Sunday 23 August 2009

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Kiss your Saturdays goodbye, The X-Factor is back and this time it means business. Still flush with the success of Boyle-ageddon, Simon has tweaked his other talent show to introduce the live audience element. Presumably this is to help with the YouTubeification of the best auditions, since the crowds' reactions are part of the appeal.

Last night's premiere episode was a fairly inconsequential affair, with few breakout stars and even fewer psychoses and delusions. We were however treated to the return of Emma Chawner, who obviously decided that the third time was the charm, having unsuccessfully auditioned twice before. This time, she brought her older sister Samantha, announcing "I’ve learnt I can sing better with my sister than on my own." Sadly, this wasn't quite the case.


Taking to the stage looking freakishly like Coleen Nolan and Kerry Katona wrapped in a kingsize duvet, the spherical duo butchered a Mariah Carey song to hoots of derision from the baying crowd.

Thankfully, there was also some talent on offer, thanks to a single mum from Dagenham and a permagrinning teen from Cheryl's home town of South Shields. However, the producers smartly saved the best for last, in the form of eye-wateringly hot teacher Danyl Johnston.

Delivering a barnstorming performance of Joe Cocker's take on 'With a Little Help From My Friends' he was winking, grinning and leaping all over the stage, marking himself out as the early favourite. Not only did he win a standing ovation from all four judges, Simon declared it the best first audition he's ever seen, clearly sensing another viral hit in the making.

Danyl aside, this was still a frustrating show, thanks largely to the producers' insistence on recycling and repeating filler footage, rather than showing us the actual auditions. Last night's show boasted more endless crowd scenes that The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This series we can also expect to see thousands more shots of beefy sound technicians at the mixing desk, and anonymous nobodies screaming at the camera that they have the X-Factor.

The relative cheapness of the concept and changes to the format don't seem to have put anyone off, with the show pulling in 9.9 million viewers. And as the series gains momentum, it's likely that those numbers are only going to increase. I guess resistance is futile.

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