Truth hurts.
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Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 1,548
Favourites (more):
CBB9: Gareth Thomas CBB8: Jedward
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Truth hurts.
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 1,548
Favourites (more):
CBB9: Gareth Thomas CBB8: Jedward
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X Factor: the semi-final (blog)
Quote:
Mary Byrne had a textbook X Factor journey. She began as a humble, frumpy supermarket cashier with a scintillating audition piece: I (Who Have Nothing) sung with scorching intensity, raw and pure, note-perfect but soaked in desperate, bottled passion.
A few months later, it's the semi-final. In a Demis Roussos outfit chosen by The X Factor's top stylists, singing too loud and slightly sharp under tuition from The X Factor's top singing coaches, Mary finishes fifth, lurching out of the competition as a mediocre, mildly annoying busted flush, over-familiar and overstretched. That's the magic of The X Factor!
The semi-final couldn't more obviously have been Mary's last appearance if Simon Cowell had stood up and made an embarrassingly ill-informed speech about her time working for him, before handing over a bunch of flowers, a John Lewis voucher for a disappointing amount, and a card full of cursory quips from colleagues who will have forgotten she exists on Monday.
Other contestants benefited from the return of the sob story. Matt Cardle starred in a public information film about the horror of tonsillitis. Rebecca Ferguson reminded us that she's left her kids alone in Liverpool, where by now they're talking in clicks and whistles and living off their own phlegm.
Sadly, even Cher Lloyd was making us play a tiny violin, stressing that she's a normal dream-chasing teenager and not, as dull people think, a stuck-up diva who, like, totally loves herself and that, innit. The message: Cher is not cocky.
Well, I want my pop stars cocky. I want them magisterial, yet constantly on the verge of tears. I want them to suddenly do a rap at inappropriate moments. I want their eyebrows drawn on in pen at a funny angle. I don't want them moaning about not wanting to be a painter and decorator again. I don't want them to be "sincere" or "real".
I want my pop stars, as Cher did this week, to undo all efforts to spin them as "not cocky" by making impossibly sweeping announcements such as "Ballads have been done!", having witheringly stared Dannii Minogue out in response to another useless comment. I want Cher to win.
In fairness, Matt's illness this week gave his performances new levels of excitement. His first, You Got the Love, raised the possibility that the "Tonsillitis! The Silent Killer" movie had been a big fake: he hit all his normal big girly notes, the only sign of weakness being some heavy panting between lines.
But his take on Billy Joel's insulting classic, She's Always a Woman, had knife-edge tension: milk-white and glistening with cold sweat, Matt looked like he might dissolve into hacking coughs at any moment. Sadly he didn't, but it was fun to hope.
My money is still on One Direction to make a late run and win. Voters who drone on about people having "a good voice" will be split between Matt and Rebecca, leaving One Direction's army of screaming children to bring them to power. Their version of Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol's song about having a nice nap, was bland and boring but, unlike Mary and (I fear) Cher, highly marketable.
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