Looks Like Leon Jackson’s Got The Christmas Number One, Then
Then buzz it up
December 21st, 2007 at 11:30 by Stuart Heritage
Along with the giving and receiving of official Cliff Richard calenders and morbid gluttony, Christmas is all about Simon Cowell getting personality-free dullards to number one with awful pretend-aspirational songs.
And that's no different this year. Leon Jackson, winner of X Factor and a young man so crushingly inarticulate that his primary method of communication is weeping, has been all but guaranteed this year's Christmas number one with his song I Believe or Believe In Me or When You Believe or I Preconceive That My Sleeve Believes Its Weave's Called Steve. Not only that, but When You Believe by Leon Jackson looks set to become the fastest-selling single of the year, selling 300,000 copies in less than a week. That's not the only record When You Believe's broken, either - it's also the only Christmas number one with a tune that nobody can remember even when they've just finished listening to it.
Winning X Factor can change your life completely. Look at Leona Lewis. 14 months ago she was just another Simon Cowell talent show pleb going "woooahaoaha" all over Whitney Houston records on TV, but now she's a multimillion-selling artiste who gets to go "woooahaoaha" over songs written especially for her that only sound like Whitney Houston records. The difference is staggering.
And that's the future that X Factor winner Leon Jackson has to look forward to, if record sales of his first single When You Believe are anything to go by. By all estimations, When You Believe by Leon Jackson is going to be this year's Christmas number one even though a) it's awful, b) it means that Simon Cowell has stretched his run of talent show Christmas number ones to three painful years, c) it's not as good as that song about everyone dying alone and d) it's awful.
According to HMV, When You Believe by Leon Jackson is shaping up to be the fastest-selling single of the year as well as Christmas number one, selling 300,000 this week alone. HMV bigwig Gennaro Castaldo says:
"Even at this early stage it looks like being Leon all the way."
But that's inevitable, isn't it? The winner of X Factor always gets Christmas number one. Even if the show was won by a goose choking on a half-swallowed string of spaghetti - or worse, Chico - it'd still get Christmas number one. So we shouldn't judge Leon Jackson yet. No, we must wait until his first album of red-eyed lazily-slurred awkward cruise-ship swing covers farts into the shops next year. Then we can judge him.
But, hey, if When You Believe by Leon Jackson is going to be the Christmas number one, who are the also-rans? Well, currently in second place is that Katie Melua cover version of What A Wonderful World that appears to have only been recorded to soundtrack bitterly ironic suicides, followed by Leona Lewis and then Fairytale Of New York by Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl, which got a boost this week because of Radio 1 wanking about with the bleeper button.
So congratulations to Leon Jackson, who'll go down in history as a Christmas number one even though his song's rubbish. We don't know how Leon plans to celebrate his Christmas number one yet, but we have a feeling it'll involve crying his whole body into dust.
Still, could've been worse. Same Difference could've won.
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December 21st, 2007 at 10:40 pm
just read your comments on Leon Jackson - who the hell do you think you are! What a load of crap you have just written, Leon has a wonderful voice, do you get off on putting people down in such a horrid way, how on earth do you sleep at night, you might think Leon has a crap voice, well I think you are a crap writer, who cares what you think anyway, it was a public vote and thats what counts.
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:22 am
I could not disagree more. If his voice isn’t to your liking, then fine, I get that. But please give me a break, the boy is talented. He’s got a rich tone to his voice and has been singing less than one year! An 18 year old who only began singing in January 2007 just won the UK’s biggest talent competition. I don’t care who you are or what kind of music you prefer, that’s a story worthy of some praise.
December 22nd, 2007 at 2:09 am
We in WALES do not have access to as many telephone boxes as all those SCOTTISH
people Also all those SCOTTISH people get speech therapy lessons from an earlier age than wot we do agogo. And its not over yet if all us Wales people sign up for tiscali and apply for free school computers at Tesco we can grab the Xmas No. 1 next year! They might be up and running just in time.
December 22nd, 2007 at 12:58 pm
i love leon sooooo much..who ever wrote that about him..ur just jealous..!!
id like day hear u sing in front of millions of people every week!
leon is a talanted singer and i think hes better than leona lewis..shes just the same as whinteny huston and all. leon is a unique singer..I LOVE HIM!!!! XxXx
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:28 am
Leon Jackson can definitely sing. Millions of voters agree. Anyway, Stuart Heritage, I’ve heard of Leon but I’ve never heard of you. Leon’s singing makes me happy and you are just a nobody critic who enjoys putting people down.
December 24th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Stuart Heritage - happy Christmas and I hope that good things come to you just as you look for good in others. I thought Leon was amazing for an 18yr singer who had only been singing for 12 months before the X factor. But it’s a pity that you attack him for being part of the X factor juggernaut that he did not create. We all know he’s a tiny cog in a big mechanism. I’m not a fan of Simon Cowell, and Sharon Osborne and Louis Walsh need a couple of doses of Christmas spirt too, but Leon has been given a great opportunity which he richly deserves. As for his moments of tears, your aggressive reaction to genuine emotion, really does say more about issues you have, than Leon. Best of luck in the world to a talented and lovely guy. And Happy Christmas Stuart, cheer up!
December 25th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Stuart has hit the nail on the head again - a very accurate analysis - but i suspect Stuart is a)not a little girl, and b) not a Scot with a chip on his shoulder.
This means he has the ability to judge crap from genuine talent and doesnt want to blather on about scottish stuff all the time. Scots want to ruin X factor - the MacDougal brothers nearly won it one year just by having Louis Walsh telling people from Scottish Land to support them.
December 30th, 2007 at 3:20 am
Ben you seem to be anti scottish. I am Scottish and unlike you, I have no chips on either of my shoulders, thank you very much, although what the English have done to my people over the years gives many reasons to harbor grudges against the English.
But why would the Scots have chips on their shoulders anyway? We are a fairly intelligent race of people, who know when to move on and get on with things. Perhaps a lesson you could learn from us (although I know Andy Cameron’s world cup song is unforgivable, even by us Scots).
I am guessing you are English? Having lived amongst your people for some time now, I have witnessed first hand that the majority of English, males in particular, hate any nationality other than English winning anything! (We Scots gave up decades ago our Football, Rugby, Tennis and pretty much any competitive sport teams ever having any success in national competitions. The English just don’t seem to get it that they are crap at Football, Rugby, Tennis and Cricket! Not to mention pretty much anything else they turn their hands to, oh except leery behavior and thuggishness, binge drinking and generally making complete asses of themselves on a national stage, which they do with absolute conviction. How the English endear themselves to the world and you never wonder why the English are hated?) I foolishly used to think it was only the Americans who had their heads so far up their own ars. . . backsides.
I am not an X-Factor fan, in fact I find it hard to reconcile the fact that Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh between them are pretty much responsible for the state of the British Music Industry. Manufactured talentless idiots being paid a wage to perform cover versions and ballad after ballad (in Boyzone and Westlife’s cases) instead of encouraging decent singer songwriters. I guess the royalties paid to songwriters, cuts record company profits, and old Syco does need to get that new roller every year (shame the rich suffer so when they screw up a whole industry).
Of the three finalists on the show, who would you have preferred to win? Same Difference? A weird throw back to the early 70’s Partridge Family meets the Waltons or Osmands? Yeech.
Rhydian, the Welsh warbler, who lets face it, only performed The Phantom Of The Opera reasonably well. Let’s for a second look at the other offerings. Oh yes, that Go West effort was awful. I’m Coming Up (So You Better Get The Party Started) whilst dressed in a more masculine effort than Shirley Bassey wore when she performed the song, it again was absurd and downright ludicrous.On the final night, when he performed ‘When You Believe’, it was out of tune and terrible. (Leon’s rendition was far superior, although not perfect). Hmmm let me think, Rhydian, a worthy winner if ever there was one. Not!
Leon. whilst his performance at the start of the series was absolutely horrific, after the third or fourth week there were definite improvements in his confidence and vocal range. A smoothness started to enter his performances. Sure he suffered nerves, but unlike Rhydian, Leon hadn’t been classically trained for 5 years prior to applying for the show.
By the third last show, Leon was looking and sounding more polished. He even sounded like a young Sinatra in places. His voice was stronger and the songs chosen were more suited to his vocal style and range (unlike those selected for Rhydian). Leon’s funky chicken dance moves and strutts I thought were just the icing on the cake (Ha!).
As a marketing guy and photographer, I know who has the most potential to be successful between Leon and Rhydian. Leon has a future. He is reasonably good looking, very photogenic and he has a voice which like the best opera singers, develop over time, but he has a natural talent which just needs to be controlled and tweaked.
Rhydian, will have a career on the West End stage, however as a recording artist, his classical style didn’t work on popular songs. His breathing was off and the songs sounded as if they had been slowed down (try and remember when the Three Tenors performed together. When they performed opera, it was fantastic, but when they tried to perform popular numbers, oh dear, it wasn’t quite the same. They were out of their comfort zone and sounded bad. Try imagining Alice Cooper singing opera (actually Alice Cooper has a fantastic operatic voice, but he can do popular rock too).
From a marketing point of view Rhydian is just all wrong, that hare, the scary, empty stare and the arrogance he showed during the auditions and boot camp are just too much of a hurdle to climb. He alienated people by being too smug at the start IMHO.
Bare in mind it was a competition. The person you wanted to win didn’t win, big deal, it was only a T.V show. Get over it and move on. If any justice is due, Niki (who is English) should have taken the X-Factor crown, but people didn’t vote thinking she had it in the bag and look what happened. I voted for her. A Scot voting for an English person? Who would have believed it possible?
As for the Offcom investigation, I watched the final with a few other people, all of whom tried to vote for their respective person and none of them could get through for Leon nor Rhydian, so it wasn’t fixed, it was simply a case of not having enough telephone lines open to meet demand, but poor losers do tend to moan (the English have made a career of that).
Personally I don’t really care who won, but I thought the original rant was funny.
As a Scot, I have no chips on my shoulder towards the unruly, self obsessed English. I don’t hate them for what they have inflicted on my people (and many others) over the centuries. I am slightly disappointed they haven’t seemed to learn from their mistakes however, but there again neither have the Scots, you just have to look at that awful parliament building. There is another monument in Edinburgh called Edinburgh’s disgrace on Carlton Hill. It was a half finished replica of the Parthenon, but the Scots ran over budget before it was finished, so they left it as a reminder to never invest more than you can afford. Scottish Parliament (Original estimate £44 Million. Final cost £400+ Million. Lesson learned there!)
I hold no grudges towards the English for forcing the Poll Tax onto the Scots 2 years before it was introduced in England. Boy you guys got together quick enough when an unfair tax was hitting your own pockets didn’t you, whilst you said nothing against it before it was forced onto the Scots. Very considerate. I’m sure had the rolls of Scotland and England been reversed and it was Scotland forcing the Poll Tax onto England 2 years before implementing it in Scotland you guys wouldn’t have minded a bit. No chips on your shoulders hey?
I bet you’re one of those fools who actually believe Scotland gets subsidized by England? Go to HMSO and get a copy of the annual Audit Records covering the past 30 years say, you’ll see it’s the revenue from Scotland that finances England, a small amount of which goes back to Scotland.
Do you believe Thatcher wouldn’t have made Scotland independent if it was costing the English anything? She sold everything else off that was costing the English, so why not get rid of Scotland? Her rouse worked though, still the English believe they are subsidizing Scotland. Well done Mrs T. another job well done.
Ben, put that in your ignorant and arrogant pipe and smoke it (outside of course and not in a bus shelter or hospital ground).
I thank you.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Leon Jackson is a load of rubbish and cannot sing live or in tune. He has no musical background and it shows. I give him six months. He is a just a blubbering nobody voted for by grannies and children because of his sob story keep witter ing on about mummy and me all the time. Grow up and get a life.
He cannot sing; has no charisma or sex appeal and is about as tall as a little elf. What do they feed them on in Scotland where people don’t grow?
December 31st, 2007 at 2:28 am
Alice, don’t you start on the Scots.
Don’t you know Scots eat haggis, and run around all the time shouting ‘Auch aye the nooooo’, whilst our kilts are blowing in the mountain air? Yeah right. Never met a Scot yet that says ‘Auch aye the nooooo’ or eats haggis non stop, although I have seen some running round mountain sides wearing kilts (a sight not best suited to younger people or persons with weak hearts, it has to be said)
You seem to think Scots people don’t grow. Have you ever been to Scotland? It’s really weird, but you would be surprised there are tall people and short people, with many sizes in between, just like every other country on the planet. Narrow minded or just ignorant? Hmmm, I’ll leave that to the readers to work out (ignorant, ignorant, ignorant)
As a final point, you would be surprised how many successful recording artists can’t actually sing live. Harmonisers were designed just for that task. The magic of electronics and software. Sing a bum note, put it through a harmoniser and low and behold it sounds perfect (well almost, even harmonisers have their limitations).
Unless you have lived in abject poverty, you don’t know how difficult it is to get a good start in life. Imagine growing up with very little on offer, just because you happen to be poor. Society sneering at you, accusing you of being a drain on society, claiming benefits only to have every element of your life poked into, to make sure you’re not cheating the system (but it’s ok to pay HRH The Queen state funds in vast amounts, whilst giving her free accommodation, on top of which, allowing her to earn a private income. This to me is benefit fraud not to mention double standards).
Unless you have had that bleak outlook, from a poor start, you don’t know what an opportunity like winning X-Factor is to someone who had been written off by society.
There again, it’s always easier to pick on the poor person than the better off, classically trained guy on the street isn’t it?
December 31st, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Gad, in making a good point keep it concise. In other words, tl;dr.