FMS-Blog : The Wildly Whimsical, Mostly Musical WebLog
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
X Factor
I was despairing when I heard that alongside Leona Lewis on the X Factor final would be the contestant that your granny no doubt loved from the beginning, Ray Quinn. Thankfully, the best singer won in the end as Leona walked away with the title of X-Factor winner of 2006 and a Christmas No.1 single A Moment Like This.
The fact is that there were always much better singers in the competition than Ray and so I found it startling as week-after-week each and every one of them was knocked out leaving his beaming smile on our screens. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Ray is nice to his Nan, but he's no great shakes when it comes to belting a tune out. To be fair, he did do a couple of good renditions of songs in the old 'crooner' style, but there's many a pub karaoke singer who could pull this off in a similar way. No, Ray's singing I found to be mostly out of tune and when he did manage to hit the notes he certainly didn't bring anything else to the performance. Your Nan would love him but I'd rather pull teeth than sit through one of his performances.
Leona, on the other hand, clearly has a nice voice - she does stick to a Mariah / Houston type style of singing but within this area she can flourish. The control she has over her instrument is quite something, switching seamlessly between her head and chest voices, and given the right song she really seems to have a lot of musicality about her performances. Admittedly, her new song is not to everyone's tastes (it's not the kind of thing I would listen to, of an evening) but what she does she does with flair, so it only seems right that she came out on top. Well done, I say - just hope it doesn't go to her head.
As always, the X-Factor competition was full of turkey's from the very start and I found it shocking how many of them managed to make it through to the later rounds. The MacDonald Brothers who Louis mentored, for example, were just dire, as were his Eton Road band - this really was a group of people who had no idea how to sing in harmony. And, the judges weren't much better: while I can broadly agree with most of what Simon had to say about the contestants musical abilities, Louis talked utter nonsense (praising people who clearly had intonation 'issues' etc.) and Sharon may aswell not have been there for all the constructive criticism that she imparts... what does this woman know about music anyway??!! All she seemed to say to each contestant was "You made that song your own." Jeez... there's a nothing remark if ever I heard one! Compare this to the comments made by the judges in Strictly Come Dancing: here are a panel of experts in their field who actually have something to say about the technical side of the performances before them. The likes of X-Factor and Pop Idol could do a lot worse than learn from this if this programming format is to survive.
The fact is that there were always much better singers in the competition than Ray and so I found it startling as week-after-week each and every one of them was knocked out leaving his beaming smile on our screens. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Ray is nice to his Nan, but he's no great shakes when it comes to belting a tune out. To be fair, he did do a couple of good renditions of songs in the old 'crooner' style, but there's many a pub karaoke singer who could pull this off in a similar way. No, Ray's singing I found to be mostly out of tune and when he did manage to hit the notes he certainly didn't bring anything else to the performance. Your Nan would love him but I'd rather pull teeth than sit through one of his performances.
Leona, on the other hand, clearly has a nice voice - she does stick to a Mariah / Houston type style of singing but within this area she can flourish. The control she has over her instrument is quite something, switching seamlessly between her head and chest voices, and given the right song she really seems to have a lot of musicality about her performances. Admittedly, her new song is not to everyone's tastes (it's not the kind of thing I would listen to, of an evening) but what she does she does with flair, so it only seems right that she came out on top. Well done, I say - just hope it doesn't go to her head.
As always, the X-Factor competition was full of turkey's from the very start and I found it shocking how many of them managed to make it through to the later rounds. The MacDonald Brothers who Louis mentored, for example, were just dire, as were his Eton Road band - this really was a group of people who had no idea how to sing in harmony. And, the judges weren't much better: while I can broadly agree with most of what Simon had to say about the contestants musical abilities, Louis talked utter nonsense (praising people who clearly had intonation 'issues' etc.) and Sharon may aswell not have been there for all the constructive criticism that she imparts... what does this woman know about music anyway??!! All she seemed to say to each contestant was "You made that song your own." Jeez... there's a nothing remark if ever I heard one! Compare this to the comments made by the judges in Strictly Come Dancing: here are a panel of experts in their field who actually have something to say about the technical side of the performances before them. The likes of X-Factor and Pop Idol could do a lot worse than learn from this if this programming format is to survive.
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Who had the best voice: Frank Sinatra or Julie Andrews? So the best voice is not always the most popular, is it?
A star lights up the place, that's why they're called 'stars' - they shine. Nothing about vocal quality, there.
Remember that ugly little Norwegian fisherman who won the world X-Factor, hands down? He sang like an angel and he's forgotten already.
That's why the show is called the X-Factor - finding somebody with the special star quality. Winning the show is not the point, as the Norwegian proved and G4's coming second reinforced.
Ray has loads of star quality. That's why he is so popular. Leona has a voice and what else? Ray was a star years ago and has three TV awards to prove it. He will be a star for a long time to come, too.
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A star lights up the place, that's why they're called 'stars' - they shine. Nothing about vocal quality, there.
Remember that ugly little Norwegian fisherman who won the world X-Factor, hands down? He sang like an angel and he's forgotten already.
That's why the show is called the X-Factor - finding somebody with the special star quality. Winning the show is not the point, as the Norwegian proved and G4's coming second reinforced.
Ray has loads of star quality. That's why he is so popular. Leona has a voice and what else? Ray was a star years ago and has three TV awards to prove it. He will be a star for a long time to come, too.
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