This year, we’ve traded in Destiny’s Child for a Pussycat Doll, which just about makes this the worst panel of judges ever. Sherzinger, for the uninitiated, is from the same cyborg manufacturing plant that gave us Rebecca Fergussonbot two years ago. I’m doing a lot of harking back to X-Factor 2010, aren’t I? Ah, glory days. Sherzingerbot, fresh from being axed from the X-Factor USA, will be mentoring the boys. Tulisa Doesn’thaveasurnameanymore will be mentoring the fuck out of the girls, but hopefully not sharing her dire blowjob technique. Louis will be mentoring (and hoping to drop the hand on most of) the groups. Which leaves Gary Barlow to mentor the Overs. Got it? Good. On with the show!
Aforementioned Inevitable Huge Twist™ is that our 12 finalists will be joined by a “wild card” choice voted in by the public. In the biggest foregone conclusion since the last time we had an utterly predictable foregone conclusion you could see coming a mile away (i.e., Amelia Lily), working class zero Chris Maloney wins the vote! Who knew? Who could see it coming aside from anyone with more than one brain cell? Confession time: I was so confident that Our Chris was going to win the wild card vote as part of the producer’s totally transparent plan to make him even more of a people’s champion, that I actually wrote most of this paragraph half an hour before the show even began.
Two things of note: Dermot informs us that we can now vote from the very start of the show. You know, from the very start of the singing competition. Before anyone sings. So now you can ensure Chris Maloney wins by voting for him long before his face ever pollutes your screen with it’s contrived nervous shakes. You fucking monster. And Dermot also tells us that tonight’s songs are inspired by the Olympics or some bullshitology attempt to latch onto the smouldering embers of Britain’s Olympic fever and make this increasingly tired and worn out show seem relevant again.
FINALLY, we get to the first act: it’s one of Louis’s groups, GMD3. Who have now been renamed DISTRICT 3. There are no more terrifying words in the English language for any young man under 25 than “Louis’ Dressing Room”. That’s exactly what the caption that pops up on-screen as Louis explains to the boys says. He explains how they need an exciting and dynamic name that reflects how exciting and dynamic these 3 boring wank-leavings are now that they’ve had a makeover to align them with the post-One Direction boyband paradigm. They end up performing a very strange version of Tina Turner’s Simply the Best involving exactly the sort of Americanised pronounciations you’d logically expect to come from three lads from Wales, London and Cleethorpes, wherever the hell that is. It’s definitely the worst performance of the night so far.
JUDGES! Louis vomits forth a string of Louisisms. For anyone playing Louis Bingo while watching, please note that there’s an “You’re like a young [insert name here]”, in this case being a young Boyz II Men, because Louis’s pop culture knowledge doesn’t go beyond the 1990s. There’s also a bad pun based on the song title, “I think you’re Simply the Best!” Make sure to tick it off your bingo card, and then punch yourself in the face for watching this bollocks.
The first of the Overs to performs is Melanie Masson. Melanie’s intro video is low-key and boring, to lull you into a false sense of security and calm before she LUNGBURSTS HER WAY THROUGH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS. Seriously. If there were transcription software that instantly turned what Melanie sings into words, it’d all be in caps. All the time. Size 76. Bold. And underlined. That’s how loud she is. She BELLOWS from atop the X-Factor Plinth of Performance, getting its first outing of the new series. She’s loud and powerful, and while that isn’t a guarantee that she’s any good, it’s decent enough overall. JUDGES! “I remember Woodstock”, Louis says. I’ll just leave it at that.
Tulisa introduces the first of the girls, Lucy the Lesbian. Lucy the Lesbian will be singing an original song, in what Tulisa tells us will be an X-Factor first. Oh how quickly we’ve forgotten Chico Slimani’s magnum opus, It’s Chico Time. For shame. I did think that Lucy the Lesbian was a prime candidate for this year’s shock-person-who-leaves-halfway-through, who the judges then use as a morality tale to beat the rest of us about the head with the importance of voting often, but given how dire this performance is, I’d be surprised if she makes it even that far. She seems a nice girl, but perhaps she should stick to song-writing Tonight’s song is about old people. Just like the one at boot camp. Next week: Lucy the Lesbian sings about her nan’s corns. JUDGES! Somone forgot to set Nicole Sherzingerbot’s internal dictionary to English (UK), and she fails to realise that spunk means something entirely different in the UK than it does in the USA. She then proceeds to ask Gary Barlow if he wants to smear some all over his face.Twice. Dermot upbraids her like a good Ofcom-fearing presenter in a post-Russell Brand/Andrew Sachs world.
Back to the groups, and Louis introduces Mortal Kombat 1, who will be performing some Chipmunk song. That’s Chipmunk the rapper, and not Chipmunk as in “Alvin and”. More’s the pity. In their intro video, Female MK1 (hereafter known as Sonya Blade) explains that they’re “here for the music” and that “If that was taken away, we’d still be here”. So if the reason you’re here was taken away from you, you’d still be here? Stop trying to confuse me with your words, Sonya. Their song is an awful shouty piece of bilge nonsense with lots of dancey dancey bright colours to distract you DON’T LISTEN JUST LOOK AT THE DISTRACTIONS WHEEEEE! JUDGES! Are about as insightful as a piece of unbuttered toast.
Working class hero and cry baby extraordinaire Chris Maloney is up next, wailing in his intro video about this extraordinary second chance he’s been given but oh, wouldn’t it be awful if his nerves got the better of him. His terrible, terrible nerves. He’s so nervous. And emotional. He could cry at any time. Or start shaking like a Polaroid picture being taken by a man with Parkinson’s on a vibro-plate. Gary talks about Chris’s nerves. Chris talks about his nerves. He says it’d just be awful if he got on stage and his nerves got to him and he just shit himself for 90 seconds without stopping. And it could happen you know. Because his nerves could really get the better of him. They really, really could. Because it’s not a contrived attempt to illicit sympathy or make a decent-yet-unspectacular singer more engaging or anything. His nerves could literally cause him to shit all over that lovely polished X-Factor stage, and that would be awful for lovely Chris. Chris will be singing Mariah Carey’s Hero tonight. I guess it takes a cunt to cover one. Luckily, Chris manages to amazingly transform himself from shambling emotional timebomb into cruiseship karaoke crooner, complete with head-tilts of emotion. And his shakes! They’re gone! Almost as if they didn’t really exist!
JUDGES! Louis congratulates Chris on overcoming his Parkinson’s to deliver such an effortless performance. Louis also makes a sly reference to Chris’s time spent on cruise ships performing to hundreds. Nicole asks him how he feels, because she wants to scan humans with her Emotion Array so that she may better emulate their affectations.
It’s the last of the bands, Union J. Union J are distinguishable from District 3 only insofar as the former have 4 members, whereas the latter has 3. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I don’t want to think about it too much because I don’t want to get too attached, only to have my heart broken when one or both of these bands is sent home within the next 3 weeks. These boys are so playful and cheeky in their intro-video, like a young One Direction. “I think the queen lives here”, says one of them upon glimpsing Casa Del X-Factor Contestants. No dear, Louis lives in Dublin. Louis tells us that Union J are four good-looking boys and that young girls will love them. Oh Louis, you really shouldn’t reveal your brilliant marketing strategy to the world like that. Maybe that’s why you haven’t had a successful group in over a decade. The three original members of whatever Union J were called before they were four attempt to convince us they that they love their new member, George. The boys will be performing Don’t Stop Me Now, because if there’s one thing that 14 year old girls love, it’s the OTT camp flamboyance of Freddie Mercury. I think one of Union J can sing. Maybe. It’s probably George, the overachieving bastard. I’ve always hated you, George. It’s still a shit performance, however.
JUDGES! Louis, Tulisa and Gary have a big row over Lady Walsh’s outdated approach to song-choices. Zingerbot interrupts the row at precisely 9.20pm because her comments have been pre-programmed and nothing can stop her delivering them at the anointed time.
Jade Ellis is up next. Her intro-video is nothing but a series of shots of her and her adorable daughter, probably meant to trick us into voting for her so that the little ‘un can have a better life. FUCK YOU, X-Factor producers. If I can ignore the Trocaire kids then your blatant emotional blackmail doesn’t stand a chance. Jade will be performing Enrique Iglesias’s Hero from atop a piano. It’s about as interesting as slightly buttered toast with a hint of marmalade. It’s quiet and boring and this entire episode is just washing past me like in a haze of boredom and toast analogies. JUDGES! Louis tells Jade that she looks like an international pop star and he knows that because he met one once.
EJACULATE THE DANCEFLOOR! IT’S RYLAN TIME! I feel like Rylan’s intro video should have some strobe lighting. Rylan is so fun, Zingerbot tells us. If anyone knows what fun is, it’s Nicole Scherzinger. And he’s so infectious! He’s like rampant crabs. Rylan and Ella randomly read harsh criticisms of Rylan from Twitter. I thought one of them was “You’re a cum-tree” but on further inspection, it's actually “You’re an embarrassment to your country”. Ella pretends to be concerned, because she doesn’t want anyone discovering that she wrote it. IT’S ALWAYS THE QUIET ONES. Unless the quiet one is Jahmene. It’s never Jahmene. Nicole tells Rylan what it’s like to be a star, because she has enough processing power to provide conjecture on what it feels like to actually BE a turbulent roiling mass of burning gases in deep space. Performance time! Rylan is doing Spandau Ballet’s Gold by way of Cascada. It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s ludicrous, and involves the sort of ridiculous staging they would’ve given Kitty Brucknell last year. Rylan has a hard time keeping a straight face at the start. Then again, I imagine that Rylan has a hard time keeping a straight anything. He seems like he’s laughing at a joke and he’s the only one in on it. Maybe he’s a performance artist and the Rylan persona is a satire on TOWIE-style fame-chasing. If Rylan happens to be in tune at any point during this performance, it is only because he has bludgeoned the other notes around him into submission first. He ends his performance with his patented *Rylan Wink*.
JUDGES! Gary Barlow hates Rylan because of the inherent ridiculousness that is Rylan. Gary says he’s embarrassed to be sitting with the 3 judges who put Rylan through. Nicole spunks all over Gary then reminds him of the whole spreading-jam-across-your-arse phase Take That went through. Yes, that really happened. Louis tells Rylan that it’s never going to be possible to please everyone so you should please Louis instead. *Rylan wink*
Desperately trying to look younger than he is, and surely missing a few syllables from his name, it’s Kye! Kye is about 42 but wants us all to think he’s 21 and still gets ID’d when purchasing alcohol in Tesco. What kind of alcohol would Kye buy? Something alternative no doubt, because Kye is alternative, cool, and he owns My Chemical Romance albums and stuff, yeah. Actually, he probably only drinks absinthe. Kye sings Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror, which fits tonight’s Olympic Heroes theme because you really should take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror, you fat fucker, and become a barely legal sexually ambiguous diver instead. Maybe. Follow Kye’s example. He’s going to make a change. He’s going to start wearing age-appropriate clothes. It’s the most not-terrible performance of the show thus far, which means you can listen to most of it without your ears exploding or your eyeballs trying to escape your face through your nostrils.
JUDGES! Zingerbot says that she knows Kye worked very hard. She encourages him to take in the applause he’s receiving using his aural input devices, or however it is that non-ferrous life forms process sound. Louis says that Kye’s going to get a record deal. The show ends and we all go our separate ways because Kye has won in week one. Yay, Kye won! Tulisa says something about Kye being en pointe and I start to notice that this is about the fifth time she’s used that phrase tonight. I’m not sure she knows what she means by it. Maybe she thinks she’s on Strictly Come Dancing.
Fresh from spreading slanderous tweets about Rylan throughout the blogosphere, Wee Ella the pony is up next. She has such a long face. Like a little Sarah Jessica Parker. I notice a pattern in Ella’s intro video common across many of Tulisa’s acts and it’s that Tulisa has an answer for every way in which her contestants are suffering. Ella’s only sixteen! I’VE BEEN DOING IT SINCE I WAS ELEVEN! Jade wants her daughter to be proud of her! MY MUM WAS A SINGER TOO AND WHEN I SEE VIDEOS OF HER I FEEL THINGS IN MY EMOTION PLACE! I’m a lesbian! I’M A BIGGER DYKE THAN YOU! Ella sings that Take That song. You know the one with the overwrought music and the quiet bit just before the music soars and the vocals climb triumphantly because love conquers all? Yeah, that one. I have to hand it to Ella (no, not a bale of hay), she has a lovely voice and mostly very good control of it, especially given her age. Alas she’s a bit off-kilter in a few places, and her voice breaks rather obviously at the end. JUDGES! Tuilsa just wants to brush Ella’s hair, feed her sugar cubes and take her to the pony-dentist.
Carolynne Poole has done a lot of things. She’s been a Footballer’s Wife. She’s been on Fame Academy, God love her. She’s had IVF. But she’s never done a cover of Nicki Minaj’s Starships in a country style. That changes tonight. See, they’ve decided that because Carolynne looks kinda like Shania Twain, then Carolynne must do country. This is a very clever move, because country and western music is so very popular in the United Kingdom these days. DON’T STEP OUT OF THE BOX, CAROLYNNE. DON’T YOU DARE STEP OUT THE NICHE YOU’VE BEEN APPOINTED. Somewhere in the United States, Nicki Minaj pauses while administering a severe beating to Mariah Carey. She shakes her head, curses under breath and mutters “You a stupid ‘hoe.” She quickly finishes off Mariah, and feeds her corpse to the dogs from the All I Want for Xmas video. Then she phones her weaveman, Huwell, and asks him to answer two questions. One: “Where my fighting weave be at?” Two: “How long does it take to fly to London?” Nicki Minaj is going find Carolynne Poole. She is going to stab her in the tit with a stiletto. And then she will sleep with Carolynne's ex husband. In front of her. While playing Azaelia Banks’ 212. Then she will eat Carolynne’s heart and give glorious thanks to her god, Huitzilopochtli. JUDGES! Flee for their lives because they know what’s coming.
JUDGES! Tulisa is lost for words, so she can’t even tell Jahmene that his performance was en pointe.
And with that, it’s time for the never-ending performances recap, which reminds us that such luminaries as District 3 and Ben Mitchell still exist, just in case you’d forgotten everything that happened before Rylan. In fairness, that’d be understandable. I think the world can now safely be cleaved into two distinct halves: our lives pre-Rylan, and our lives post-Rylan. Join us tomorrow for the first ever X-Factor results show of the post-Rylan world, in which a jet-lagged Nicki Minaj murders Carolynne Poole while Leona Lewis plugs her new album.
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