We have two more weeks of The X Factor left, and then we can go and do something else in our brains. We know. It’s amazing. Amazing how it’s all gone so marrow-achingly slow isn’t it? Amazing how time can absolutely not shift for three months in the slightest sometimes.
Amazing. A bit like how 2001: A Space Odyssey covered thousands of years scoping from the dawn of men to beyond the infinite. Or a bit like how The Curious Case of Benjamin Button lasted infinity-hundred hours long and achieved absolute zippo. A bit like that, a BIT like that…
And hey! Talking of clutching at straws…
This week on The X Factor it was of course Psychological Meltdown Motown week and Unrelated Other Song To Fill In The 50 Minute Gap week. Well, it’s about bloody time.
Last week we ‘lost’ Janet Devlin, and by ‘lost’ we of course mean “We sat on our clammy posteriors and watched as her popularity slowly dwindled into nothing as appropriated by the people who do actually vote for X Factor.” We just like to be concise.
Okay so, life changing recording contract, “I want to be in the final so much”, “I am excited”, and all that sort of thing. That’s what we’re contending with as we cross through into the semi-final, so kind of a big deal. Not in the scope of reality or anything, but in the scope of Louis Walsh’s bath nights schedule for the week, it’s absolutely paramount.
For your viewing pleasure or something to that effect, we of course had:
- AMELIA LILY!
- MISHA B!
- MARCUS… We usually forget his name and have to Google it! Marcus Brigstocke possibly!
- LITTLE MIX!
There you are. No no. YOU’RE welcome.
FACTLET: The X Factor Opening Titles go on for 2 minutes and 35 seconds. You know what you can do in 2 minutes and 35 seconds?
*Do 2 minutes and 35 seconds of a task that ultimately will take much longer but perhaps might be more emotionally fulfilling!
*Listen to the entirety of Wipeout by The Sufaris with no burden to bear!
*But mostly the first thing we mentioned!
For those of you haven’t watched it/did not take part in the Ludovico experiment this week/think that Dermot O Leary fella is a bit ‘ehhh’, we have provided you with a blow by blow fully detailed description of this week’s dance routine, because we are kindly and attentive and want to mother you. No no, seriously guys, it’s absolutely no bother.
1. The X Factor doors open to the tune of Do You Love Me by The Contours, which is a song about emotional insecurity and doing the mashed potato.
2. Dermot appears in badly fitting suit perpetrating a basic Stationary Hand Jive routine.
3. Scantily clad women stand next to him perpetrating a basic Stationary Hand Jive routine.
4. Dermot jumps a bit to the left, and then a bit to the right. (This bit’s important.)
5. Dermot turns around and shakes around his backside like he’s in the SEX PISTOLS or something.
6. Dermot looks embarrassed, and all the girls run away.
But, hey. That’s just involuntary abstinence for you.
“Tonight they’re facing the toughest judges of them all. That’ll be YOU,” Dermot warned us in the sort of Orwell-esque manner of omnipotence that only he can pull off and first up to perform, and for an absolutely incredibly sparse chance at performing in the live final because she’s been unreasonably edited to fuck from Day 1, was Misha B!
This week in her everlasting menagerie of Humble Field Trips, the X Factor producers forced Misha visit lots of sick children to try and evoke some sort of caring in her artificial vestibule of hatred that the X Factor producers created in the first place. It didn’t work obviously. Slag.
Misha sang the covered to death Dancing in the Street in a dress made out of broken records, and here is a carefully orchestrated joke about that.
Hey Misha! Maybe you should change the record!
(dress!)
…
Alright.
Well everybody loved that performance, especially Kelly who managed to unfurl 80 extra hidden meanings from the Mick Jagger barnstomper by saying “You’re not just dancing in the street! You’re dancing on OTHER indeterminate locations too!” Seriously, this woman is the effin’ Sphinx. Exhausting. Then we had to go through the WHOLE Louis Walsh says Berry Gordy is dead thing which is a bit of a silly thing to say considering at no point on Saturday the 3rd of December was Berry Gordy actually dead. No biggy Louis, we all make mistakes.
And then there was Amelia Lily with Aint No Mountain High Enough, which is a song about how no level of altitude can keep James Stewart from dressing Kim Novack as a double of his dead wife. Or something. You know, WE’VE GOT A LOT ON.
This all led to us being very confused over whether she looked darn attractive in a 60s Nancy Sinatra way or just a bit trashy in a modern day Twiggy M&S advert kinda way. Either way, it’s a bit of a grey area for us, and it’s probably easier for us not to bother. The dress code of the dancers seemed altogether a little bit more confusing. Houndstooth and tartan? Is that ‘The 60s‘? Let’s just check Wikipedia’s page for the 60s just to make sure. Blah blah blah – radical political change – blah blah blah – centre left social reforms – yadda yadda yadda – The African American civil rights movement… Oop. Hang about. “EVERYONE IN THE 60S LIKED TO WEAR FUNKY PATTERNS” it says. Ah, fair enough. Amelia sang the song vaguely well, basically giving her the exact capabilities as all the Jesuses. That sounds pretty serious. Let’s not deal with that.
“YOU SOUND AMAZING!”IOO”JOJI!IO!HIDBISH!” Kelly Rowland reported in a kind of cerebrovascular accident kinda way. (This is the same Kelly Rowland who wrote the song Stole, which is about a song with a girl who has same size hands as Marilyn Monroe, FYI)
Little Mix up next, singing We Are Nonthreatening But Women Nonetheless! By The Supremes. Ah, that wouldn’t be The Supremes, the collective compromising of quite a fair few women singing at the same time would it? Because… Wait, hold the phone. Don’t Little Mix do something to that effect? Flaming, third degree burns Nora! That’s too much of a coincidence. Assumingly then this was going to be absolutely amazing. So, what degree of amazing did it end up being we hear you cry whilst you claw at our ankles sobbing for catharsis? WELL. If only we had some sort of scale…
Oh dear. So what went wrong? HOW COULD THIS HAVE POSSIBLY GONE WRONG? What is THAT ANSWER? Will we ever even truly know?
Well, they didn’t sing it very well and someone forgot the words. Next week, we’ll sort all that Atlantis and Jack the Ripper stuff out everyone keeps harping on about. Anyway, hot blonde baritone Mix kind of saved it a bit though, which our Spiritual Guide Gary Barlow later points out saying that Peri (Oop. careful Gary, if you name them, you might generate an emotional attachment) should be the lead singer.
“That’s what this group is missing. A lead singer.”
A very interesting Robbie Williams ’90s solo career-y point well made.
“DIANA ROSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” – Louis added.
It’s actually something of an achievement that The X Factor has gone this far in the competition (Say about..six weeks) without featuring Robbie Williams actually. And here we were worried that the show was…dare we say it, missing the mark of what constitutes as entertainment! Pah. Oh how wrong we were!
Oh wait, there he is with Marcus Collins wearing a cravat. Ah well, we had a good run.
Yeah, that brings us quite messily on to Marcus Collins, who was performing a song that may or may not make us want to ‘get up and dance’ as the dubstep generation like to call all that sex these days. Oh, alright. Not really. God, we’re such jokers. He sang My Girl, which he presumably sang about one of his female platonic friends that he is not boning dry. Ah, so that’s why Robbie Williams came in to give him some advice this week! Gotcha. Gotcha. (Banal early 2000s Robbie Williams homosexuality jokes! Yes we ARE really pushing the boat out this week, thanks for playing!)
“I was hoping you were singing for me.” Kelly told Marcus. Marcus smiles and nods respectfully, as that is all he can offer her.
Mi-Icantbelieveimintouchingdistanceandidontwantittoend-sha B was up again, singing “Humble” the Gary Barlow remix, by SadPink. It’s good-at-singing kind of good. But that doesn’t matter.
Amelia came back singing I’M WITH YOU by AVRIL LAVIGNE which is a song about feelings and being with someone but them not actually being there. Still confused? Okay. It’s like An Affair to Remember with early 2000s pop-punk, and when we say ‘like’ we mean EXACTLY THE SAME. Deborah Kerr probably got a bit angsty and wore a tie with a vest top in her spare time too. We’ve all been there. And we all made it through. Clearly.
Amelia sang the song in that classic Amelia Lily Loud singing/Whisper Singing/Louder Singing/Nicole Kidman Bronchitis Moulin Rouge Whisper singing way. But does this mean that she didn’t absolutely definitely mean EVERY SINGLE WORD? Of course she did! God, we really aren’t taking this very seriously tonight. Apologies to Avril Lavigne, or alternatively: People with actual problems. Cheers guys.
“With that song [That song being ‘I’m With You’ by Avril Lavigne just to remind you] it’s like you are telling a story. And you have to sing that song as if you are telling a story.”
Which you’ll be shocked into a catatonic state to hear Tulisa came out with at one point. But it turns out it’s actually a very fair point! Seeing as:
“I’m With You” by Avril Lavigne is about Avril Lavigne standing on a bridge waiting in the dark for someone to come and take her hand, and then if there’s time, take her somewhere new. Now, she doesn’t know who this IS, but rest assured she is with them in a metaphorical sense despite him not being physically there. Now CALL US PICKY but we’d think of that more as an experimental William S Burroughs Beat Novel more than a story, per se Tulisa. But hey, ‘that’s just us’.
“Pipes” Kelly Rowland added.
Marcus Collins was up again, or if you prefer, Marcus“afewmonthsagoiwasahairdresserworking9to5andnowiminlondon&itssofunny” Collins, as is is his more catchy pseudonym, sang Can You Feel It. Well, when we say ‘Sang Can You Feel It’ we mean more like ‘inquisitively questioned Can You Feel It in a tentative yet hopeful for one singular sensual brush of the skin of another kind of way’, which we assume is the way Michael Jackson intended it to sound! Hurray!
Sadly, he didn’t muse on what ‘she’ would look like with a ‘chimney on her’, which would have been amazing.
And finally, Little Mix came along to sing ‘If I were a Boy’ which doesn’t work as a group song at all, so Tulisa spits mentals and starts rifling off every single local region in the UK and telling them to vote for Little Mix, like how Winston Churchill used to do when he was trying to get people to vote for Little Mix.
The Little Mixicans (As nobody should EVER call them) say something about how ‘they don’t want to be perfect’ which is why they sang the song about wanting to be boys, because women are biologically inferior as we all know – and then everything came crashing to a close in a mass of violent shrugs.
Shit on that ending, Shawshank Redemption.
THE RESULTS
*Call us picky, but we absolutely loathe Justin Bieber’s bollocks excuse for a Christmas song and don’t like Justin Bieber at all or would ever try and single out any redeeming quality to the fabric of his existence.
*Bye Misha. That’ll teach you to try and bring your talent and very broad vocal range on to The X Factor.
*The sound editors surpass themselves by playing Dream Is Collapsing from the Inception soundtrack over Marcus’ VT where he talks exclusively about how getting through to the final would be his dream. Very good.
*We got to hear that really emotionally taxing Jessie J ballad again, and only for the third time in the space of three weeks. Oh Mr Ambassador, you really are spoiling us etc.
*It is uncanny just how much Tulisa looks like Debenhams and Mkat sometimes.
*Perez Philtrum appears in the ad break even though nobody wanted him to.
*Kelly Rowland uses soliloquy in pop music, and it is theoretically hells-a-mazing. It was perhaps the most precise mixture of Orbital and Dr Faustus in RnB pop history we have ever seen. But we’re just speculating.
Next week is the final. Or as we like to call it: ‘The Hecklerspray Christmas Party where we’ll deliver a really drab, hungover last minute mess of a review’ This means we’ll only be putting in aprox. 5 billion percent more effort into the review than ITV will be putting into the actual contents of the show, so we’ll call that fifteen love.
Source: Hecklerspray Justin Bieber
Uh-oh! Caroline Flack is getting received death threats from Harry Styles’ fans after it was revealed that the pair have been on some dates. What is it with young women and their penchant for sending death threats?x”
