We're not exactly sure why this is news, but it is so bear with us – Jarvis Cocker from Pulp and Jarvis Cocker solo career fame has sensationally lashed out at TV talent shows like X Factor for no real reason apart from the fact he doesn't like them.
Jarvis Cocker – who once appeared on Stars In Their Eyes as Rolf Harris – has told the Radio Times that shows like X Factor depress him because they only promote personality-free warblers with no real character in their voices. Next week, Jarvis Cocker plans to give his opinion on those new £20 notes, calling them "too blue" and scoffing at all the poncey microlettering, followed by a vicious attack on internal household doors. "They're like windows but you can't see through them because they're made of wood. What's that all about?" Jarvis plans to say. Probably.
Jarvis Cocker is truly a man of many talents. As well as being in one of Britpop's biggest bands and then a marginally successful solo artist, Jarvis Cocker is also the kind of gentleman who can infuriate Canadian folk bands in an instant, write songs for other good bands like The Lovers, and convince hecklerspray to go and see Harry Potter films by being in them for less than three seconds.
Despite all this, though, pop music is still Jarvis Cocker's first love – to the extent that he wanted to do Eurovision until he realised that he probably wasn't as good as Scooch. Yes, Jarvis Cocker loves pop music. Just not the sort of pop music that you see on TV talent shows like X Factor, because Jarvis Cocker hates that enough to rage against it in interviews even when X Factor hasn't been on TV for six months. According to Metro:
Cocker, who recently released his first solo album, said of TV talent shows: "They never pick people with great voices. They pick people who show off how many notes they can fit into a 10-second period. A great voice expresses something and gives you some idea of the personality behind the voice. There's zero personality in the voices of any of the people who sing on these shows… It saddens me because I love pop music and these shows prove that it's become an industrialised process. I hate that. The kind of pop I was brought up on is over."
It's hard to tell whether Jarvis Cocker really hates X Factor for what it is or if he's just doing that middle-aged thing of imagining that things were better when he was younger. The fact is, though, that Jarvis Cocker is wrong. Plenty of X Factor contestants have personality in their voices. Take last year's X Factor runner-up Ray Quinn, for example – his voice dripped with personality. Admittedly it was the personality of a swivel-eyed, over-varnished ventriloquist's dummy that's been possessed by the devil and likes to stand unblinking over young children while they sleep with an unsettling fixed grin on his face and thoughts of chainsaw-based murder on his mind, but it's still a personality.
And then there's… um…
OK Jarvis, we'll give you this one.
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Mithaearon says
Jarvis is still a hero for sort for E’s and Whizz and the Brit Awards MJ incident and now continues his superhero status by voicing what every sane person thinks, these “talent” shows showcase next to no talent.