Sunday, November 21, 2004
Cassie Go
Last night Sharon's golden boy and apparent clone, Tabby, found himself taking one of the places in the bottom two which, given that he's considered to be one of the favourites, no doubt came as a shock to the nation or, at the very least, the small - and constantly shrinking - percentage of the nation that still gives a rat's ass about the show. It certainly came as a shock to us as, based on the evening's performances, we'd happily expected Rowetta and Cassie to be in the bottom two, even going so far as to do a first draft of this introductory paragraph based on that very fact.
As it turned out, the version that we half wrote turned out to be half right, as Cassie did find herself in the bottom two, leaving Sharon to fill Louis' shoes and be in the position of deciding between two of her acts. Except for the fact that she didn't. Acting in the sort of professional and decorous manner that you'd expect from her, she promptly threw her toys out of the pram and refused to pick between them. As it was, it didn't matter as both Louis and Simon decided to say bye bye to the young girl who may, as Sharon never seemed to tire of telling us, have had a big voice, but ultimately she had no personality to speak of, unless you count looking a bit like Charlotte Church as a personality. And we don't.
Was it a fair decision? Well, yes. This week Cassie was given All By Myself to perform, a song which, as Simon correctly pointed out, is traditionally sung by recently separated middle-aged housewives in dodgy kareoke bars up and down the country, not by a 17 year old girl and while you can argue, not hugely successfully admittedly, but it didn't stop Sharon trying, that emotion is the same no matter what age you are, you can't really justify a teenager singing a song which starts with the line "When I was young...", unless said line is followed up by references to rag-dolls, lollipops or pet hamsters. Even ignoring the song choice, the performance left a lot to be desired. Presumably she was trying to do a sexily husky voice, but simply ended up sounding like a drag queen, and a not very good drag queen at that. She also seemed to be so satisfied at hitting the high note towards the end that she promptly forgot about the melody for the rest of the song and only managed to do something vaguely approximating the tune.
Not that her team mate and rival Tabby was anything earth shatteringly brilliant, he wasn't bad, but we fail to see why people are getting all excited about him. Yes, his version of Sweet Child of Mine was a flawless recreation of a late eighties rock classic, but this is 2004, we already have one Justin Hawkins and that, quite frankly, is already one too many. We'd also like to point out that flashing up pictures of his son towards the end of the song is one of the most cynical things we've ever seen and we'd like to think that his position in the bottom two was as a result of a backlash towards this.
As for the rest? Meh. When the show started the continuity announcer happily told us that the pressure was increasing for the acts and for the judges, but failed to mention that interest was rapidly waning for the viewer. Louis' final remaining act, G4, did My Way, starting off acapella, which was quite frankly horrendous, before the backing music came in and it started to sound quite good, though you are left with the feeling that this may have pulled out their trump card a bit early. As for Simon's acts, Steve, who's VT segment was based around an incredibly laboured Charlie's Angel schtick, did Let's Stay Together and seems to be turning more and more into a stubbly Will Young with each passing week, while Rowetta did her usual bellowing through Sometimes from West Side Story. We prefer the Pet Shop Boys version.
At the end, Kate Thornton, who was back to looking lovely in a deep reddy,browny dress, excitedly informed us that it's all change from next week, let's hope that this means it's actually going to start getting good.
