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This past weekend may have delivered one of the most predictable X Factor results ever, with the three acts who’ve never to have touched the bottom two – Matt, Rebecca and One Direction – getting their golden tickets straight to the final. Disappointingly, the semi-final was somewhat lacking in spark (not literally of course – there will never be a lack of pyrotechnics, not on Brian Friedman’s watch!), but the prospect of my first ever X Factor final without an intense dislike for any of the acts is rather exciting!
Maybe my inner cynic has disappeared – or my standards have dropped. But even One Direction, the one act I was sure I’d be sticking pins into voodoo dolls of by now, have charmed me with their ‘united front’ attitude – and they managed to harmonise during ‘Chasing Cars’ on Saturday! That was some definite never-before-heard musicality. As for ‘Only Girl (in the World)’, while Zain may have had a serious case of Pants on the Ground going on, the song suited them (although listening to 16-18 year olds sing about being “taken for a ride” which will “last all night” certainly made me shift in my seat uncomfortably).
Beyond One Direction, there were a lot of misfires and song choice fails that plagued the night. Neither of Matt’s songs quite managed to regenerate last week’s magic; his voice was pegged at an awkward key for ‘You Got the Love’, where he overstrained on extended notes and seemed to be rushing through to make sure he kept up with the music – the overproduction towards the end only made things more incomprehensible. ‘She’s Always a Woman’ was a smidge of an improvement, but still lacked the depth and genuine connection I was anticipating.
Rebecca’s ‘Amazing Grace’ went much the same way; the twenty-odd anonymous choir members’ continued presence distracted from her voice and built up an expectation that the song was going somewhere…which it wasn’t. I mean, who sings ‘Amazing Grace’ beyond primary school anyway?
At least her first song more than made up for it – the classic clubbing track ‘Show Me Love’ shouldn’t have worked in the X Factor venue as well as it did, but her one-of-a-kind voice seemed to slide into the song as effortlessly as if it was always hers – not to mention it was pleasantly jarring to see her pull a new trick out of the bag at this stage – I see a disco/club anthem album in her future!
As for Mary and Cher being the nation’s bottom two, it was so shocking it made me…shrug. In reality neither delivered a memorable performance; Cher butchered the already annoying B.O.B/Bruno Mars track ‘Nothin On You’, and stuck to too similar territory with a positively schizophrenic ‘Love the Way You Lie’ – yes, it has been nominated for a Grammy, but chopping up 9 and a half minutes worth of music (parts 1 and 2 were both sampled) into 2 and a half minutes just sounded messy – and the clumsy Eminem-rap to Rihanna-sing transition was epically wince-worthy. Mary meanwhile balanced a karaoke camp ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ with a moving ‘The Way We Were’ which were at such extremes that they couldn’t indicate any sort of musical identity. Of the two, Cher’s raw ‘Everytime’ felt like a genuine battle-cry for her finalist spot, whereas Mary seemed to have thrown in the towel before she’d even started – which in itself made her departure all the more inevitable.
Next week’s the X Factor final – be sure to come back to The Yorker for our full coverage of the epitome of end-of-term TV entertainment!
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