Cast your mind back to the end of 2009 and the United Kingdom was split into 3 distinct groups: those who wanted the X Factor winner to get the Christmas number one ; the anti-X Factor brigade who wanted the protest Rage Against the Machine single to get the position and those who didn’t give a toss either way. I must confess that I was in the “I don’t give a toss” brigade at the time. X Factor was no more than an annoyance to me and I always found Rage’s teenage angst chorus a bit laughable. It turned out that Rage got the number one which must have shaken the foundations of the Cowell empire for such a blink and you’ll miss it period of time that a new unit of time measurement called the Cowell was created.
A year later Matt Cardle won X Factor and managed to get the Christmas number one with ‘When we Collide’. The song is so insipid and nondescript that you just forget about it as soon as it’s finished. The act of disliking the song is irrational-it’s like getting angry over listening to a blank cassette. However it has made me angry (which probably means I require professional help) and think more about X Factor. I know it’s a cover version of a song by Biffy Clyro (about whom I know nothing) but isn’t this the problem with X Factor: it’s just a show of mediocre to average cover versions with a bit of glitz, glamour, hype and controversy attached to it.
However, I’d like to look at some of the arguments for X Factor before I give my impartial (ahem!) judgements on the subject. One of the cases for the show is that it’s a good family entertainment show that everyone can enjoy. Top of the Pops fulfilled this role in its day and managed to play a cross-section of music so pop music fans, rockers, indie kids and dance music ravers could get the chance to see at least something that would appeal to them. They’d even play the likes of easy listening Cliff Richards for their more conservative viewers. TOTP sometimes offered original tunes as opposed to X Factor’s bland cover versions. X Factor is also bizarre in the sense that Cowell is being paid a king’s ransom to promote his own acts on primetime television. I guess this isn’t new in the industry. For example, the Monkees show in the 60s promoted their tunes around a flimsy daft comedy but at least some of their songs (even if they didn’t write them) were great, original pop tunes.
Another case for X Factor is that you get to see the artists’ journey throughout the show. However isn’t this televisual journey determined by the editing staff and ultimately Cowell’s judgement? In the last series it transpired that an autotuning device was used on some of the artists’ auditions making them sound better than they really were. In other words, all artists weren’t treated equally by the show. The viewing audience still had some influence through the public vote. The public vote was responsible for keeping in the truly awful Wagner but even the vote was undermined by the judges’ final decision throughout most of the series. It turned out that Mary Byrne got more of the public vote than Cher Lloyd in the semi-final but Mary was still voted off by the judges.
The so called in-fighting amongst the judges is just an example of how the music is secondary to the personalities of the judges on the show. They care so little about music that Cher Lloyd sang ‘Imagine’ on the Beatles week show (even though the song is a solo John Lennon composition). The in-fighting is a joke because Cowell clearly wears the trousers in the judging panel (even if they are half way up his chest). Danni Minogue isn’t going to rock the boat. If it wasn’t for the show, she’d be selling her more famous sister’s signatures on Ebay to pay for her Marks and Spencers store card bills. I challenge anyone to name any of Danni’s singles without resorting to an internet search engine. Louis Walsh has been responsible for the success of Westlife and Boyzone and this is enough to condemn him in the pits of Hell for eternity. Cheryl Cole seems nice enough and is very pleasing to the eye. However, that’s about it. If she was a contestant on the tv show ‘Dating in the Dark’, you’d never know she was there due to her sheer blandness unless she farted.
However to be serious I think the show is scary because impressionable, young kids think success can be earned so quickly and through being totally manipulated by the likes of Cowell. The show offers nothing in the way of originality and whilst pop music has had its fair share of trash throughout its history, it has also produced some original gems that have stood the test of time (for example, Outkast’s 'Hey Ya!' is a work of genius). In a time of recession and illegal music downloading the music industry is being hit financially and will become more cautious and conservative. This can only be a bad thing for music and X Factor only serves to exacerbate this situation.
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However, I’d like to look at some of the arguments for X Factor before I give my impartial (ahem!) judgements on the subject. One of the cases for the show is that it’s a good family entertainment show that everyone can enjoy. Top of the Pops fulfilled this role in its day and managed to play a cross-section of music so pop music fans, rockers, indie kids and dance music ravers could get the chance to see at least something that would appeal to them. They’d even play the likes of easy listening Cliff Richards for their more conservative viewers. TOTP sometimes offered original tunes as opposed to X Factor’s bland cover versions. X Factor is also bizarre in the sense that Cowell is being paid a king’s ransom to promote his own acts on primetime television. I guess this isn’t new in the industry. For example, the Monkees show in the 60s promoted their tunes around a flimsy daft comedy but at least some of their songs (even if they didn’t write them) were great, original pop tunes.
