vs Numbing Brain Death Week more like AM I RITE?
The Blackout – Could have been a great name for an X Factor group couldn’t it? Anyway, as it was, the technical fault and subsequent replacement gave me ample opportunity to catch up what I’d been missing during the auditions this year, and let’s just say it validated my decision to not watch a single second of them. Sami? Crap. Jade? Dull. The various comedy(/”comedy”) auditions? No. Even Goldie wasn’t as amazing as she later became. And still, I bet this was the best rated part of the show as everyone rushed in to watch the trainwreck. You know…more than usual.
Kitty Weasel : The whole SAGA of Kitty Brucknell this week was, if nothing else, the only thing that happened truly worthy of the theatrical overblown ideals of a Gaga vs Queen week. Sure her performance was the same -old same-old, style prioritised fifty times a second over substance, but everything else was pure drama. Sure there was the tedious old X Factor “SHE DUN STOLE MY SONG!” drama, and obviously it was Misha B being branded now a thief as well as a bully as Kitty weeped into her weave over LOUIS RUINING HER LIFE. But from then on it was gold, from Lady Gaga herself actually turning up and exposing Kitty’s sub-Friedman staging for the flim-flam try-hard knock-offery it was, then offering forgiveness to Kitty via a lingering hug and a pint, reducing her to a whiny, snivvelling, over-eager supplicant, telling Gaga that she was her Idol and she has all her records and she considers herself a Little Monster and PUT YOUR PAWS UP cry cry cry. We’ll ignore that inept stab for a MOMENT in her sing-out, as it doesn’t really fit the narrative but still…Kitty Gold, for the first time in ages. And she went out in the same place as her obvious precursor as well. PURE DESTINY.
Biscuit Factory : Whilst this year’s Weasel is now sadly gone, we’re fortunately still not bereft of people forever on the verge of showing us who they REALLY ARE. Are you ready Britain? Are you read to see who Biscuit Factory REALLY IS? As an Artist? Well, and get ready for this, it turns out who Biscuit Factory is, is someone who sings ballids looking vaguely pissed off. He also does gender swaps for no earthly reason, even though everyone knows that every male contestant this year is gay and, if we all buy into Frankie Cock’s erasure from history as a result of breaking the Golden Rule, have been since the second The Risk disappeared up Nicole Shitsinger. I always hate when people treat the discovery that pop lyrics are often A BIT DARKER THAN THE UPBEAT MUSIC WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE by ham-fistedly slowing them down and turning them into some sort of inept murder-ballad. Papparazzi is creepy, Biscuit Factory, we get it. When we get to the final, I don’t want him donig this rubbish to “All I Want For Christmas Is You”.
BixMix : Oh God, Bixmix. So it’s official that they, above all other X Factor girlbands who can’t harmonise without sounding like shagging cats, really have been plucked out as actually likeable and actually representative of REAL WIMMINZ everywhere. They love a good curry! But not a scary goat curry, LOL, that’s a bit random isn’t it? Goat?! LOL! And then there’s that one who keeps on crying all the time! Just like you all do, you real wimminz you. I will give them credit for being pretty much the only group to sing an up-tempo song in an up-tempo style this week, even if it was flat as a pancake for the most part. I only hope they stay strong in the face of Borelow’s apparent quest to drive the genres of pop and RnB off the show so it can turn into 24/7 Adele on the Adele Network for Adele lovers everywhere. Sadly I can see all too clearly a rendition of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” (the Fergie version) in their immediate future, followed by a disillusioned public booting them out. OH WELL, WHAT A SHAME.
Janet Devlin : Could this have been any slower? Freddie Mercury’s anthemic call to lost souls to come together and sing as one, getting louder and stronger and more forceful as the song goes on until the Universe caves in and just drops a man on them out of the sky just to get them to SHUT UP SINGING THIS BASTARD SONG ALREADY. And Janet sang. it. one. note. at. a. TOYME. very. slowly. with. random. celtic. YAYHEYAYHEELPING. until. we. all. just. wanted. it. to. end. please. as. soon. as. possible. Bless them all, every judge, for hurtling her under the bus so hard that even Dermot, after five series of being numbed by this show’s rubbish, noticed it and decided to take up arms on her behalf. Maybe he’s shagging her? Maybe that’s it? Or maybe without Simon there the programming’s wearing off without someone for him to suck to every week. We can only hope he goes full rogue by the final and tells all the contestants that it doesn’t matter anyway, none of them are going to have careers anyway. Stop trying kids. It’s a shit business.
Marcus Collins : You know that Internet meme, where you can take a famous person in various photos and their face doesn’t change orientation once? I’m starting to think you could do that with Marcus Collins performances. Enter, flanked with dancers, mug to the crowd, big end-pose, finish. I’m sure if you layered every performance on top of one another, you’d see that, despite the varying themes (doo-wop, throwback doo-wop, new-style doo-wop, rock doo-wop, Rihanna doo-wop) everything he did would be exactly the same. And yet he’s probably the only contestant never to be called on it. Good work so far Marcus, but I’M ONTO YOU.
Misha B: Oh Misha B, not your fault that you decided to make a Lady Gaga song boring in the same week that everyone else did. I think a “Come To Jesus” Gospel rendering of Born This Way could have worked if…the song was a bit better. Lyrically speaking. You don’t want to be drawing attention to those words travelling at that speed past everyone’s nose. Still, at least she made it more interesting than the version she originally performed, which is someone on Youtube, and which is amongst the most tedious things I’ve ever seen. And so it is the stage when we start just pruning off everyone who has been Bottom 2 before, and so Misha B had nowhere left to run. I figure the best chance we have of more than one more week of her is the judges bothering to use DEADLOCK for the first time all series. Never have I longed for it…well at all, and therefore, technically, more.
Amelia Lily : Well, well, well. Look who came CRAWLING back. I kind of liked the circular irony of people claiming it was a fix that she came back, because the show’s official website announced she was coming back ahead of time. When the website in fact announced that all of them were coming back, in separate articles. And the only reason people only found her version of the article was…everyone knew she was coming back, so weren’t bothering to look for anybody else. Anyway, Two Shoes (*sniff*) are gone as are…erm…the other two, and we’re left with Amelia, in all her slightly awkward slightly unpleasent ness. That she gave the best performance of the night is a compliment in the same way as saying that “PUT IT DOWN!” is the least annoying of Kelly Rowland’s stabs at a catchphrase.
The mighty mighty Monk Seal 
I don’t really agree with those who say Kitty was better than Misha in the singoff. I like the idea of Kitty (kooky, bitchy, diva, but vulnerable, etc) , and I like the idea of having a Michaela McQueen lookalike on TV at the same time as Hollyoaks wised up and brought Micks back for a few appearances, but I don’t get anything from her performances. I got over the oh so emotional performances of Over the Rainbow a long time ago (Katharine McPhee was enough) and as a singer she’s very overwrought. Misha is so hated, but at least she makes me feel something when she sings. Her voice has such a richness and haunting nature when she has the right song, like whatever she did in the singoff.
I keep hearing people say “Why is Marcus there? Who is voting for Marcus?” but I’m more interested in who is voting for Craig. Is someone having a drinking game for every time he goes off-key? Don’t let them drive home, please.
I enjoy BixMix’s performances, and I like how no one seems to be the designated “why is she there” nontalent of the group, but I can’t see them having any great career.
It seems like Amelia may peak after this performance. It was presented like a winner’s performance (not hugely impressed but she did choose a difficult song). I was waiting for confetti to rain down and the others to be cattle prodded out of the studio.
I can’t decide if Kitty was a great idea with rubbish execution, or if the great idea necessitated a rubbish execution. Gaga Wannabe’s such a great idea for a reality contestant, but the show didn’t have the vision to pull it off after the Alice In Wonderland set-piece.
I think Jes is the one thing keeping BixMix connection to the audience. When she winds up leaving due to emotional instability they’ll look exactly the same as every other X Factor girlband ie forgettable. Ah well, I guess it almost worked with Parade.
I wonder who made the decision to apply the echo effect to Mischa B’s voice that made her sound like she was singing in a draughty church hall.
Vocals effects are all the rage this year apparently.
My favourite suggestion I read on how to replace Frankie was that they’d bring back Amelia, James, 2 Shoes and Jonjo back as a Frankenband. It would have been ridiculous, which is one reason I would have quite liked to see it, but I also think they’d make a great cast for a STARStreet*/No Sweat style pop band does a cartoonish TV show. Amelia could be a superheroine/villainess, James could do that cute smileyface/woobieface he did, 2 Shoes could be, well, themselves, and Jonjo could do that robot voice he did in his Holy Moly interview. To be honest, I quite liked all five of them as people, so I was pleased that they had been given another chance. I agree that Amelia was the best performance mainly by default, but it such a boring live show I think it needed that a good performance and a ‘comeback’ of some sort.
The sing-off for me was a case of be careful what you wish for, you might be underwhelmed by it. All series I’ve been kind of wanting a Misha B vs Kitty sing-off. Well, I wanted it to be them both as the final two competing to be the winner, but realistically there was never a chance of THAT. But for the sing-off we did get, well… if it had been like when Misha did Use Somebody and when Kitty did Edge Of Glory, where they gave great, compelling performances and really looked like they were fighting to stay in it might have been good, but this time they looked like they expected to be in the bottom 2. With the production team thoroughly blanding out Misha and rather blatantly throwing Kitty under the bus this week the sing-off seemed more like a formality than anything. Still, at least Kitty’s version of Katie Waissel’s “You know what, sod it” was also her parting shot to the main show.
Kitty should have just stomped out and done Born This Way as her sing-off performance regardless of what the tape-deck cued up, but I guess she actually thought she had a chance of staying in, so she added it on as a coda instead.
Her ‘Over The Rainbow’ was worse than that 3 year old who sang it on the first series of Britain’s Got Talent. Favourite moment : “I’m going to show G.A.Y the biggest show it’s ever seen!”.
I still think Beautiful Disaster was the apex of Kitty’s awfulness, such that it almost became endearing.
Yes, you’re right. And it was built to be the song that was (to quote Assassins) sum it all up and blow it all wide open. A bit like when Diana Vickers and Cheryl Cole announced that her next performance was going to be The Diana Vickers Performance, the performance they’d play in her 2058 retrospective TV special as the one everyone remembered as being bigger than Live Aid. Then she came out and sang White Flag by Dido.
And then Eoghan ate her face.