Sunday, October 31, 2004
Choir as Folk
It's Hallowe'en! And that means that tonight evil will spread across the land like a cancer and all sorts of nastiness will take place in the name of all that is devilish and wrong. Naturally this is quite a big night for the ghosties and ghoulies of the world, which is why they took the chance to have a quick rehearsal last night before the main event. As a result of this, banshees wailed, eldritch sounds emanated from all corners and a group of small children were forced to dance to the tune of a creepy looking hob-goblin. Yes, it was the second X Factor live show, live from London, the centre of all evil.
Of course, it wasn't all bad, some good came out of it as pointless, weepy, dull Verity finally got the boot, despite the fact that Simon attempted to galvanise all the middle-aged housewives around the country to vote for her by giving her their theme song, Wind Beneath My Wings, to sing. To be fair she wasn't the worst this week. That honour had to go to 2 To Go who did Always, alas not the Erasure version, with some live piano action. Pete was good, but Emma very much let the side down by only walking alongside the tune and occasionally stumbling haphazardly onto the right path.
As well as picking rubbish songs, Simon also felt that the best way to look after his artist's interests was to book a choir and have them warble all over the contestant's songs, whether it was appropriate or not. This served mainly to make all three of them seem incredibly generic. Rowetta in particular suffered as a result, given that her main selling point is her personality. It was also interesting to note that Steve equates having soul with listening to soul. Sharon and Louis seemed a bit put out by the choir but, as Kate Thornton never seemed to tire of telling us, "The only rule is that there are no rules", which we're not entirely convinced by and we'd like to see put to the test. Perhaps Louis could put Westlife out to perform instead of 2 To Go and watch the votes rack up, or maybe Sharon could bring a gun with her and hold the audience hostage, threatening to go on a killing spree should either of her remaining acts end up in the bottom two. It's a thought.
Sharon brought her dog with her to sit in on the judging this week, presumably believing that looking like a sad old woman with no friends is the best way of looking like a good manager. This week, Cassie decided to ditch the 10 year old street urchin look and was looking a lot classier in a purple dress. She performed well, but is Without You really the best choice of song for a 17 year old girl? Tabby on the other hand performed My, Oh My, though once again a trick was missed as this was Slade, rather than the far superior Aqua song. We're still not quite sure what to make of his version, which featured a kids choir and a child acting as his guitar roadie, but we get the feeling that if he carries on down this route he'll be wearing spandex catsuits and sing falsetto before he knows it.
While 2 To Go may have let Louis down the most, his other two bands didn't do much more to keep the side up. Performance-wise, both G4 and Voices With Soul cut the mustard, but in terms of style we had G4 looking like they were a bunch of posh students patronisingly dressing down as Britpop refugees for their version of Oasis' Don't Look Back in Anger, while Voices With Soul seemed to think that the best place to look for clothes for their performance of You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman was the men's suit department at Marks and Spencers.
At least justice was done with regards to Verity, even if it was a week late. If this is going to be a recurring theme, then presumably we'll be waving goodbye to 2 To Go next week, which we really hope doesn't happen, as it'll leave Cassie as the only girl left who we actually fancy, and that would truly be the most evil thing of all.
