their weight behind it, asking people sending in their pictures of their mums dressed as Honey G. That is, them wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, because that is such a unique look. Dermot at one point said something like “Send us pics of your dads or your pets dressed as Honey G”. They were milking this one joke untill the last drop. Mummy G, Daddy G, Granny G, Doggy G.

Honey G wasn’t even entertaining. Every single week it was basically just her saying “When I say Honey, you say G” at the audience. One week we spared that when she performed ‘Under Pressure/Ice Ice Baby’, and that’s only because David Bowie’s estate refused permission for Honey G to add lyrics to it.

But while for me she failed as a joke act and as an entertaining performer, her success as a talking point can’t be denied. She was a magnet for scandalous tabloid headlines and hand-wringing broadsheet thinkpieces, and that’s not even taking into account the tidal wave of tweets, blogs, comments online, or just people talking about her in real life. She really should have performed Cher Lloyd’s ‘Swagger Jagger’.

In her final week, on her first performance was mainly memorable because some bozos did a stage invasion at the end of it. Her second was better, because the show did viral internet craze the Mannequin Challenge. This saw Honey G perform the track used for those videos, ‘Black Beatles’ by Rae Sremmurd feat. Gucci Mane, with the judges, the audience and everyone except Honey G frozen in time perfectly still Sleeping Beauty/Bernard’s Watch style. This was quite good, but it wasn’t really anything to do with Honey G, who forgot some of the lyrics. She was out that week, coming full circle by singing her week 1 song ‘California Love’ as she her sing-off song.

Emily Middlemas also seemed to have been put through to play a pre-defined role. The X Factor occasionally likes to have an elfin, barefoot messy haired teenage girl singer in the final 12, and this year that was Emily, other years it was Diana Vickers and Janet Devlin. They also often end up doing drippy, slowed down John Lewis Christmas advert versions of well known pop songs. Emily did say that she’d love to do the John Lewis advert song for real one day. She also said she’d love to do an uptempo song, but the show seemed to want her to stick within the confines of the role they had cast her in. Of her John Lewis-type performances, the best was probably when she did ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ by One Direction. It had an explosion made of butterflies in the background though, like some kind of butterfly bomb. They ended up coming together into the shape of a heart, which was a bit saccharine, but on the whole it was a nice enough version.

She did Britney Spears – ‘Toxic’ played on the ukulele. I’m not sure anyone really wants that, but apparently some people do, as she finished 2nd place in the vote with it. Personally I’d like to think it was more to do with her second performance that week, a sophisticated, smoky performance of  ‘Human’ by Rag ‘n’ Bone Man.

I didn’t like Emily’s version of ‘Wishing On A Star’ by Rose Royce, but credit to her for beating the curse of that song. Both Austin Drage (series 5) and Tamera Foster (series 10) ended up in the bottom 2 when they sang it, she ended up in 4th place.

The performances I liked most from Emily were when she was allowed to do something other than John Lewis versions of songs. I really liked her performance of ‘Closer’ by The Chainsmokers feat. Halsey, in fact it made me like that song after being indifferent to it before.

Her big moment though was when she topped the public vote after her performance of ‘Creep’ by Radiohead. It was a very mesmerising performance, and sweet in a strange way. Quite Tim Burton-ish, both in style and that whole gothic but romantic thing he does. It could have been from a Tim Burton musical film, especially with the silent movie staging and the Victorian doll outfit and make-up she had.

Emily finished in 4th place overall, the Bridesmaid position in The X Factor where the runner-up of the female soloists usually ends up, such as Diana Vickers, Cher Lloyd, Misha B, Lauren Platt and Lauren Murray. Emily took her elimination about as well as any contestant, and she seems like a really nice person, so good luck to her.

5 After Midnight, originally 5AM. That’s running late, isn’t it? 19 hours and 5 minutes later than planned. Though their name was still often shortened to 5AM anyway. Despite the name(s), there’s only three of them. This group did look like something that would be on CBBC, like a colourful, kid friendly version of hip hop. Indeed, one member Kieran was on a CBBC programme.

5 After Midnight were a bit hit and miss for me. They were by far the best performance in Motown week, a medley of ‘Get Ready’ by The Temptations and ‘Reach Out (I’ll Be There)’ by The Four Tops, which showed them managing an uptempo track and slow ballad. I even sort of liked the Merrie Melodies title card circle rings background. But they became one of the worst performances a week later in Diva week doing Amy Winehouse’s version of The Zutons -‘Valerie’, making the song sound really cheesy, not helped by the orange colour scheme and their tacky shiny jackets looking like a gameshow repeat you’d see on Challenge TV.

They were top of the vote in Disco week with another uptempo/ballad medley, ‘Boogie Wonderland’ and ‘September’, both by Earth, Wind & Fire. I wouldn’t say this was a stand-out, either for them or for this week, but it was a good performance.

They were never the strongest vocalists in the world though. They didn’t sing ‘Try A Little Tenderness’ by Otis Redding well, but in fairness the arrangement used for it was such a mess! They performed ‘Uptown Funk’ by Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars quite well, but not as good as when Fleur East performed it in series 11. When they performed ‘Stay Another Day’ by East 17, they at least looked very like a ’90s boyband with the white padded jackets and performing on a hastily crafted stage outside, though that performance is mainly memorable for Nicole thinking the song was called “steak house” and Simon comparing it to an ice cream sundae with tomatoes (?!).

In the final they did a performance of ‘Crazy In Love’ by Beyonce with an army helicopter. It was OK, but mainly because it was dancing. When they had their duet, ‘Tears’ by Clean Bandit and last year’s X Factor winner Louisa, it became clear how poor 5 After Midnight’s vocals were. They finished in 3rd place.

Saara Aalto, originally from Finland, had voiced Anna in the Finnish dub of Disney’s Frozen. But she sang Elsa’s song in the live shows, the famous ‘Let It Go’. The performance didn’t take its cues from Frozen though, there was no Snow Queen outfit with a snow and ice palace, the staging was more inspired by Disney’s Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent, being very gothish and black, with a forest of thorns and castle in the background.

Saara ended up in the sing-off in week one, and even this early she gave one of the performances of the series with a great take on ‘Alive’ by Sia, it was very dark and dramatic. But at this stage it looked like Saara wouldn’t last long in the competition despite being one of the best singers. Britain can be a horribly xenophobic country at times, and it has to be said more of that has come out of the woodwork since the Brexit vote. It got very uncomfortable to watch how the show kept emphasising that Saara wasn’t British, cultimating in her mentor Sharon keeping getting the country Saara was from wrong and in her second sing-off annoucing her as “Zara from abroad”.

I think the show became aware of this on some level, as from week 3 they started treating her better. The bad jokes continued too, but this is The X Factor.

In week 3 Saara performed Bjork’s ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’. Like Kitty Brucknell’s performance of it in series 8 it had an Alice In Wonderland theme, but Saara’s version was also candyland, underwater mermaid kingdom and giant magical garden. It was totally bonkers, but she did very well with it, getting to 2nd place in the public vote that week. She performed ‘Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga in a rainbow church with black umbrellas black roses colourful hair and carried it off brilliantly, and got 3rd place in the vote.

She ended up in the sing-off again the following week. She performed ‘Sound Of The Underground’ by Girls Aloud, which is a great pop song, but not one that vocally goes anywhere, and it was staged as some bizarre neon geisha mess with Saara wearing a wig the size on an antique chest of drawers on her head, all of which had precisely nothing whatsoever to do with the song. From top 3 the previous couple with weeks, this took her all the way down to 6th place.

She had the best performance in Disco week in my opinion, dressed in a silver robot-ish outfit with a glitterball, lots of silver and glitter generally, and sang ‘No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) by Barbra Streisand & Donna Summer and finished in 2nd place in the vote. They sensibly toned things down a little for when she performed the Titanic theme song ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion in Movie week, and she again ended up in 2nd place.

In the quarter final she performed ABBA’s ‘The Winner Takes It All’ on a throne playing a piano. It was amazing! Usually I think this song only really “works” when Agnetha Fältskog is singing it, and certainly most reality TV contestant performances of it are beyond terrible, but for Saara’s version was one of the high points of the whole series.

That week she also did a medley of ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ and ‘Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend’. Not many diamonds in the staging, but she was sat on a fluffy cloud
with icicles coming down from it which she fell backwards from to be caught by her dancers. This performance was one of my least favourite of hers, it was far too
cheesy. But whether it was the ABBA song or that plus the Diamonds medley that did it, Saara topped the vote this week!

In Christmas week Saara started with ‘White Christmas’ before going into ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ on a merry-go-round horse. This was the only genuiunely enjoyable performance in the semi-final for me. Then she reprised her audtion song ‘Chandelier’ by Sia, and again she topped the vote.

It’s easy to see why she was a favourite of the shows creative director Brian Freidman, as she gave the opportunity to go nuts with the staging and costumes. Often it was camp glory.

Saara’s overjoyed reactions to being saved in weeks she got through were great to see. They showed a montage of it in the final, and a homecoming gig in Helsinki with
a crowd of 10,000 people. I liked the LGBT theatrical rock opera duet of Saara singing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ with Adam Lambert. In a paralel universe where both of them are straight they’d make a great couple.

As a person she is hugely likeable, and her performances were some of my favourites from any X Factor contestant. She ended up being the dark horse of the series, going from being in the sing-off in week one to looking like she was heading to win as we went towards the final. She actually was 1st place in the vote on Saturday, but was pipped at the post by Matt in the last 24 hours of voting. But really, the big surprise regarding Saara in the vote reveals was that she was never actually in the bottom 2! Had it not been for the lifeline vote who knows how things would have gone, but one things for sure, her whole narrative would have been different. She was more popular with the public vote than was thought.

Matt Terry was a favourite to win through most of the series, with many, myself included thinking that he was the obvious winner in about week 3. This was mainly on the grounds that he has a very good singing voice and he’s inoffensive, to the point of blandness, and as a generically good looking guy he would probably appeal to most of The X Factor voting audience. Most performances I thought “Yeah, he’s pretty good”, but I didn’t actively like them. He sang ‘Alive’ by Sia alright, but not as good as Saara.

‘The Writing’s On The Wall’ by Sam Smith seems to be seen as Matt’s standout performance, and it kind of sums up Matt for me too. That song is a good vocal showcase,
but it is so boring!

The only time he really impressed me was when he performed ‘I Put A Spell On You’ by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins/Nina Simone on Halloween Week Fright Night. That’s the only time I found Matt attractive too. Maybe my emo boy phase is coming back.

In the final Matt sang ‘Purple Rain’, in a duet with… Ruth Lorenzo! No, not really. It was with Nicole. It wasn’t so much a duet either, more Nicole making sure to oversing him and nudge him out of the spotlight like she did in her other finalist duets. Her immense ego will not tolerate sharing. How did she cope in the Pussycat Dolls all those years? Unless back then she had an inkling of how “blink and you’ll miss it” her solo career would turn out to be.

Matt won the vote 6 out of 10 weeks, and all the weeks he didn’t he was still top 3. Vanilla will always be the most popular ice cream flavour etc. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with Matt winning. I certainly don’t have a problem with Matt as a person, he seems like a nice guy. But it does feel a bit of an anticlimax. Basically, I would have much preferred Saara! But he and Saara seem to geniunely really like each other, and are both talented vocalists and likeable people, so quite a pleasant ending I guess.

The winners’ single is called ‘When Christmas Comes Around’ and is written by Ed Sheeran. It’s as dull as all the other winner’s singles, but at least it’s not a cover again.

A new addition this series was the X Factor jukebox, which ‘randomly’ picked the theme. Most likely it was just a way of making more of a song and dance (if you excuse the exprssion) of the theme weeks. I’m sure it was a TOTAL COINCIDENCE that it picked Fright Night for the weekend Halloween was closest to. Halloween Week is usually one of the best though, and this year was no exception, some of the best performances of the series were then.

As for the other themes: I love Motown, but I found Motown week to be such a snoozefest. Divas week included songs by divas such as… Michael Jackson, Queen, David
Bowie and Vanilla Ice. When it was hosted, Dermot called it “Divas and legends” to excuse that, like an extra note about a last minute replacement that has been hastily pasted on a billboard.

Disco week is hopelessly dated, not just as a genre but as an X Factor theme week. This year’s Movie week, I can’t think of any other time the X Factor has been more going through the motions, the contestants did nothing they hadn’t already established before and the songs had been overdone on The X Factor.

Louis Loves was just another “songs that are songs” one, and it was joined with the contestants “own choice” as their second one. But Louis Loves was actually one of the more entertaining weeks in terms of song choice, ironically Louis last act 5 After Midnight finished in the bottom 2 of the vote. Christmas week was added late from viewers suggestions on Twitter. This meant ’80s week was left on the shelf, though I’d say it was given pretty fair representation over the course of the series, plus it’s an overrated decade anyway. There, I’ve said it.

The week I enjoyed the most by far was week one, Express Yourself, or songs which allowed the acts to showcase what sort of act they would be, and with more modern songs than in other weeks. To be honest, I’ve long thought The X Factor would be a better show if every week was like that.

Oh yeah, the clips of Dermot’s bad dancing soundtracked to the “de-de-de-da-da-da” from Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’ before and after EVERY ad break including Sunday shows. Why?! This programme’s commitment to utter pointlessness.

Freddy, Gifty, Sam, Ryan and Emily all looked very aware that they were heading home and how the show had set them up for a fall in weeks they ended up in the bottom 3. Matt as well towards the end. This is a generation who has grown up with The X Factor, so they’re probably good at spotting the manipulation.

The Lifeline vote, while not a particularly great addition in itself, certainly made an impact, as it changed the entire narratives of Saara and Ryan on the show.

The X Factor series 13 was a bit odd really. A mixed bag I suppose. Mostly rubbish, but some good performances here and there. It was also a show that seems unsure of where it fits. It’s trying to be the old familiar light entertainment show it was when it started, with all the panto antics from judges and contestants, and all those theme weeks. At the same time it’s desperate to be relevant picking young contestants and occasionally songs that haven’t even been a hit yet or trying to shoehorn some internet meme or trend into the programme. You know what, in some ways perhaps Honey G is the personification of The X Factor these days. Much talked about, seen as a bit of a joke but takes itself very seriously, getting on a bit and desperate to be “down with the kids”, has given up even really bothering to hide that it’s all a facade, but still insisting that it isn’t.

The ratings were very low this series, I think it is definitely fair to say the franchise’s best days are far behind it. Its studio, Fountain Studios, is being demolished, but the show has been renewed so it will be here for the rest of the decade, so will the change in location make a difference, is it just going to stumble along until it is axed? Is it going to accept that this is how things are now? As always, we’ll see, and let’s face it, some of us will be watching.

Even More Random Thoughts on ‘The X Factor’ (plus a little bit on ‘Fame Academy’)

This has been another one of those months where, for various reasons, I haven’t been able to commit to doing a decent blog post, but I want to try and maintain posting at least something every month, so I just have to do a filler one with random thoughts on a reality TV franchise. This one is also something of a sequel to the last time I did one about The X Factor, and it’s mostly info on what they’ve done since, but it also includes some on the mostly forgotten defunct Noughties reality TV series Fame Academy too.

In April this year Rachel Adedeiji joined the cast of Hollyoaks playing Lisa Loveday. I’m pleased to see Rachel Adedeiji back on our screens, I always thought she was one of the better contestants in series 6. She wears a wig to play Lisa Loveday, and I’m not sure if it was intentional, but the hairstyle is very like series 11 contestant Fleur East!

Rachel Adedeiji’s public vote polling on The X Factor is notable in that she ended up in the bottom 2 for 3 weeks in the month she was there, but the one week she escaped it she actually topped the vote! It is still a fairly exclusive club to top the vote on The X Factor.  

It’s not known who topped the vote in the first 4 series, but obviously the eventual winners did (Steve Brookstein, Shayne Ward, Leona Lewis, Leon Jackson). Apparently Maria Lawson from series 2 did one week as well, but not sure if this has been confirmed. Since series 5 they have released the voting figures, so we know who topped the vote during those years. Eoghan Quigg (yes, strange but true. Even more bizarre, he was top of the vote 6 weeks out of 10 weeks!), Diana Vickers, JLS, Alexandra Burke, Danyl Johnson, Stacey Solomon, Rachel Adedeji, Joe McElderry, Mary Byrne, Matt Cardle, Janet Devlin, Amelia Lily, Little Mix, Christopher Maloney, James Arthur, Sam Bailey, Nicholas McDonald, Andrea Faustini, Ben Haenow, Louisa Johnson, Reggie n Bollie.

Though it looks like performance in the televote doesn’t mean much for their chances in the pop charts afterwards. As said above, in series 5 Eggnogg Quigg topped the vote nearly every week, but the other vote toppers Diana Vickers, JLS and winner Alexandra Burke all did better in the charts.

You don’t even have to top the vote at all! Olly Murs never did. I’m not much of a fan of his, but he’s one of the more successful contestants to come out of this series, and not only did he never top the vote, in week 7 he finished last place in the vote…and was in a sing-off with Jedward! Yes, in that week he got fewer votes than Jedward and if it had gone to deadlock, he would have been eliminated.

Series 7 was the one One Direction were from, and they finished 3rd overall and were 3rd and 4th most weeks. Rebecca Ferguson and Cher Lloyd from that series did OK in the charts for a bit as well. But which contestants were top of the televote in that series? Mary Byrne and Matt Cardle.

Ella Henderson from series 9 never came top of the vote either, and she went in week 7 in deadlock against eventual winner James Arthur but with the exception of Rylan‘s TV presenter success, she’s done the best.

James Arthur has made a bit of a comeback though, after being dropped by Syco he’s signed a new record deal and had a number 2 hit [Edit – and the day after I posted this, it climbed to number 1!] with ‘Say You Won’t Let Go’, which personally I think is very boring and turgid. But it sounds a bit like something Ed Sheeran would write and give to One Direction, so I can see why it was a hit. Much as I’m not keen on the song I have to sort of admire it for including the line “I held your hair back when you were throwing up”.

Jahméne Douglas from series 9 was second in the televote EVERY SINGLE WEEK! To Christopher Maloney until his vote started to fall and James Arthur leapfrogged both of them. But still, 2nd place every single vote. Jahméne Douglas should join Art Garfunkel, John Oates, Jim Messina and Lisa Simpson to perform their number 2 hit ‘Born Runner Up’.

Lloyd Daniels from series 6 and Wagner from series 7 were on This Morning together. It was a bit of a random combination really. They weren’t from the same series and they weren’t the same type of contestant.

Wagner apparently now makes a living doing personalised messages via his Facebook page, singing ‘Happy Birthday’, sending “Congratulations on your new job” sorts of messages and performing ‘Sex Bomb’. To be honest, I wouldn’t have thought that there would still be demand for an X Factor novelty contestant from 6 years after his series was on, so you know what, good for him.

Lloyd Daniels seems like a lovely guy, and he’s following the path of many a former X Factor contestant and has gone into musical theatre. He’s played Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which also featured Over The Rainbow winner Danielle Hope as the Narrator.

Series 6 X Factor winner Joe McElderry has played Joseph as well, so that means that two of the Boys category from that series have gone on to play the same part!

Apparently Kitty Brucknell from series 8 has tried to represent Switzerland and Moldova in Eurovision and she now lives in L.A. Why do neither of these things surprise me?

Do you know what my favourite story about The X Factor is? It’s not one of the scandalous ones or the secretive ones. It’s all those stories about how Simon Cowell‘s dressing room is so much bigger and more elaboarate than everyone else’s. It reminds me of diva hell goddess Glory in Buffy The Vampire Slayer living in a luxurious palatial apartment with her human host Ben’s bedsit next door, or a bit in a Red Dwarf spin-off book where Cat suggests that they remodel the whole ship to be just his giant walk-in wardrobe with a “tent for everyone else” outside.

I didn’t watch Fame Academy, but I heard the stuff some of their contestants released when it made the pop charts, and on the whole they were pretty good!

Series 2 winner Alex Parks released the quite Annie Lennox-ish ballad ‘Maybe That’s What It Takes’.

I loved ‘I Can’t Break Down’ by series one runner-up Sinead Quinn. I actually bought her album!

‘Keep Me A Secret’ by Ainslie Henderson  was very good as well. Apparently he’s making animated films now and won a BAFTA.

‘Bring It On’ by Alistair Griffin was quite nice as well. The most recent things I’ve seem him do are Leeds sport related, such as a track called ‘The Road’ with Kimberley Walsh from Girls Aloud for the 2014 Tour de France starting in Leeds and the track ‘Heroes’ for rugby league club the Leeds Rhinos.

Of course, James Fox did Eurovision in 2004. To link things back to The X Factor, Carolynne Poole was in series 2 of Fame Academy (then known as Carolynne Good) and would go on to lose out to Rylan in the first elimination of X Factor series 9.

Oddly, the thing I most remember about series 1 Fame Academy winner David Sneddon is a possible reference to him on ‘Lemon/Lime’ by Richard X featuring Deborah Evans-Strickland from the Richard X Presents His X-Factor Vol. 1 compilation album. (Probably not a reference to the TV series of the same name we’ve been talking about, as the album predates it by a year). Anyway, on ‘Lemon/Lime’, there is a lyric which goes “Armageddon, David Sne[BEEP]”.

The contestant who did the best out of Fame Academy was Lemar, who has a great voice, the best from what I’ve heard from the Fame Academy lot, and finished 3rd in series 1. He went on to have lots of hits, the most well known probably being ‘If There’s Any Justice’.

The X Factor (Series 12)

This series was a revamp, with big changes intended to make The X Factor new and improved, revitalise the brand and allow  it to regain its status as the biggest show on TV. Did it work? Well, the short answer: LOL, NO!

Changes in the judges line-up aren’t anything out of the ordinary. In fact there’s been some sort of change in the judges line-up for the past 5 series. But that Louis Walsh was one who wouldn’t be returning was a bit of a surprise, as he’s the only judge that has been on the panel for every series up until this one. But for this series Louis Walsh was chucked out like a cracked, faded Toby jug that’s been part of a house furniture for decades but nobody can be bothered to throw away, and even if someone does it somehow finds its way back in. His replacement was Radio One DJ Nick Grimshaw.  While he’s not the most charismatic guy who ever lived and I don’t think he ever really settled into his role as an X Factor judge, I have to admit I quite liked Nick Grimshaw. Of the judges, his comments were the closest to what I was thinking anyway.

Mel B also wasn’t returning, so they had to find yet another female pop star to fill a vacant seat on The X Factor panel.  I’m starting to think this show has a lottery machine filled with balls with the names of female pop stars on, and they just pick who’s going to fill the judge seat that way. The one they went with was Rita Ora, who had actually done it before, which I’d forgotten about, as one of the guest judges before Nicole Scherzinger joined.  Despite getting the job full-time and being a former panelist on The Voice, Rita Ora was still a bit… well, not so much “work experience”, more like a daughter on take your child to work day, spinning on the swivel chair at her dad’s desk.

The two returning judges were Simon Cowell, who was, well, Simon Cowell. You could use clips from previous series and just replace the old contestant names with the new ones and it wouldn’t make much difference. Also back was Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, now an executive producer, and actually seemed to be enjoying herself this year. In her original stint as X Factor judge she sometimes came across a bit like a human trapped inside a robot, so it was nice to see the human managing to break free from the metal casing a little.

Of all the departures the one that turned out to hurt the show the most was the host Dermot O’Leary going. He was always a good TV presenter, but I think many of us viewers took it for granted how easy he made it look. He was replaced by former Xtra Factor presenters Olly Murs and Caroline Flack. They were like two dummies in search of a ventriloquist. It’s hard to say who was the least awful of them. Caroline Flack was bland and Olly Murs was useless.

Another exit was voice over man Peter Dickson. But then he was reinstated at the last-minute, so it didn’t really matter.

If there was one element of this years series that was universally unpopular, it was the 6 Chair Challenge, with contestants literally begging for a place in the final, like the judges were 4 smug Pauline Campbell-Joneses and the contestants were desperate, downbeaten members of her job centre restart course.

Because ITV were broadcasting the Rugby World Cup, that meant that there had to be fewer live shows. This had an effect of the series seeming to be caught in an eternal, continuous slow loop at the early stages, like a sort of Light Entertainment Hell and then the live shows speeding by before like your life flashing before your eyes. Kind of as if we as an audience were dying in reverse as a punishment for watching.

They had 7 weeks to get through the live shows, but not only did they put the usual 12 finalists in, they added another as a wild card! So the first 4 weeks were all double eliminations.

Leeds singer Bupsi had one of the biggest personalities in the series, and a decent voice, and was likeable. In her audition Simon said she was “too nice”, so she replied “if you want nasty I’ll do that right now” which included her giving Simon a lapdance, climbing over the judges desk and doing a splitdrop. But it was still predictable she wouldn’t really be the sort of contestant who attracts many public votes, especially as the song choice was not well-known, ‘You’re A Wonderful One’ by Marvin Gaye. It blanded her out and glossed over her personality. She finished at the bottom of the first public vote, which was a shame really, as inevitable as it was.

Also eliminated in week one were girlgroup Alien Uncovered. With brightly coloured red, blue, pink and purple hair and an unusual image they might have been interesting,
but after landing in the bottom 2 and doing a truly awful, tuneless sing-off performance of ‘Pressure’ by Sounds of Blackness they were voted off by the judges.

Keira Weathers survived the week one sing-off, but was bottom of the public vote the following week. She was nice, down-to-earth and was a good singer. She went through auditions being told she was amazing, then in the lives shows was constantly told she wasn’t very good. She was far from the first example, and wasn’t even the last in this series, but it left a nasty taste in the mouth.

The second week saw a shock elimination in Seann Miley Moore. He had fabulous costumes and make-up, a brilliant voice, some spectacular performances, but was clearly not to the taste of most of the voters, as he never polled well. I doubt that the show itself wanted him to leave so early though. They put him on the tour anyway, along with the final 7.

The slightly awkward Max Stone had three performances, all showing the bad, the good and the boring. The bad: a reggae version of ‘Someone Like You’ – nobody wants that, and it very nearly landed him in the bottom 3. The good(…. ish): The Israel Kamakawiwo’ole ukulele medley of ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World’ giving him his highest public vote result in 6th place, and the boring: an absolute snorefest ‘Secret Garden’. He finished bottom of the vote with that, and off he went.

Monica Michael was the Wildcard contestant. She had a soulful voice and is a songwriter, but it seemed as though despite putting her back in the show didn’t really want her. She was styled in dresses which didn’t suit her and reprimanded for “letting it happen”. She actually did quite well in the first week vote, finishing 4th. I think what most X Factor viewers will remember her for though is the utter mess that her elimination announcement was. First she and her sing-off opponent Anton hugged each other in front of the much shorter Caroline and Olly, blocking the view of them. Then Olly Murs messed up by thinking that Monica had the most votes from the judges to eliminate and voting Anton would send it to deadlock. It was actually the other way round. After commiserating Monica for being eliminated, Caroline stepped in and said they were going to deadlock and, surprise surprise, it turned out Monica did have the fewest votes. It was very funny, but such a shambles.

Mason Noise (which is quite a good punny name, to be fair) became known in the show for the 6 Chair Challenge when he complained about the lack of screentime his audition got. The Birmingham singer argued with Simon Cowell before getting booed and storming off stage. He was bought back for the headlines after another contestant dropped out. But just as the show seemed to lose interest in Monica after she was bought back as a wildcard, it didn’t have much use for Mason after he’d been bought back for the headlines. They kept having him apologise and beg for public forgiveness, even via song choice (‘Sorry’ by Justin Bieber). It was only after he survived the bottom 2 they started to present him like a pop star with his versions of Will Smith’s ‘Men In Black’ and Nick Jonas’ ‘Jealous’, but it turned out he was never all that popular in the public vote, so hey.

Anton Stephans started out in 3rd place in the vote with his take on ‘Dance With My Father’ by Luther Vandross, but the rest of his relatively short stay he was low in the vote. To be fair, he was thrown under the bus in week 2. A medley of ‘All About The Bass’ and ‘Bang Bang’, which he really couldn’t sing and shouted through, coupled with his natural over-the-top nature plus the gaudy eyesore glitter gold staging with dancing speakers was one of the bigger car crash TV occurences this series. Then he got given the Whitney/Mariah diva ballads, with cheesy performances of ‘I Have Nothing’, one of the most overdone songs on this show, and ‘One Sweet Day’, which is a morbidly sentimental borefest at the best of times. To an extent though, it’s easy to see why the producers might not have been keen on him as a potential winner. The sort of pop star he was most likely to be was a dated, easy listening balladeer.  His performance style as well was very overwrought, and when he sang he ended up looking like a cheap Punch and Judy crocodile puppet, bulging eyes, mouth bigger than the rest his head showing umpteen teeth, and he ended up sounding like a foghorn. On one hand, he became very hard to watch and listen to. On the other hand, he was kind of stitched up.

Fillipino girlgroup 4th Impact, was made up of sisters Almira, Irene, Mylene and Celina. As one of the few uptempo acts their performances were among some of the highlights this year. For me I liked their energetic performance of Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea’s ‘Problem’, and I even liked the blossom and bubbles staging even if it didn’t fit with the song. It was their highest polling result, finishing 2nd in the vote. There was also their sassy performance of Christina Aguilera’s ‘Ain’t No Other Man’. My favourite and least performances of theirs both came in their final week. My least favourite was the one time they did a ballad, ‘I’ll Be There’ by the Jackson 5, which was a bit too sickly-sweet. But my favourite  was their second performance, a fun medley of Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX’s ‘Fancy’ with Gwen Stefani – ‘Rich Girl’. That had them in a candy coloured dolls houses and as prepackaged set of dolls with glittery accessories with their names displayed on there. I liked the ending line with “Simon, remember our names!” after he’d, rather rudely I think, referred to them as “A,B, C and D”. But this was the week they got voted out, ironically in a bottom 2 against Lauren Murray after a ‘controversy’ the week before. But it was one of the best sing-offs the show has ever had, with both acts performing strongly.

Lauren Murray was another contestant who got Whitney/Mariah diva ballads, but in her case they were more “Girls Night In” songs. Whitney Houston’s version of ‘I’m Every Woman’ which had a hairdresser setting with giant pink glittery combs and scissors and women with pink curlers, and Mariah Carey’s ‘We Belong Together’ with falling pink rose petals and butterflies. But she was a lot more versatile than that. She did a very lovely version of James Bay’s ‘Hold Back The River’, she sang it very well.  The North London vocalist also did a stripped back version of Ariana Grande’s ‘One Last Time’, which was very, very good, my favourite performance of the whole series, and Lauren’s highest public vote result, where she finished 2nd. She delivered emotional connection, singing every word like she meant it and made top ten on the iTunes chart. In fact, many of her performances did well on iTunes.

Things took a turn for the worse for Lauren thanks to a brief shot of her declining a hug from 4th Impact. It ended up getting blown out of all proportion and her getting painted as evil incarnate despite 4th Impact and Lauren appearing in an online video to confirm there was no bad blood. But the internet loves a bandwagon, especially a hate based one. She survived against 4th Impact, then was bottom of the vote the following week, in both cases after been given some very modern but fairly unsuitable dance tracks. Her exit was one of the most uncomfortable to watch, where she likely knew she would be the one who was going home. She started the sing-off already in tears, before trying to get through Rachel Platten’s  ‘Fight Song’ . It was nice of her mentor Rita Ora to go up to her after she had finished singing, and Nick Grimshaw always was a big fan of Lauren. While the result went to deadlock and she was at the bottom of the vote, she was less than 1% away from scoring more than Che, so she almost made the final. She was by far my favourite contestant this year, and the one I most enjoyed.

19-year-old Che Chesterman was very much an “old school” sort of singer, he mainly sang Motown soul type records, even doing the Marvin Gaye cover of The Beatles ‘Yesterday’. My favourite performance of his, even though it was his lowest public vote result finishing 8th, was his medley of Amy Winehouse – ‘Tears Dry Their Own’ and Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell’s ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’.

He finished in 1st place in the vote in week 5, though I’m not sure anyone would call it his best performance. He sang Adele’s megahit ‘Hello’, and unfortunately he messed it up. He forgot the words, not only that the words of a song that is one of the biggest current hits and loads of people in the country know the words to! To be fair, when I first watched the performance I was wondering if he had forgotten the words or if it was some rubbish rearrangement, so he covered it up well. I felt really sorry for him, and so did a lot of voters it seems, as it was probably mostly a combination of a sympathy vote, a bounce from being in the bottom 2 the week before that caused him to top the vote.

Che has a fantastic voice, one of the best in the competition this year, and he seems like a really nice guy. I found him very likeable, particularly in the VTs with him and his dad, Che Senior. He wasn’t given a lot of help in the final. One example was the staging for his performance of Amy Winehouse’s version of ‘Valerie’ being set in a ’50s American diner with giant hamburgers for no apparent reason other than to be distracting. But overall, I think Che came across well, and again he has a lovely voice.

With Ghanaian duo Reggie n Bollie it was refreshing to have a fun, colourful act that wasn’t turned into a joke novelty act. Of course that didn’t last, but they started out well with their version of ‘It Wasn’t Me’ by Shaggy. Then in week 2 they did a medley of One Direction’s ‘What Makes Me Beautiful’ with OMI’s ‘Cheerleader’ which worked a lot better than you might imagine, in fact seemed to get everyone up dancing. But they were turned into a joke act in Movie Week, with pretending they were singing the theme from Titanic, going into ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’ with Simon’s dogs in the stage background.

In week 4 they did a mash-up of Walk The Moon – ‘Shut Up and Dance’ and Fuse ODG feat. Sean Paul – ‘Dangerous Love’, two songs I really like. It was a very enjoyable performance, and they topped the public vote with it. They were sometimes joined by a whole carnival, and their children. Once in their ‘Azonto’ performance their mentor Cheryl got up to dance with them! The boring, ballad-heavy semi-final was improved with them doing ‘I Gotta Feeling/I Like To Move It’ at the end, and one of the better parts of the mediocre final was their performance of ‘Dangerous Love/Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta)’ with the original artists of those songs, Fuse ODG and Craig David respectively. (Though Sean Paul and The Artful Dodger didn’t turn up).  Reggie n Bollie were definitely one of the most popular acts this year. They were 1st place in the public vote once, and 2nd place in 4 out of the other 6 weeks, ultimately that was the position they ended in, as this years runners-up.

The winner was teenage singer Louisa Johnson. She was a favourite to win from the beginning of the series, and was top of the public vote 5 of the 7 weeks, and 2nd and 3rd in the other 2. She is undeniably a good singer, but … I never quite ‘got’ Louisa, to be honest. Her performances tended to be quite dull and clinical, and of the “show-off vocal gymnastics are more important than any connection to the lyrics” school of thought. The arrangements of the songs she was given all seemed like they were trying out to be next year’s John Lewis Christmas advert too.

She was massively hyped by the show throughout the series. In ‘Love and Heartbreak’ week she was placed on a high plinth above everyone else with heavenly cloud staging dressed in white. They couldn’t be more unsubtle if they’d stuck a halo over a head, got her to wear angel wings and play a harp… so in the semi-final they did give her some angel wings on the back of a screen and halo lighting, and even called her an angel several times in the final! They didn’t do the harp, but then, how often do you see musical instruments on this show?

The only performance that worked for me was her cover of Christina Aguilera’s cover of ‘It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World’.

In 11 series The X Factor has had, at most, 4 winners who’ve gone on to a reasonably successful pop career (Shayne Ward, Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke and Little Mix). That’s not really a good hit rate. They’ve had more acts who’ve done well without winning, such as One Direction and Olly Murs among others, but that in itself doesn’t look great, that an act is better off finishing runner-up, third or even sixth like Ella Henderson, but not winning. That Louisa was hyped so much throughout the competition suggests that they will probably be spending a lot of time and money making her “happen”, but while her vocal talents are obvious, I think they are really going to have to work out what sort of personality or identity she has as a pop star.

This series of The X Factor had very low viewing figures. The Rugby World Cup messed up their schedule a bit, so they had to pad out the build-up, chop down the live shows and plough through the contestant eliminations, but I think it was more than that. The average viewer is becoming wiser to the manipulation, and the show itself becoming as subtle as a sledgehammer with it. That said, it’s also a year where the apparent producer intentions seemed to go exactly according to plan, with the possible exception of Sean Miley Moore’s early departure.

Yet again they had sing-offs in the quarter and semi-finals instead of just leaving it to the public vote, but the result went back to the public vote anyway.

I’m not a fan of the theme weeks, but they didn’t exactly bother having them this year. The theme for week one was ‘This Is Me’, for all the contestants to introduce themselves as the act they’d be in the charts. Week 2 was ‘Re-Invention’. So… week one was all about introducing them, now week 2 is them changing completely? Actually, it was more of a “making classic songs their own” theme. In other words, covering well-known songs by other artists. So, like every week, then. Other theme weeks included ‘Jukebox Week’ and ‘Get Me To The Final’.  So, “songs” then.

The final included duets from past finalists. It was nowhere near as good as when Alexandra Burke and JLS collaborated in the series 6 finale, but we had Ben Haenow and Leona Lewis who were… fine, I guess. Little Mix and Fleur East did quite a fun performance. Fleur East appeared so many times in this series, she was kind of like when a former regular cast member who becomes “recurring” in an American drama series. She appeared almost as much as she did last year, and certainly more than she did in her first X Factor stint as part of Addictiv Ladies.

That said, one of Fleur East’s guest appearances was to perform her single ‘Sax’, which was a fantastic, fierce performance, not just showing up the current contestants but putting a lot of the half-arsed ‘proper’ pop star guest performers to shame.

My other performance highlights were Adele performing ‘Hello’ in the final, and her comments in her interview afterwards. She was surprised at how close the judges were to the stage. (“On the telly you look so far away!”) and said Lauren was her favourite.

Then there was Rudimental feat. Ed Sheeran – ‘Lay It All On Me’. I love that song, but the performance is probably best remembered for the apocalyptic scale of confetti coming down and practically smothering the whole X Factor studio.

If there’s one word I’d like to hear less of in the next series of The X Factor it’s “moment”. It felt like it was said a billion times this series!

All in all, series 12 of The X Factor was poor. It wasn’t a horrible series or even a unenjoyable one really, but it just wasn’t very good, and to be honest it felt a bit like a show that’s working its notice. We’ll see what they try next year.

Random thoughts on ‘The X Factor’

I try to post something every month on here, but I just haven’t been inspired to post anything this month. I disappeared into Wikiholes and YouTube holes looking at X Factor stuff, this post is just random thoughts I have. So with the 12th series of The X Factor about to start, here are some random thoughts I have about past series.

Looking at how last year’s lot are doing, the winner and runner-up Ben Haenow and Fleur East haven’t released anything yet, so it remains to be seen how they will do. They were both pretty good, but then so was series 10’s winner Sam Bailey and Syco didn’t keep her beyond a year.

3rd place finalist Andrea Faustini has released an album. Stevi Richie, the joke act that wasn’t that funny and Chloe Jasmine, the tabloid headline grabber who didn’t last long enough to grab any headlines, are now a couple and following the path of other joke/controversial acts like Jedward, Frankie Cocozza and Rylan they’ve gone into Celebrity Big Brother.

Stereo Kicks split up after a grand total of one single release. To be honest, I’m surprised they stuck it out that long.

Only The Young released a single which reached number one on the physical singles chart, but let’s face it that doesn’t mean much these days. On the proper chart, they reached number 53. I think a problem they have is that they don’t really fit in anywhere. They’re not quite an indie band and they’re not quite a bubblegum pop band. That was always part of their charm, but it’s not likely they’ll ever trouble the mainstream again. I have a soft spot for them, so I hope at least they can do OK for themselves even if it’s just touring.

They were a type of finalist I always seem to like, a serial sing-off surviving underdog. Others included Lloyd Daniels from series 6 (he had a nice voice, if not really suited to most of the songs on the show). Hannah Barrett from series 10 (she had a lot of good performances, but her version of ‘Somebody Else’s Guy’ stood out as the best) and Ruth Lorenzo from series 5 (she has since represented Spain for Eurovision last year, was on Spain’s Jury for Eurovison this year, and is taking part in the original Spanish version of Your Face Sounds Familiar).

Looking back, series 8 was odd wasn’t it? I still think that week one twist to get rid of one from each category is one the worst they’ve ever done. I definitely think James Michael, 2 Shoes and Jonjo would have bought more to the show had they been given more of a chance. James Michael was at least pretty, 2 Shoes were fun and it’s supposed to be an entertainment show after all, and Jonjo despite probably being the most forgettable managed to get into tabloids from having a few pints, he might have been interesting. Amelia Lily was voted off in the same twist, and was the one chosen to make a comeback later. She became one of the biggest contestants of that year, but we’d never have known that if not for Frankie Cocozza getting kicked out.

So many of the show’s initial plans fell through for various reasons. Frankie, Nu Vibe and Misha B all seemed like they were supposed to be the ‘stars’ of that year, but it all went a bit pear shaped. Tulisa predicted Nu Vibe to be the overall winners, but they ended up dead last in the first public vote. With Frankie, it turned out he couldn’t actually sing, and ended up being kicked off for doing drugs. Misha B’s time on The X Factor has to be one of the most depressing examples of what this show does, as in her they had a readymade popstar, and over the course of the series she was turned into a deflated reality TV contestant.

The top 3 in the first public vote was Janet Devlin, The Risk and Sophie Habibis. None of them made it to the final, in fact Sophie and the Risk were both gone before the second half of the live shows. The designated joke act Johnny Robinson was 1% off topping the vote the one week he was taken semi-seriously singing ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ by the Darkness.

Janet Devlin topped the vote from weeks 2-5. There were a lot of rumours that she was determined to do her own thing and didn’t play ball with song choices and what the show wanted her to do, which may have led to the massive deramping she had.

Amelia Lily in her big comeback got the most votes in week 6 and her bottom 2 bounce in week 8, and Little Mix topped the vote for weeks 7, 9 and 10. That’s probably what’s most unusual about series 8. A girlgroup was not only popular, they won! And became one of the more successful winners.

My highlight of that series, by a long way, was Lady Gaga running on to hug Kitty Brucknell after she was voted off.

Speaking of Kitty Brucknell, I kind of adore her, but unfortunately I haven’t much liked anything she’s released since leaving the show. With the exception her guest vocals on the dance track ‘I Wanna Get Out’ by Tiltin, specifically the Loverush UK remix, which I ended up playing a lot on my iPod.

Diana Vickers – ‘Cinderella’ came up on my iPod shuffle this month, which I had forgotten about. It is a very good pop song and should have been a hit really. I’ve got to love the lyric “for you I would lose both of my shoes”, referencing the fairytale in the title, Diana Vickers’ shoeless performances and the morning after the night out before walk of shame.

I found out the Bewitched TV series theme tune has lyrics thanks to The X Factor. Olly Murs sang it for Big Band week in series 6 and Katie Waissel sang it for Halloween week in series 7. God, I’m having nightmarish visions of a remake of that TV show with those two in the lead roles!

A lot of series 6 alumni are still ”around” in the public eye.

Joe McElderry was on TV.  Is doing musical theatre now. He seems happy. Good to know.

Rachel Adedeji was on showbiz website news as she’s got married. Is doing musical theatre now. She seems happy. Good to know.

Stacey Solomon isn’t doing musical theatre, but she’s finally got an album released. This year she did The Jump and had a relationship with fellow contestant Steve-O from Jackass. She seems happy. Good to know.

We’ve never had X Factor contestants collaborate outside the context of the show have we? I suppose that in some ways they have to not become too anchored to The X Factor and exist in the pop world in their own right, but Alexandra Burke and JLS returning and performing together in the series 6 final was great. I’m surprised we never got an Alexandra/Leona Lewis duet actually, although they both released stuff this year. Leona’s last single didn’t make the top 40. Alexandra has made an EP, but either it didn’t make the chart or it never got released. Instead she’s been playing the lead role in the West End musical version of The Bodyguard.

I remember reading someone on the internet somewhere suggesting that Leona and Alexandra should do ‘I Know Him So Well’. Well it would be interesting addition to the list. As well as the Elaine Paige & Barbara Dickson original we’ve had Whitney Houston & her mother Cissy Houston, Steps, John Barrowman & Daniel Boys, Lily Savage & Barbara Dickson, Elaine Paige & Susan Boyle, Geraldine McQueen & Susan Boyle, Melanie C & Emma Bunton. It’s a pity we’ll probably never get an Agnetha Fältskog & Frida Lyngstad version, considering it was co-written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. Sorry, gone off topic a bit. Get back to The X Factor.

The Beyonce/Alexandra duet of ‘Listen’ in the series 5 final is still the best moment the show has ever had, and I can’t see this upcoming series containing anything to knock that off the top spot to be honest. But let’s see what the new series brings.

The X Factor (Series 11)

With the US version crashing and burning, and the UK version nosediving, Simon Cowell returned to the UK version for this series intending to turn its fortunes around. Cheryl Cole returned too, though she has got married again since she was last on so is now called Cheryl Fernandez-Versini. Of course, Louis Walsh never went away, him being the cockroach of The X Factor, not well thought of but survives apocalypse after apocalypse, clinging on while those higher up the food chain are wiped out. So with Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and Cheryl Tweedy-Cole-Fernandez-Versini-Bouvier-Terwilliger-Hutz-McClure-Fosington-Gore-Lambert-Banana-Fanna-Bo-Besca The Third (yes, I know everyone else has done that joke already), the judges line-up was three quarters of the line-up from the shows 2008-2010 heyday. The only missing judge was Danni Minogue, who is currently a judge on the Australian version of the show. Instead we had had Scary Spice Mel B who is… a former judge of the Australian version of the show.

I think it was a pretty good judges line-up, certainly an improvement on the last few years. As Simon Cowell’s company makes the show, you at least suspect his decisions actually make a difference, and that he has some authority in what’s going on. He’s also far better at playing the part of Simon Cowell than his understudy Gary Barlow was. Looking back at the very first series though, (which the winner of that series Steve Brookstein has recently released an interesting tell-all book about), it is kind of worrying how in the first series Simon Cowell was a panto villain for the audience to boo, and as each series has gone on his role in the show has grown to some kind of all-powerful dictator who the audience is supposed to think he knows what’s best for them.

Mel B had a similar role to Simon Cowell’s original one by being the “harsh”, “critical” judge, and she did it pretty well. She made good points most of the time, and was lively without coming across as a total loose canon like Sharon Osbourne and Nicole Scherzinger did. Cheryl’s years away from The X Factor have also done her good, in her final series on the show, series 7, her long conversion into becoming a fembot was almost complete, but now she seems a bit more human.

Speaking of series 7, this series seemed to be following the formula of it, what with series 7 having the highest viewing figures the show has ever had. They had 16 acts in the live shows rather than just 12. Did it work the same? Not really. Unlike series 7, which felt very ‘big’, overbearingly so in fact, this series was a bit of a snoozefest. I fell asleep a few times while watching. By the time it got to the final week there was a bit of an “Is it over already?” feeling from people, and not in a good way.

One problem was the casting. It’s all very well having more acts in the live shows, but in series 7 there was a lot more variety and individuality with the acts. In this series so many of the acts were bland and samey, so more acts just amounted to extra padding. Like last time, the 4 extra acts were by each category having a “Wild Card”, but if an act has been chosen to be a wild card, that kind of implies the producers didn’t want them enough to put them in the final 12, which hardly bodes well.

The first couple of weeks saw double eliminations to cull the acts which weren’t getting many votes. To start with, two groups went. Blonde Electra, a duo compromising of two bleached blonde sisters Ruby and Jazzy King. To be honest, I quite liked them and their staging in their only live show performance ; a neon circus with light-up unicorns, pink and blue elephants, a roaring green lion and loads of hula hoops. But it was no surprise that most of the viewers didn’t care for it. The other act who went was the Wild Card group, a boyband called Overload Generation. They were told they hadn’t made it to the live shows, then bought back just to be thrown under the bus and compared negatively to the other shite boyband Stereo Kicks. It’s difficult to think of a more thankless role than that.

That said, the act who beat Overload Generation in the bottom 2 sing-off didn’t get a much better part. Stephanie Nala had previously been in a band who entered Britain’s Got Talent, and her role in The X Factor was to be filler material, as they never showed much interest in her. She was voted out in week two. I liked that she sang Brandy’s ‘Have You Ever?’ in her sing-off though, as I like that song a lot but hadn’t heard it for a while.

Chloe Jasmine was supposed to be this year’s version of Katie Waissell, but Chloe only inspired indifference from the public rather than being the tabloid headline grabbing hate figure La Waissell was. Plus, say what you like about her, but Katie Waissell did something different with her performances every week. Chloe Jasmine mainly stuck to jazz-lite while dressed like that very brief time in Madonna’s career when she kept playing 1920s gangsters molls in a futile attempt to become a movie star.

The next eliminated contestant, Jake Quickenden, was fairly pointless. He couldn’t sing and was only there because of his looks (though I never quite got his appeal, I thought he looked a bit rodent-like really). The most interesting thing about him was that he went in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and finished runner-up before this series of The X Factor had even finished! In fact, he’s the shortest ever time it’s taken for a former X Factor finalist to go on another reality TV show. I suppose you can’t blame him for entering, but you have wonder why he was asked to go on in the first place. Former X Factor contestants have been cast other reality TV shows were at least memorable in some way, as a joke act (Jedward/Rylan), a scandal (Frankie Cocozza), or because they were popular (Joe McElderry/Stacey Solomon). That we’ve got to the stage where these reality shows are even casting reality show also-rans says a lot about how much the barrel is being scraped.

The Boys and Girls Wild Cards both went in week four. The show tried to hype Jack Walton‘s unique selling point as his performances being slowed down acoustic guitar versions of popular songs, but that’s something that’s hardly in short supply. He was thrown under the bus, and seemed well aware of it, with a rubbish production which saw a vampire girl coming out and biting his neck. Lola Saunders‘ performance of Sam Smith’s ‘Stay With Me’ was my favourite in the first live show, but from then on she just faded into the background slowly but surely until she vanished altogether.

Paul Akister had a decent voice, but even though he was only in his 20s, his style of performing was very middle aged, middle of the road and very appealing to middle England. His treatment by the show was the most uncomfortable to watch, as it was yet another example of a contestant sacrificed on the altar of reality TV. He did very well in the vote for the first month, finishing in the top 5 each time, but in his final week he finished dead last, after being shoved on first, singing Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, a song that was completely unsuitable for him, and there had been videos here and the week before showing him grumbling. He ended up in the bottom 2 and voted out, and seemed to know exactly what was going on. To an extent, I can’t really blame the producers for wanting rid of contestants which might be good singers and might get lots of votes from the viewers, but are dull and have pretty much zero chance of making it in the modern pop charts afterwards, and to be honest Paul was quickly forgotten after his exit. But then it is very cruel how this show tells people they have a shot at stardom only to chew them up and spit them out. This whole situation is probably best viewed as a cautionary tale, but sadly I don’t think Paul Akister is going to be the last.

Big Band Week was awful as usual, but I’ll say one thing in its favour, it got rid of Jay James. He never did all that well in the vote, and is one of the few contestants not to get a sympathy bounce after ending up in the bottom 2 the week before. His final week saw him doing a “New York medley”, though how they could call singing a couple of lines of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ ‘Empire State Of Mind’ before going into a lounge lizard version of Frank Sinatra’s  ‘New York, New York’ a medley is beyond me. There was always something a bit smug about Jay James, but he wasn’t much less of a cheeseball than the joke act Stevi Richie was, and it was very satisfying to see him voted off in the bottom 2 against Stevi, especially as Stevi actually sang better than Jay in the sing-off.

Stevi Richie was the designated joke act, but he was never that funny. He wasn’t as larger-than-life as Jedward, Wagner or Rylan. He was just very amateurish, very low budget holiday camp compere, dad dancing at a wedding, bloke from accounts who’s had too much to drink at the office party. He sang cheesy tunes like ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ ‘Footloose’ and ‘Mambo No. 5’.  He left after he performed Elton John’s ‘I’m Still Standing’, the song being a fairly obvious attempt to put or at least reaffirm the idea in viewer’s heads that Stevi had been there too long. That performance saw him dressed as a pharaoh and covered with honey and feathers among staging which looked like a dodgy downmarket Ancient Egypt themed casino. One of the few things this series did have in common with series 7 was that the Wild Card who lasted the longest was the Overs joke act. When the voting figures were released, he did about as well as most joke acts do, i.e not very, apart from the week he sang ‘Music Of The Night’ dressed as the Phantom of the Opera, when he finished 3rd. It was a bit like in series 8 where Johnny Robinson finished 2nd, and quite close to 1st, in the vote after singing ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ by The Darkness. I didn’t personally reckon much to either performance, but it’s interesting to me that both were designated joke acts and ended up doing well in the vote when they were given a late slot in the running order and a song choice that took them at least semi-seriously. I think this shows that, despite what is often said, people aren’t really that motivated to vote for “guilty pleasures”, they’re more likely to vote for something they genuinely like.

One of the acts I most rooted for was Only The Young, Mikey, Parisa, Betsey-Blue and Charlie. They looked similar to bubblegum pop groups like S Club 7 or Steps, and while there have been a lot of boybands and girl groups in the charts we haven’t seen that sort of boy/girl pop group in a long time. Only The Young also had an indie or at least “alternative” pop band vibe to them, in a “we play instruments and we’re serious proper musos” way. I think I liked their uniqueness. There was also a sense that they really believed in what they were doing, which is something you so rarely get from X Factor groups. Their performances were a bit messy, but that was part of their charm. The three performances I liked the most from them were ‘Come On Eileen’ by Dexys Midnight Runners, a song which they weren’t even keen on, but their performance of it was oddly soaring and inspiring, and I enjoyed them doing ‘Boom Clap’ by Charli XCX. By far their best though was ‘Monster Mash’, which they had released a video of before for the Teenage Cancer Trust charity. Their X Factor performance of it had them sat at a banquet table with skeletons, jack o lanterns, a bubbling cauldron and a spooky house, and they were so enthusiastic performing it. Their highest position in the vote was when they got to 6th place performing ‘I Wanna Be Like You (The Monkey Song)’ from the soundtrack of Disney’s The Jungle Book.

Only The Young really brightened up the series. I didn’t like everything they did. Their sing-off when they sang ‘The Winner Takes It All’ was terrible, but in fairness nobody except ABBA themselves have done that song well. I also didn’t like the performance which saw them finish bottom of the vote, a speeded up version of Elton John’s ‘Something About The Way You Look Tonight’ with bumper cars and party streamers, which was far too cheesy and far too try-hard in a “YAY! WE’RE FUUUUUUUNNNN!” way. The voting figures revealed they were never massively popular in the vote, which is a shame, but I guess they always were underdogs. In any case, I really hope they do well for themselves from being on this show.

The group the show seemed most eager to make “happen” were Stereo Kicks, and they were the group which lasted the longest, but they ended up in the bottom 3 as early as the second week. The show was determined to drag them along like a heavy bag of rotting rubbish towards the bin at the end of a very long garden path. Stereo Kicks were yet another one of the Frankenband groups made up of rejected soloists. Their main gimmick was that they were an eight piece boyband. That seemed to be the total thought that was put into the act. Where to begin with the problems? It was ridiculous that they had a 14 year old and a 21 year old in the same band. They sounded tuneless. Only two of them, at most, could sing. They had no identity whatsoever, the show was still trying to make Spice Girl style nicknames for them stick in the week they left the competition, bear in mind this was week 8! They came across as shallow and obnoxious. Their performances were forgettable borefests. There was a (possibly planned by the show) stunt where comedian Simon Brodkin invaded the stage similar to when Calvin Harris invaded a Jedward performance in series 7 wearing a pineapple on his head. But this time it wasn’t as funny because there were so many of Stereo Kicks nobody noticed an extra person on stage with them until it was pointed out afterwards. In short, Stereo Kicks were crap.

With Lauren Platt, I initially filed her with other bland, insipid, drippy Girls category acts like Lucie Jones (series 6) or  Sophie Habibis (series 8) who only last a month or so. I was wrong. She was much more popular than either of those were, and more than a lot of the finalists this year, she finished in the top 4 of the vote every single week. I still found her a bit overrated though. She began the live shows with a cover of Foxes’ Radio One Live Lounge mash-up cover of ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams and ‘Teardrop’ by Massive Attack.  Then a couple of weeks later Lauren did ‘Let It Go’ from the soundtrack to Disney’s Frozen, and the week after that she did ‘Dark Horse’ by Katy Perry. I think Lauren was one of those acts where the show never seems quite sure which direction to take them. Indie-pop songstress? Disney Club member? Colourful mainstream pop star? It’s not as if she was versatile, her versions all sounded like John Lewis adverts. I thought her version of ‘Don’t You Worry Child’ was quite sweet, but I never got all the fuss with Lauren really.

Andrea Faustini was a camp, bearded Italian who loved pugs and, more importantly, was a good singer. He mainly sang Mariah, Whitney and Beyonce diva ballads. He was a favourite in the early stages of the show, and indeed he topped the public vote for the first three weeks. But as the series went on it increasingly looked like a) the show weren’t taking him all that seriously and b) they didn’t want the audience to either. The videos of him before each performance were filled with associations to food and eating, Simon Cowell infamously comparing Andrea to eating too many doughnuts, and even worse in the semi-final asking whether Andrea was going to eat his pet pug!  There were so many cartoonish national stereotypes in this introduction videos too, both Italian (pizza, pasta, spaghetti, saying “Mamma mia!”, ‘That’s Amore’ played in the background in many of them), and British ones with Andrea saying how much he loves it in the UK  (red London buses, drinking tea, eating fish and chips, wearing a Union Jack hat). Halloween Week saw him painted gold and dressed up as a devil. The show basically turned him into a novelty act, and it succeeded in denting his popularity to the extent that even though he reached the final he was pretty much out of the game by then. That said, while he might have been the best technical vocalist this series, even at his best it is a little difficult to imagine him existing in the music world outside of reality TV.

The winner and runner-up were also the only two acts who never ended up bottom of the vote or in the sing-off. I had picked them as two of my favourites fairly early on, so regardless of which won I was pleased to see them essentially being the prom king and queen of this series.

Fleur East had appeared on The X Factor live shows before, way back in series 2 as a member of girl group Addictiv Ladies. They were voted out first in a bottom 2 against the original X Factor joke act, Chico. In between her two X Factor appearances, Fleur had been a guest vocalist on a few drum and bass tracks. She became my favourite from week 2 onwards after a brilliant performance of Monie Love’s ‘It’s A Shame’ on a giant gold disc record player, singing and rapping, and as much as it’s one of this shows many cliches to say this, she looked like a popstar. (It is typical of The X Factor never sticking to their own theme weeks though. ‘It’s A Shame’ was in ’80s Week, and the song came out in 1990!) Despite not being a powerhouse vocalist, she performed ballads well too, doing a classy performance of Michael Jackson’s ‘Will You Be There’. Even though it almost landed her in the bottom 2, I have a soft spot for her version of ‘If I Ain’t Got You’ by Alicia Keys, in which Fleur wore a blue dress with peacock feathers in the background. Part of me would quite like to see her play Mrs. Peacock in a new version of Cluedo actually. In the first half of the show, Fleur had been around 5th/6th/7th place in the public vote, but after a brassy rearrangement of ‘Bang Bang’ she was 2nd in the vote and stayed there more or less for the rest of the series.

Her best moment though came in the semi-final when she performed a song that hadn’t yet been released in the UK, ‘Uptown Funk’ by Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars. She gave a fantastic, energetic dance-filled performance dressed in gold before going to sit on a throne. Her version of the song made it to number one in the UK iTunes chart that week. The release of the original version was due in January, but was bought forward after the success of Fleur’s version and made it to number one on the official chart. A memorable moment in any series for sure. It didn’t really increase her vote, but then at this stage I think it’s obvious that there isn’t that much crossover between people who buy music and people who vote on The X Factor. There was a lot of talk about blatant favouritism towards Fleur, and not without some justification. Most strikingly was the focus given to her campaign bus with VOTE FLEUR EAST written in big letters. All of the final three had campaign buses, but Fleur’s was certainly given the most screen time. Perhaps I’m just a biased fan and all that, but favourable treatment or not, I thought Fleur was great and the best shot of getting a popstar out of this series.

The winner was Ben Haenow, his surname causing everybody, not least the show itself, to make reference jokes to ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ by Crowded House (“hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over”). He was very hot and handsome, certainly more so than most X Factor “hunks”. In contrast, his narrative on the show was a fairly standard one. An ordinary working class bloke who wants to use his talent to make a better life for his family. This being The X Factor they were never exactly subtle about it, going on in his introduction videos about how he was a VAN DRIVER! who eats SAUSAGE AND CHIPS IN A GREASY SPOON CAFF! Ben had  a raw, gravelly singing voice that was best suited to rock songs, such as ‘I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing’ by Aerosmith, and ‘Highway To Hell’ by AC/DC.  ‘Highway To Hell’ was by far my favourite performance of Ben’s, and it was the first of his to top the vote in week four. From then he topped every single vote all the way to the final. The previous act he is most similar to is Matt Cardle from series 7, so this series did succeed in emulating series 7 after all. Matt Cardle was also a good looking, rock-ish singer who was 1st in the vote most weeks, though his career didn’t really do well afterwards. In fact, while white male singers tend to do well in The X Factor  vote, most of them that have won didn’t have a long music career afterwards. Steve Brookstein, Leon Jackson, Joe McElderry, Matt Cardle and James Arthur are examples of this. There have been male contestants that did quite well, like Shayne Ward, JLS, Olly Murs and One Direction, but none except Shayne Ward were winners, they all finished 2nd or 3rd. Can Ben Haenow avoid the winners curse? I’m not sure, but I kind of hope so.

A change this time was free voting via an app where people could get five free votes. This resulted in more votes being cast, more than ever before in fact, but it didn’t appear to change things massively. They also opened the voting lines at the beginning of each show, the second time they’ve done so since series nine, and the same patterns still seem to apply. Early slots in the running order are still harmful, pimp slots are still beneficial. Bottom 2 sympathy bounces the following week still happen.

The ratings for this series were just as low as the previous few, but I think the show has had it’s day anyway. People are a bit tired of it these days, and even casual fans are noticing all the manipulation that goes on now. I wouldn’t say this series was bad, I found it watchable enough, and it think it was a reasonably good final 4 by X Factor standards, but it was a bit of a shrug of a series really. Rumored changes for next year include ditching deadlock (which should make it all the easier for the powers that be to get the outcome they want). There is some speculation that Tulisa will be back as a judge after filling in for Mel B when she was off sick in the first half of the final. Personally, I wouldn’t want to see Tulisa back, I’ve always found her a bit rancid.

I really don’t think there’s much they can do to reverse the ratings decline, at the end of the day the show has passed its peak. But let’s face it, chances are a lot of us will still watch it next year.

To finish off, a few random things from the series.

* Lizzy Pattinson, sister of actor Robert Pattinson, entered and made it to the Judge’s Houses stage. I was quite pleased to see her again, as before her brother was famous she sang on a couple of  tracks for other acts, including ‘Dreaming’ by Aurora, which is one of my favourite songs of the 2000s.

* Halloween Week was great this year, the best Halloween Week they’ve ever done. Some of my favourite performances of the series, including Ben’s ‘Highway To Hell’ and Only The Young’s ‘Monster Mash’. There was also Fleur doing a good job with Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ considering it is such an iconic dance routine, and Stevi as the Phantom of the Opera. Even it did start the deramping of him,  I quite enjoyed Andrea’s camptacular performance of ‘Relight My Fire’. They even did something similar to when The Simpsons has spooky names in the credits of their Halloween specials, by the show’s presenter Dermot O’Leary giving the judges nicknames. Lucifer Walsh, Hell B, Cheryl Fangnandez-Versini and Slimon Cowell.

They tried the same thing with the Christmas theme week. Dermot announced the judges as Good King Walshness, Jingle Mel, Cheryl Fernandez-Versleighny and Simon Christmas Carol. I don’t think that worked as well. But I’m one of those people who prefers Halloween to Christmas anyway. Another reason I wasn’t as keen on Christmas week is that, well The X Factor can get mawkishly sentimental at the best of times, add that to Christmas, well it is a bit much. One thing I did like was during Fleur’s performance of ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ part of it was for the dancers to give wrapped presents to the judges, which contained chocolates, and Cheryl joked that it was a bribe to the judges. I have to admit, I did find that very funny.

* This year the theme weeks often had naff titles which sounded like tacky cash-in compilation albums. “I Love The ’80s” for 80s Week, “Fright Night” for Halloween Week, “Countdown To Christmas” for Christmas Week, and “Disco Fever” for Disco Week… or it would have been, except that last theme week didn’t happen. Infamously it changed three times, from Boybands Vs Girlbands Week, to Disco Week to the one they eventually went with, Michael Jackson Vs Queen Week.

The X Factor (Series 10)

The tenth series of The X Factor recently finished, and it was one of its least watched ever.  I personally didn’t find it as frustrating to watch as some of its previous years have been, but it was bland and diluted, and show has always sold on OMG! moments, tabloid headlines, and hyperbole. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more to that sort of thing in next year’s series.

The judging panel this year saw the return of one of the original judges, Sharon Osborne, who quit the show after series 4. I can remember lorryloads of utterly worthless pop culture stuff, but my memory of the early years of The X Factor is hazy. But what I do remember is mostly Sharon Osborne related. One thing was that she turned out to be right about what a pillock series one winner Steve Brookstein was, and another is all the jokes about her. One was that she was “the perineum of X Factor”, that is the bit between the arsehole (Simon Cowell) and the bollocks (Louis Walsh). Another was by TV critic Ian Hyland, something along the lines of  “They say you shouldn’t exploit doddering old women on reality TV, but I think Sharon Osborne is an important part of X Factor”. Her return turned out to be short-lived, as she announced she won’t be back next series. Perhaps there isn’t much point though, as with this series she managed to do something she was never able to in the four series she was on before, and win with her category.

This means Gary Barlow is one of only judges never to win. The other was Kelly Rowland, who quit after just one series. Gary Barlow’s finishing positions have also got worse year on year, his most successful act reached 2nd in series 8, 3rd in series 9 and 4th in series 10. With that in mind, it’s increasingly strange that there is this perception that he is the “head judge” and top of the pecking order. But then he only has that position as he’s essentially keeping Simon Cowell’s seat warm while he does the flagging American version of the show. He is filling in for Cowell’s role as the hard-to-impress big boss and the one bothered about the “integrity” of the competition. But it’s never really worked. For one thing, who still believes this show has integrity? For another, Simon Cowell has a personality. One that many people loathe, true, but he has one. It’s not for nothing Gary Barlow has been dubbed “Borelow” by some viewers. He’s so beige. It’s hard to know whether he’s trying or not. Gary Barlow enthusiastic and Gary Barlow indifferent seem more or less the same thing.

Nicole Scherzinger is a far, far more entertaining as an X Factor judge than she ever was a popstar. I’ve never seen her much less successful stint as a judge on the US version, so I don’t know what she was like there, but in the UK version her way of spewing random nonsensical gobbledegook livens things up.

Louis Walsh is usually the joke judge who gets the joke acts, and mainly sits there looking like a garden gnome that has been carved out of a mouldy turnip. He did that this series too, but got more of a starring role this time, although it was mainly just him being even more bitchy than usual. I think it was a combination of him having the Boys category, which traditionally do the best with the public vote, and the fact that he has been there throughout the ten series, and it’s suspected that he’s the one that tows the party line the most. The X Factor has been accused of being a bit Orwellian at times, with their re-writing of history, airbrushing certain past contestants out, even some winners, Simon Cowell as all-powerful authoritarian Big Brother figure, that time when it seemed the cover of every newspaper and magazine and every poster and billboard had Cheryl Cole grinning like a Stepford wife, and, despite the claim that their environment produces the best, brightest and strongest, the one who’s survived in it the longest is a toadying, insincere beetle-man.

As usual after getting a final 12, the first 4 weeks of the live shows to get rid of the cannon fodder, contestants which they clearly never intended to do much with and were just there to make up numbers/to cushion acts they actually want to stay in, and those that the public clearly just can’t be arsed voting for.These unfortunate few wouldn’t be going on the X Factor Live tour.

The first 4 acts to go were two Over 25s followed by two groups. The Over 25s and the Groups are the two categories which rarely do well. With the groups, it’s harder for people to relate to a group as opposed to an individual, and for the Over 25s, as shallow as it is, I think there’s a feeling from people that they are indeed “over”, “past it” or “ready for the knacker’s yard”.  OK, the winner of this series was an Over-25, but it’s only the second time that has happened.

The first act to go was 26-year old Lorna Simpson, who had barely any screentime before the live shows and was styled older than her age. Few things are as unappealing as a bitter reality TV contestant, but I have to say I rather liked Lorna frankly saying she felt she’d been set up for a fail. It was like, she’s out first, she’ll be forgotten and will get next to no benefit out of it, she might as well burn this bridge. Then went another Over-25, 35 year old Shelley Smith. I think the show hoped Shelley would be the comedy act, like Jedward (series 6) or Wagner (series 7), and if she resembled any reality TV contestant it was Geraldine McQueen from Peter Kay’s Britain’s Got The Pop Factor spoof. But Shelley never really took on with the public. The problem might have been that she was less court jester and more someone’s drunken auntie at a wedding. Joke acts never get that many votes, just enough to avoid the bottom 2 for a few weeks, so it’s easy to see why Shelley, who was not officially the joke act, but had that role by default, would get even fewer votes.

Then it was two groups in a row which left. One was Miss. Dynamix, who were one of those chop and change “Frankenbands” that you seem to get every series. One of the members, SeSe Foster, auditioned with two blokes as a group called Dynamix, and the show took what they liked from there (i.e, SeSe and the group name), and stuck her with two girls who’d auditioned as soloists. Then it turned out SeSe was pregnant, and due to give birth near the time the X Factor live tour would start. Let’s just say the show became less eager for the group to stick around long enough to make the tour.  Then there was Kingsland Road, who outstayed their welcome even if they only lasted four weeks. A boyband who did cheesy dance moves while overstyled in hipster clothes was never going to work.

After that, they began to see more important members of the cast fall into the bottom 2 and had to lose some. Abi Alton, who wore glasses and had flowers in her hair, was the designated “quirky girl”, like Diana Vickers (series 5) or Janet Devlin (series 8), the one in the Girls category who’s there to give some variety to the competition and last most of the series, but ultimately that type in X Factor is always the bridesmaid, never the bride. The bride is a belty diva type with long flowing hair and dressed in a ballgown like a Disney princess.

However, Abi was the last girl to fall in the bottom 2. She was doing better in the public vote than the girls they saw as more important, Hannah and Tamera, so the show seemed to be desperate to get rid of her . That said, she was never hugely popular. Abi’s pattern in the public vote was more like that of Sophie Habibis (series 8) than Diana Vickers or Janet Devlin. The latter two were both high in the vote most weeks, but Abi and Sophie both started out high in the first public vote, but then slowly fell down the vote week by week. Whether it’s was the restrictive nature of the show or a lack of versatility on their part, they were both unable to do more than one type of performance, which were slowed down piano ballad versions of pop songs you hear played on John Lewis adverts. Abi was best when she had a piano, and worst when they had her sing Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ surrounded by pink heart shaped umbrellas. A week after that mess the judges tried to get her out by criticising her harshly for a dull performance, which backfired as it made her cry. They got it right the second time they tried it. After giving her a breather one week, they used a few tried and tested tricks to get rid of a contestant. Abi was on first, she lost some of her ‘identity’ (no piano, and she wasn’t wearing glasses), and was singing Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’, which has seen everyone who’s sung it on X Factor (the others were Scott Bruton in series 5, and Miss Frank in series 6) end up at the bottom of the vote and eliminated that week. That’s the thing with a vote to save, if the powers that be want to get rid of a contestant in one week it’s better to make them forgettable than to go on a full on character assassination.

Sam Callahan was a nice, pretty boy who was the heartthrob type, who teenage girls can fantasise about him being their dream boyfriend. The problem with him was he couldn’t sing that well. His voice was passable-to-average for pop-rock that’s a favourite to be played on the radio, like when he did ‘Summer of ’69’ by Bryan Adams, or ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls which he sang in his sing-off performance, but try to get him to sing something else, like ‘Relight My Fire’ in Disco Week, and it doesn’t work at all. It was at this point, week 4, that they tried to make him into the “joke act”, but that wasn’t a role he was credible in. He was more of a Lloyd Daniels (series 6) than a Jedward. Gary Barlow also wasn’t willing to play along with his role as the outraged judge. So Sam Callahan went in week 6. Like Abi, it was thought that he was too popular and had to be stopped, but when the voting figures were released, it turned out he never got that many votes. If anything, he was very close to being in the bottom 2 in week 3, and in week 5 even though he got “the pimp slot” (performing last just before the phone vote lines open).

It looks like Abi and Sam C were always heading for a middle position, and neither were versatile, but they were both very likeable. Abi comes across a sweet girl, Sam seems to be a nice guy, and I think the series lost something when they had both gone. But you can see why they were jettisoned for contestants that had more potential in the pop charts, though they all finished between 6th and 3rd place.

Hannah Barrett was seen as one of the front runners at first. But she found herself in the bottom 2 in week 3. It’s all about momentum, and ending up in the bottom 2 that early killed a lot of it for Hannah, from then on it was seen as only a matter of time before she went. But in a strange way, I think ending up in the bottom 2 so early prompted Hannah to try even harder and she improved over the next few weeks. For me, off all the contestants she’s the one I grew to like more as the competition went on. I found her blandly competent at first, good but not that memorable. But she seemed to fight for it more after being in the bottom 2. She came back stronger in week 4 singing Jocelyn Brown’s ‘Somebody Else’s Guy’. In her bottom 2 appearance the following week she sang ‘Wrecking Ball’  Miley Cyrus a hell of a lot better than Miley Cyrus herself did when she sang it as the guest performer the week after. Hannah then gave a performance which looked like she was enjoying herself more than any other week when she sang ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ by The Rolling Stones. The following week she gave a good performance of Alexandra Burke’s version of ‘Hallelujah’, but ended up in the bottom 2 again against Rough Copy who were there for the first time. The general consensus was that she sang much better than them in the sing-off, but went because she’d been in the bottom 2 more often. I was pleasantly surprised when the voting figures were released as, after a lot of people piled in to make snidey, bitchy comments about how unpopular Hannah was, it turned out she was doing better in the public vote than expected, she was 3rd place three out of the seven weeks she was there, and had it gone to deadlock she would have survived the week she went. It’s weird how similar her voting pattern was to another teenage soul diva contestant, Misha B from series 8 though. Both were 5th place in the first public vote, the week after 3rd place after a pimp slot, next week bottom 2, next week top 3, next week bottom 2, next week top 3, then bottom 2 the week after.

Tamera Foster. They really messed up here, didn’t they? She looked like a ready-made pop star, she had a good voice, and at first it seemed everyone was saying she was going to win easily. Then she ended up in the bottom 2 in week 4. When the voting figures were released, it turned out she was never all that popular in the public vote, the highest she got was 4th place. Where did it all go wrong? One thing was the revelations that Tamera had committed petty crimes in the past, which she said she regretted and had changed since, but something like that is bound to put people off voting for a contestant. It’s possible all the hype about her being a global superstar in waiting and being the star of the final already might have put viewers off her, but I think the bigger issue with the hype was that, coupled with all the bad press she was getting, it was a lot of pressure on Tamera, who was actually one of the youngest contestants this series, aged 16. It certainly seemed to be getting to her, as in weeks 6 and 7 she had problems with the songs, forgetting lyrics and coming in too early and having to try and cover it up.  Now this may well have helped her avoid the bottom 2 for a couple more weeks; the voting figures revealed that like most contestants who fall in the bottom 2, she had a rebound vote the following week, and it fell down the week after, which usually puts the contestant in the bottom 2 again. In Tamera’s case, she scraped through by the skin of her teeth in weeks 6 and 7, finding herself at the bottom of the vote and eliminated after two fairly competent performances in week 8. It’s likely her problems with the songs might have helped her avoid the bottom 2 for those weeks, fans seem to vote more for their favourite if they seem to be in trouble.

For me personally I was mostly a bit “meh” about Tamera’s performances, they were mostly OK, but I only actively liked three of them. Her week one performance of Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody’ was fun, and she really gave it her all in her two sing-off performances, Whitney Houston’s ‘I Have Nothing’ and Christina Aguilera’s ‘The Voice Within’. I think it may have been better for Tamera to have not been put through this time and asked to come back in a couple of years where she may have been more mature and more able to handle things better, but eh, what’s done is done.

On The X Factor usually one of the groups isn’t a total disaster, and after the two thirds of the group category have gone, the remaining group gets at least to the semi-final. This year that group was Rough Copy. But while not a total disaster, they had problems. One was that they weren’t that great vocally, and couldn’t harmonise. In the ’90s some boybands were, rather pretentiously, called “vocal harmony groups” to try to make them sound more credible. They wouldn’t be able to try that with Rough Copy.  In fairness, Rough Copy made up for it by having a lot of energy, and I’d say the bigger issue for them was less how they performed and more the show not knowing what to do with them. Their styling was random, having stuff like backpacks and army camouflage gear. Then there was the attempt to create a brand by getting the crowd to chant their initials “R.C”, which just sounded like they were saying “Arsey”.

Some of their song choices were a bit strange for an urban-pop group too. OK, fine, I know Phil Collins in general, and ‘In The Air Tonight’ in particular, is popular with many American hip hop/R&B artists. And yes, Brandy covered ‘Everything I Do (I Do It For You)’ by Bryan Adams. But ‘Viva La Vida’ by Coldplay?! There’s trying to “make a song your own” and there’s trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I think the crowning moment of the show not knowing what to do with them came on Best Of X Factor week, where the remaining contestants performed songs by previous X Factor contestants. Everyone else got a number one single by one of those acts. What did Rough Copy get? ‘Don’t Let Go (Love)’ by En Vogue, the reasoning being Little Mix performed it in week 8 of their series, it topped the vote and it set them off on their route to winning. Yeah, because they were a group and kind of R&B-ish and they won, it’ll totally work for Rough Copy too. Except it didn’t, it landed Rough Copy at the bottom of the vote, and set them off on a route to bottom of the vote in the semi-final. I’m not a fan of the theme weeks in The X Factor, especially when they are dated genres like Disco and Big Band, but I think they can be a gift for acts which the show has very little idea of what direction to take for them. The only two Rough Copy performances I enjoyed were ‘Superstition’ by Stevie Wonder (Disco Week) and ‘Hit The Road Jack’ by Ray Charles (Big Band Week).

Luke Friend, a 17-year-old busker, has been described as the underdog and the dark horse of the competition, but the animal he reminded me most of was a lion, with his straggly mane-like hairstyle and his growling vocals. Either that, or Hair Bear, from Hanna-Barbera’s Help!…It’s The Hair Bear Bunch. He started out as something of an also ran in the first couple of weeks, finishing low in the public vote despite late slots. However, doing a good performance of ‘Kiss From A Rose’ by Seal in Movie Week saw him reach third place in that week’s vote. His other performances included performing ‘Let Her Go’ by Passenger in a rowing boat on a sea of dry ice, and doing an acoustic guitar cover of ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ by One Direction. In contrast to Rough Copy, I think the theme weeks were bad for him, as they tend to be for contestants with a clear image and style already. They tried to make him fit Big Band Week, tying back his hair and putting him in a suit, but the purple suit they had him wear made him look a bit like The Joker from Batman. That said, in the quarter final he performed Mumford & Sons and Bon Iver, which should have been right in his comfort zone, but landed him in the bottom 2 for the first time. He was in the bottom 2 again in the semi-final, but he was he was way ahead of Rough Copy in that week’s public vote. In the final he finished 3rd, which was expected as he’d been in the bottom 2 twice, but it turned out the vote percentage between the final 3 was very close. It seems he managed to build up more of a fanbase as the series went on, so all in all, he did quite well. He’s been compared to previous winner James Arthur (series 9) and Frankie Cocozza (series 8), but he’s seems a much more pleasant person than Arthur, and a hell of a lot more talented than Cocozza, though, granted, it’s not hard to be more pleasant than James Arthur or more talented than Frankie Cocozza. I’d say Luke Friend is a good bet to be the one who turns out to be the traditional non-winning finalist who becomes the biggest star from that year. That seems to happen often, with One Direction (series 7) and Olly Murs (series 6) being two examples.

That’s one of the big problems with The X Factor . Most of the viewers are mums and grans, so middle aged and older women, and generally they rarely buy music, they get it bought for them on Mother’s Day. They also tend to like bland and inoffensive ballads, and not really interested in what’s currently popular in the charts. So there is a ceiling to the support that acts on the show that have even short term appeal to the pop charts are going to get. As many predicted, the top two in the vote all the way through the competition were Nicholas McDonald, a one-boy Westlife, and Sam Bailey, a former cruise ship singer.

Nicholas McDonald always reminded me of an episode of Coronation Street where someone described Tyrone Dobbs as “like a middle-aged teenager”. That was the thing with Nicholas, he dressed like a kid playing an car salesman in a school play, and was doing middle-of-the-road ballads. This may have been The X Factor itself trying to show him as a “Baby Buble”, and to the demographic of the show that he was adorable, they might want to mother him, and he’s doing songs you like. He may well have had a lot of votes from his home country of Scotland too. Either way, he was always top 2 in the public vote, and got first place a couple of times, his best performance being week 6 when he performed Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ as the last act to perform on the show. That was the last time he was ever allowed to perform at the end or even in the late stages. From then on he was in the death slots of first or second to perform, which are proven to be a disadvantage, as lines open after all the acts have performed, and people tend to forget the ones who were on earlier in favour of the ones they have most recently seen.

It seems clear that the show wanted to deramp Nicholas, probably because the winners he most resembled were Leon Jackson (series 4) and Joe McElderry (series 8). The latter returned as a sort of mentor for Nicholas in The Best of X Factor week when Nicholas sang Joe’s version of ‘The Climb’. Neither Leon nor Joe had much commercial success after winning The X Factor. Leon, Joe and Nicholas all have good voices, they all seem like nice enough lads, and there was a feelgood story with them because they came from working class backgrounds, so a lot of people could identify with them and want to cheer them. It’s the reality TV type that was well parodied as R Wayne in Britain’s Got The Pop Factor. But while that’s popular with reality TV viewers, it doesn’t seem to be what people who buy music regularly want in a pop star. They tend to want more of an “edginess”, even if it is contrived. It’s easy to see why the show wanted to dampen his support rather than get a winner who is unlikely to last long. It did get uncomfortable to watch how Nicholas was being treated though, and the sad thing was he seemed well aware of it. Two moments that really stick out were him being given ‘Halo’ by Beyonce, a song completely unsuitable for him where he cried after it inevitably didn’t go well, and in the final where he was given ‘Candy’ by Robbie Williams, and the staging completely swallowed him up, with what Betsfactor would call “colour vomit”; gaudy, garish eyesore staging, with bubbles, ice creams, teddy bears and pink and yellow shell suits! It looked like something from a kids TV programme in the ’80s. Ah well, Nicholas, silver medal for you. Second place will probably be a better memory from being on The X Factor than that rubbishy birthday cake they got for him when he turned 17 while on the show.

The winner was predictable, as many viewers, the press and it transpired all the four judges thought that she would win. It turned that she had topped the public vote 7 out of 10 weeks (plus one of the flash votes). It was fairly close between her and Nicholas most weeks, and in the final it was shockingly close between Sam, Nicholas and Luke, but by the time it came to the top two, she got more than half the votes. Sam Bailey was a prison officer who was married with two children. We got to see some of her home life with “Jam tart Wednesdays” where every Wednesday she makes jam tarts for her kids. This all meant she was a type of contestant that would get a lot of votes, as most of the demographic would be able to relate to her. She was dubbed “ScrewBo”, a pun on her job as a “screw” (i.e, a prison officer) and on Susan Boyle’s nickname SuBo. In a way, you can see an evolution of this ‘type’ of contestant.  The starting point is SuBo in Britain’s Got Talent, which led to “Tesco” Mary Byrne is series 7, then “Cruiseship” Sami Brookes in series 8 (poor Sami, she was the Archeopteryx of this evolutionary chain, the transitional species which dies out quickly) to eventually getting a contest winner with Sam Bailey.

Sam seems like a lovely woman, she’s very down to earth, which is why she was so well liked. But she was also the strongest singer of the finalists by a country mile. She carried some of the shows, sometimes being the only one to give a good performance. She also showed a bit more nuance and versatility than previous contestants of her type, Tesco Mary for example just BELLOWED everything.  Granted, this means “nuance and versatility” in the context of The X Factor. Sam’s style was mainly big pop ballads, like ‘The Power Of Love’ by Jennifer Rush, but if you like that sort of thing, which I do, then she did a great job with them. She gave a fantastic performance of the Titanic theme ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion. I even liked the purple dress and underwater kingdom background. I liked her performances of songs I normally can’t stand, like ‘If I Were A Boy’ by Beyonce, and with Sam’s version of ‘Skyscraper’ it’s the first time I can say I like The X Factor winners single cover better than the original, which was by Demi Lovato. I prefer Ruth Lorenzo’s performance of ‘No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)’ from series 5 to Sam’s version though.  Still, Sam Bailey is a well deserving winner, and it’s the first time my overall favourite X Factor finalist has actually won, but the second time this year my overall favourite reality TV contestant has won! The other was another Sam, Sam Evans in Big Brother 14.

To finish off, there were a few laughs with the strange production choices and mess-ups this series, including:

* The flash vote, where the vote was frozen ten minutes after all the acts had performed and whoever was at the bottom of that was automatically in the sing-off the next night. It meant there was less reason to watch the Sunday show, so the flash vote was unceremoniously ditched in week 4 never to be seen or even mentioned again. “There ain’t no monorail flash vote here and there never was!”

*The way they tried to pretend The X Factor’s tenth anniversary was this year  (as opposed to the tenth series) and tried to make week 7 a celebration for seemingly no other reason than Doctor Who‘s 50th Anniversary Special was on the BBC against them at the same night. It didn’t do much good, Doctor Who thrashed them in ratings.

* In the quarter-final, with a bit of a SHOCK!BOTTOM!2! of Tamera and Luke, ITV lost the transmission for half the country and had to give results via ITV Twitter “BlankScreenUpdate”. The loss of transmission lasted into another one of ITV’s big reality shows I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

*Leona Lewis’ performance of her Christmas single ‘One More Sleep’. The song’s alright, but what mad staging! Dressed like a panto fairy godmother with a video of a blizzard of snowflakes in the background, with people dressed up as Christmas trees, and presents addressed to the judges with people jumping out of them like strippers out of cakes. Still, I like this sort of Leona Lewis X Factor performance a hell of a lot more than her going through the motions singing a cover of Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Hurt’.

* The semi-final having the most random theme week ever: Elton John vs. Beyonce. It turned out this was probably due to Elton John performing in the final and the winner getting to support Beyonce on her UK tour, but it still seemed “pluck two pop star names out of a hat” at the time.

* Most years there isn’t a sing-off and judges vote when it gets to the quarter-final stage and it’s just left to the public vote. This year they shoehorned in sing-offs into the quarter-final and semi-final and both times the judges vote went to deadlock and the result was left back to the public vote anyway.