X Factor final

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

(haha this almost ended up on fooptimists through not paying attention)

I've watched Pop Idol and X Factor a lot, but this is the first time I've felt myself really caring about who wins. We have Ray, a charming and likeable young man who would like to have been in the Rat Pack, and Leona, the first woman in an X Factor final, a powerful singer in a Mariah/Xtina vein. Ray is fine, but his singing is pretty limited - I suspect he will crop up in a big West End show in a few months, and probably do well in it. Leona strikes me as having ability that could make for one of the greatest three or four female voices the UK has ever had. I really think she is hugely talented, and the moment where she started singing A Million Love Songs and her backing vocalists joined her on stage, and they were Take That, was jawdropping.

I hope she wins it, but I suspect they will already have the song ready for the winner, and it'll be a lame ballad about chasing a dream or something that will suit neither of the contestants (nor the Rod Stewart/Joe Cocker type, Ben, who finished third). Give her the right songs and production, maybe only available in the US, and I think she could make records to stand comparison with Christina. Give her limp ballads produced to not offend anyone, and she'll have one #1 and fade quickly into the distance. I fear the latter is the more likely scenario.

Comments

[koganbot]

You might be interested in Stephen Thomas Erlewine's review of the first Kelly Clarkson album over on Allmusic; he raises the same issues you guys are, and explains how he thinks Kelly got around them; also, "Miss Independent," the first single from the album, is quite good; you should track it down. Aguilera's one of the co-writers, so's Clarkson. (Got to post this in two parts, 'cause it's long):

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Anybody older than 18 who's watched American Idol for any length of time will undoubtedly find the similarities between this talent contest and such square '60s/'70s variety programs like The Andy Williams Show startling and unavoidable. Whenever the kids are hauled out to sing an oldie or stumble through a production number, AmIdol goes into a time warp, particularly because they're nearly always singing the same songs that would have shown up on The Andy Williams Show those many years ago. That's because this is a show-biz creation, not an organic pop phenomenon. It goes for the choreographed razzle-dazzle, it has the sense of "let's put on a show!" and it's about the televised show; the music is there to serve the program, not vice versa.

This makes for splendid entertainment, but the format of the show and its inherent squareness do make it difficult for contest winners to appeal to listeners their own age, since the show has positioned them to be as unhip as possible. Take Kelly Clarkson, the winner of the first American Idol, aired in 2002. Her first single, "A Moment Like This," may have been a number one hit, but it was such a staid adult contemporary tune that it suggested that her career was over before it really began, since it was not a work that played to her age or audience, and it gave her no room to grow. Somebody - whether it was Kelly herself or her monolithic management - realized that she was not on a path to either a long career or a successful one-shot album and rethought the game plan for her much-delayed debut album, Thankful.