Saturday night's all wrong for singing

Elton John (oh yes we're all over the new and contemporary music) week

Tx 13th November 2010

Last weekend! There were lollerskates! Tears! Dancing girls! Epic mentor failing! Simon has rubbed his hands with glee all week because of the column inches generated! This weekend, we have contestants - Dannii's boys, Paije RICHARDSON, Aiden GRIMSHAW and Lazy DECORATOR, Louis's old people Mary BYRNE and WAGNER, Cheryl's girls Rebecca FERGUSON, Cher LLOYD and Katie WAISSEL and the single group belonging to Simon, One DIRECTION. Cheryl reckons this will be make-or-break; Simon is ready to be surprised. It's the X Factor!

Titles!

Dermot shamefacedly salutes us and welcomes us to our Saturday night which starts here. He is wearing a navy (?) suit with brown shoes, tie and pocket hanky. It is not a good look. He introduces the judges to the strains of The Bitch Is Back, and reminds us to download things from the holy sacred iTunes.

Dannii begins by announcing Paije, who's in this week's Performance Slot Of Doom. He VTs about the Harry Potter premiere, which is very exciting for him to attend because he used to be an extra in the earlier films. It's quite funny because Paije pretends they were all just getting ready in their rooms and Daniel Radcliffe came to see them, and what ACTUALLY happens is that they're all sitting round in a meeting room and Daniel Radcliffe, dressed as Nick Clegg, comes to shake their hands in the manner of the Queen or similar.

Paije is singing Crocodile Rock. There are approximately 18 billion dancers and 25 billion blue-and-white balloons on the stage along with him. It's borderline competent, but nothing amazing, but that might be the best we can hope for, to be honest. Louis thinks that Paije is a soulman (ba-da-ba-daaaaaaaaaa ba-da-ba-daaaaaaaaaaaaa) like Luther Vandross, not a rocker, crocodile or otherwise, and criticises Dannii for picking a song that was released before Paije was born, because obviously Elton John has had loads of well-known solo hit singles in Paije's lifetime. Cheryl says she doesn't know Crocodile Rock. How can you not know Crocodile Rock? More pertinently, how can you be a mentor on a music show and not know Crocodile Rock? [Seriously. FIRE CHERYL NOW. - Steve] Simon, hilariously, asks Louis how Paije can be a "little Lenny Henry" last week and a "little Luther Vandross" this week, and then says Dannii wouldn't have Lazy DECORATOR singing Crocodile Rock. I bet she would if she could. He could do the naaaaaaaaaaaaaa-na-na-na-na-naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas in falsetto. Simon reckons that Paije's chances of winning "after that song" are zero. Which they were before he actually sang that song, so it's as you were. [Dannii's awesome revenge for this staggeringly hypocritical "favouring one act over another" comment, by the way, was to ask Simon to name all the members of Wan Direction live on The Xtra Factor. He failed. - Steve]

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Aiden GRIMSHAW and his amazing Jedward QUIFF now. He too has enjoyed the red carpet walking prior to the Harry Potter premiere this week. He looks much happier off-stage than on it, where he is singing Rocket Man, has duelling pianos, and is stroking the mic stand in a disturbingly erotic way. Simon is making "up" gestures at someone. Perhaps the sound man in a plea to turn the backing track on and encourage Aiden to follow the tune. Louis says, "You changed it from the original melody." Yes, he didn't sing the original melody at all. He then claims that Elton would love that performance. Elton John, that well-known X Factor fan [weren't they all grumpy with Elton JOHN the other week? - Rad]. Simon doesn't think that's the best Aiden has sounded (no kidding) but thinks he has great presence, and enjoyed him walking across pianos, because that is the kind of thing Elton John would do. Maybe Aiden should also have worn some lolarious glasses, bought millions of pounds worth of flowers and taken over a football club then.

Next up, "singing another Elton song" (yeah, because it's ELTON JOHN WEEK), it's Mary BYRNE. Last week she was shit and is blaming it on being tired and missing her daughter. She reveals that she rings her daughter three times a day; her daughter reveals that Mary's room is like a shrine; and then Mary reveals EXCLUSIVELY that this week they all went to the Harry Potter premiere! She's singing Can You Feel The Love Tonight in a cabaret style with a gospel choir backing her. It is very tedious [and terrible. I think Mary's broken - Rad]. There is a key change. Not even that improves it. Dannii says that the X Factor contestants went to a film premiere this week. Cheryl's breasts are looking magnificent tonight. Simon thought it was pub singerish. Which it was. He also thinks that because Mary has a heart, it worked. Which it didn't. "The only thing that was shaky about it was your nerves," says Louis.

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Katie has been to a film premiere of Harry Potter this week. She signs autographs and evidently loves being the centre of attention. Who'd have guessed? Louis wants Katie to come out fighting tonight. Oh Louis. You know that she will. Because she's clearly singing Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting, with that kind of intro. Ah yes, yes of course she is. She has a gang of girls. How very gender enlightened. Other reality show contestants could learn much. Louis says that he saved Katie for the right reasons but this is a silly song. Dannii gives Katie credit for coming back. Oooh, damned with faint praise. Simon says that Louis will get removed from the building soon. He's already said that before. And then brought him back again. So don't get too excited. He talks about the nasty press Katie has had this week, like she hasn't loved it. And then Katie tells us all about her lovely week meeting inspiring children which is keeping her humble, or something. Blah blah Danyl JOHNSON blah. [I loved that Dermot cut her off before she could even finish shamelessly using sick children for her own benefit. Hag. - Steve]

Lazy Decorator next! [So that's all of Dannii's acts on in the first half of the show, including two at the very top? She's obviously upset someone. - Steve] He sang The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face last week, a song which has great meaning for him and his family, and this week he has gone to the Harry Potter premiere and met Helena Bonham Carter and Jason Isaacs. He's singing Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, all the better to wheel out some terrible falsetto...and he's really quite out of tune in the first half of the song. The second verse is better, but he doesn't seem to know when to go into the falsetto and when not to. [It wasn't a patch on the greatest reality TV performance of this song ever, either. - Steve] Louis says that Lazy never lets him down. Fnar. Cheryl thinks it was a perfect song choice; Simon says he was worried about the song, but the second half of it was good, after he got over the nerves.

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Cher tells us about walking the red carpet at the Harry Potter premiere. "I feel like a somebody now," she says. A nation seethes. Cher, wearing the legs of Ianto's Robot Girlfriend, then yelps her way through the first part of Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, which mashes up into something I don't know [it's Eminem's 'Mockingbird' - Steve] and then she raps and it's fucking awful, seriously. Dannii thinks Cher is more confident on stage and likes it better when she sings rather than raps. Simon says he thinks she is 100 per cent back in the game: "It sounded like a record." I think he means that it's something he'd be able to release and make money from, rather than something that wasn't performed live. I think we can all tell that it was performed live.

Wagner talks about how happy he feels when Dermot says his name. We then see a lolarious snippet of VT where a slightly scared-looking Daniel Radcliffe quizzes Wagner about the photo where he's holding a lion by its tail, and then Radcliffe gets sidetracked at the thought of having a pet lion and how exciting that would be. He does not specify whether he would like to be licked or bitten by it. At the end of the VT, the performers clearly aren't in their right places and Dermot really ineptly fills the time with worried looks and a stilted chat with Louis. Finally, we are ready for Wagner to sing I'm Still Standing, which leads into The Circle Of Life, complete with aerial gymnastics and another fake wedding. Simon says, "[Louis] is leading you into these positions he'd like to be in himself." HA. He points out that it's the weirdest marrying of songs ever. Dermot tries to pacify Wagner's anger about Louis getting his name wrong: "That one's going to run and run and run!" [But he didn't pick up on the fact that Cheryl and Simon also got it wrong tonight, ignorant fucks - Rad] Oh Dermot, you fucking corporate SHILL. Don't try and make it look as though it's some kind of hotly-debated moral topic of the moment when it's just Louis being an ignorant TWAT.

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Simon apologises to Elton John on behalf of the panel. For what? Wagner? This theme week? This whole sorry show? Too late for that, Cowell. Far, far too late. He introduces One Direction, who have had an odd conversation with Daniel Radcliffe about the beauty of Emma Watson. Apparently this week One Direction have been adamant they want to prove themselves as singers. In a competition where none of them were good enough to get through as soloists [it's come to something when a group made up of soloists who weren't good enough to get past Boot Camp are heralded as not only better than all the actual groups that auditioned but also the actual soloists. One Direction are essentially this show eating itself. See also: Waissel, Katie. - Rad]. They're singing Something About The Way You Look Tonight along with their invisible backing singers amidst a falling rain of fire from the ceiling. Zain is singing away into his dead microphone. Is anyone ever going to tell him, or should I? [No, don't spoil the illusion. Zain's tuneless echoes are my favourite thing about this show right now. - Steve] Simon says he genuinely believes a group is going to win this competition, and then witters on about how nice they are. Maybe. But they're still shit.

Cheryl introduces the absolutely BORING (or it might have been "flawless") Rebecca Ferguson. She's from Liverpool, and went to the Harry Potter premiere this week. She's singing Candle In The Wind in the style of a Clanger, all swooping intervals in that high-pitched whistle. She changes the melody. A string quartet appear. She breathes in hideously inappropriate places. Where is Yvie Burnett when she is needed? Louis reminds us that Rebecca is from Liverpool and is a wonderful role model. Cheryl opts to play the "single parents" and "young mums" role model card. Egregious.

So that's it, and the lines are open. Dermot gives us all the necessary voting numbers and leads into a recap - Paije rocking like a crocodile, Aiden sidegobbing as a Rocket Man, Mary feeling the love tonight though not from me, Katie fighting, Lazy and his falsetto, Cher being fucking hideous, Wagner allowing Louis and NotLouis to live out their deranged fantasies, One Direction and their singers, and Rebecca and the Soup Dragon.

Tomorrow! JLS! Westlife! And Take That! I'm only sorry it's too early for JLS to perform Last Christmas. Join us then!