I Am Not Alone

I'm not a fan of the X-Factor, I think it's a pile of wank to be perfectly honest, but my girlfriend and her housemates do enjoy it, and since I was at their house this weekend I had the displeasure of enduring it.

 

One of the shows 'judges', Cheryl Cole, performed her new (possibly first) solo single in attire I informed my girlfriend was very reminiscent of the get-up worn by Street Fighter character M.Bison.

 

Turns out I was not alone in this observation, as this article from The Sun demonstrates. How very condescending of The Sun to refer to Street Fighter as a "kid's computer game". I suppose they won't mind me calling their newspaper a "low-brow ignorant dumb-ass's rag".

 

I was going to put together a side by side comparison, but since I've been beaten to the punch by the low-brow ignorant dumb-ass's rag I won't bother.

 

Having now sat through two full X-Factor shows (apparently it takes 3 hours over 2 nights for them to get shit decided) I'm struck by how stupid the judging is. The format seems to be that a category of music is chosen - in this case "divas" (whatever the fuck that means) and each contestant is allocated a song by their mentor (one of the judges), they perform it live on the Saturday, the public phone-vote their favourites and then on Sunday the bottom two "sing for survival" and the judges boot out whoever they feel is the weaker.

 

Seems a bit unfair to me that you can be booted off on the strength of one performance of a song you didn't choose from a genre your voice or style may not be suited to. It means the competition may be booting off contestants who have superior overall talent in favour of those who are average at everything resulting in a poor crop of finalists, or a poorer crop than you may have had if you hadn't kicked of that guy who couldn't sing x style very well despite being amazing at y and z or that girl who couldn't sing a but was jaw-dropping at b, c and d.

 

Seems to me that a more rounded system would involve several rounds where points would be allocated based on an individuals share of the total votes and after a number of weeks those acts with the lowest scores would get the boot. This would ensure everyone gets a fair go at demonstrating their prowess and would prevent the less talented average singers from progressing further than perhaps they should.

 

I suppose it depends on what having "The X-Factor" actually is. Is it being a half decent singer who can sing proficiently over a number of genres? Or is it someone who is supremely talented over a narrower subset of genres?

 

I rather suspect the "X-Factor" in this case is sounding as generic as possible while feigning as much emotion as possible while singing songs you didn't write nor have the talent to.

 

Now I think I'll listen to a bit more Dark Tranquillity and wonder if anyone on the X-Factor will still have successful careers (or careers at all) after as many years as DT have been together - doubtful. Maybe their career would have been more glittering if Michael Stanne threw in a bit of R&B - again doubtful.

 

freedoms_stain, despairing at the manufactured pop industry, out.