So, what IS rock music? Well guys, “rock” was a musical movement invented by Simon Cowell in the mid-2000s. A genre that was ostensibly about dancing but was in fact a thinly-veiled allusion to sex culminating from 50s blues riffs and a 4/4 beat utilizing a verse chorus form.
To further delve into this cultural phenomenon, please refer to minutes 1.26 to 1.36 of the following?video.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when ?rock music? properly settled in Western culture specifically, but hecklerspray?s investigations have come up with a couple of answers. It could be argued for instance, that the first fleeting moments of the genre came to a head all the way back in 2002, ?with??Sam from Barnsley?s‘ original interpretation of local Wigan barbershop quartet Bon Jovi’s classic love song ?Always? on Pop Idol 2. You may have been confused by it's unique rawr rawr guitarry kind of noises, risqu? use of ?real emotion?, and omitting the g?s on the end of words that usually have g?s at the time. You may still be. So remember all of that, because that may be important later.
Fast forward to 2011, and thanks to modern technology, a generally conclusive ethos that music is good, and all round universal grumpiness, rock music is finally showing signs of becoming more accessible to a broader audience, to the extent that the X Factor have helped along matters by introducing a ?Rock Week? on the show on Saturday. So don't worry if you start feeling confused, or don't know any of the songs, or start getting abrupt tunnel vision every 10 minutes or so. That's just a natural bodily reaction, because rock music can be very loud.
And with Kelly Rowland threatening to literally ?rock the house? (We can't be sure which house this is, so be extremely careful this week, esp when visiting house-esque establishments and buildings sharing similar structural features. No really) and Louis Walsh labouring under a post-Westlife anarchic state, things are looking to get hectic even before the show got going.
We were quite frankly exhausted enough before Kelly started fingering everything in sight squawking ?bring it on? at literally any abstract noun available in her lexicon of sass. ?Bring it on.? Bloody hell Kelly. Calm the fuck down.
This week: Dermot?s opening gambit of the show was the following very funny joke.
?The four monsters of rock who are louder and wilder than four of the biggest bands in the world. But ONLY WHEN THEY ARGUE! It's the X Factor judges!?
Very good indeed. Good employment of both sarcasm and hyperbole there. Of course,?if we were Dermot O Leary?s joke writers we would have personally gone for one of the following.
HECKLERSPRAY?S OFFICIAL PITCHES TO DERMOT O? LEARY?S JOKE WRITING TEAM
1. Here come four people! Like how there was four people in Sex and the City! It's the X Factor judges!
2. And talking of a bunch of people reproductively fused by eight gametes, it's the X Factor judges!
3. Don't get us started on a blas? put-together group of people vaguely related to the music industry! But enough about The Beatles! Here?s the X Factor judges!
Call us anytime. *Phone hand*
First up to perform was Marcus Collins. Following his turmoil of (not really) being in the bottom 3, Marcus told us all about how he ?hadn?t cried so hard in years?. God, that sounds really awful. YEARS? As in? YEARS? That is ages. Jesus Christ, X Factor ? has this poor soul even been tested for Hypoadrenocorticism or any other Neuroglycopenian niggles? WE DOUBT IT VERY MUCH. As you can tell, we have absolutely sod all to say about Marcus performance. He had trousers on? He sang a Lenny Kravitz song? His hair went ooOOO, like that.
God, rock music is so textured and complicated. Only one thing for it. Let's see what heavier than a Warner Brothers’ comedy anvils rock connoisseur, maverick of mayhem and just basically very talented man indeed Justin Hawkins said about it all on Twitter!
DAMN IT JUSTIN.
Dermot asks clearly homosexual Marcus if he ?enjoyed dancing with the girls? before plying him with overtly masculine man hugs, spitting all over him screaming ?PLEASE BE STRAIGHT. PLEASE MARCUS.? all the while rubbing lovely conventional grey cotton garments all over Marcus? charismatic and still notably sexually free face before the producers drag Dermot back to SAS: Are you tough enough? where he belongs.
Next up to sing was Janet Devlin, but not before an interrogation with some of the finest minds in British journalism, aka Gary Glitter?s Iwoulddoanythingforlove-child, Bald Man from Daily Star, where together, the pair grappled with the hard hitting issue of whether Janet is going to ditch all the fucking paisley and start doing sexy urethra dances at any point in her future music career/the next five minutes/whenever C4 stop showing Juno on television. Janet however would not budge, and she was in it for the music so SLING IT, CRITICS because ?THAT?S WHO I AM SO WHATEVER? as she then announced with a lofty ?PAH? to the universe before cracking on with an incredibly moody Guns n Roses cover with added anger and harps. Steve Coogan better start making some calls before all that dainty zeal dries up.
So, yeah. Janet sang Sweet Child O? Mine, and it was awful twee bollocks as usual. And to make the performance even more bone marrow-crushingly endearing, she adopted very large orange frizzy hair, just in case the world needed another joke about someone with orange frizzy hair looking like Mick Hucknall. And hey! Janet! Top tip! Before singing along to a harp-led arrangement of the most well known G?n?R song of all time, learn the words! AMIRIGHT?
Tulisa called up Janet for not performing a song in a rocky fashion. Kelly Rowland called the performance a rock song. As Tulisa would later point out, she finds it hard to actually distinguish what ‘rocky’ actually means. It could be a biscuit for all she knows.
Our incredibly wearisome and tedious Field of Dreams Screenplay-esque lives then continued with Rhytha-a lot of the same letters as Eurythamics but that's totally fine-amix, who all pretend that they like each other despite being forced to sing as a band by the producers in the first place. Aw, they even told us how they now have a member who doesn't get out of bed! Hahahha! Aww! Hahahaha! Bridget Jones did that once and it was as equally hilarious. But it's okay, because how could these guys totally not tap rock week once the revelation is forced out into the ether that one of the band was named after Perry from Journey a bit? Nonetheless Rhythamix Girl On the Immediate Right Hand Side is gravely concerned that Rhythamix may not be able to ?rock it? on stage, and might somehow definitely not ?rock it? on stage, and, we don't know, accidently sing a Ke$ha song instead or something, which is of course exactly what happened.
EXACTLY, Justin. EXACTLY. (He's being sarcastic, guys.)
Obviously the judges who have probably not seen that picture of Ke$ha trying to hide her vagina with a Pixies vest get into a massive argument about this, with Tulisa bringing up the absolutely amazing argument that ?the song had some rocky noises in? and that ?it's rock week, not rock SONG? week. Fair enough. It's also not ?Songs with guitarry bits in it that go rawr rawr rawr? week though, is it? Actually, scratch that. Every week on the X Factor is ?songs with guitarry bits in it that go rawr rawr rawr? week. God, this is going terribly.
Then came Sophie Habibas, who was so good last week that we completely forgot to write about her, because we don’t like to write about women who sing slowed down versions of songs by The Calling. However, this means we're totally playing into the producers hands, considering this is Sophie?s ?story? that they're painting for her throughout the show. Ie: The lost X Factor contestant everyone forgot to vote for despite having talent and fringes and this that and the other. Although to be fair, they probably wouldn’t have had to spin that angle for her, if she had just bothered to acquire a dead wife that recently was shot in the head, so we’re only taking 30% of the blame TOPS for that one.
For the third week in a row, Sophie sang a slowed down version of a song that was boring to begin with in the first place. WHAT DO YOU WANT US TO DO? WE HAVE NOTHING TO GIVE.
*Sigh.*
We love how Louis is always filmed jotting down page after page of important analytical notes during the act?s performances and then just prematurely honks out “You made it your own!!! Amazing!!! You’re a star!!! You have a similar molecular facial structure as my favourite black person!!! I love black people!!!!!”
Craig Colton was up next, his VT X Factor plot not quite as moving as Rhythamix? ?the road to friendship and replacing the Saturdays? storyline, and seems instead to be about him ?missing Nu Vibe? and trying to steal a pint of whole fat milk off Misha B in the X Factor house. Its grand emotional setbacks such as these that led Craig on to the stage sing Stop Crying Your Heart Out. By the certified rock legends OA-LeonaLewisarrangement-SIS. It was really, honestly, very boring.
?I know Noel Gallagher is a big fan of the show because I read it somewhere.??Winston Churchill Louis told Craig.
For the 900th time in the show it was at this point that Tulisa delightfully gets confused between rock music and rock songs again. WHAT? Don't look at us, Tulisa! If you want to learn about music, just check Steve Brookstein?s blog about all of that, like the rest of us. You know, once you sift through all the ?anti X Factor propaganda?s and ?Underhand tactics? and ?Real pain in the neck?, it’s not a bad read.
And following Craig we had Kitty, wearing an entire flesh mould of Blonde Ambition-era Madonna’s head and singing Live and Let Die. Oh, and it was incredible. But that doesn’t matter, because Kitty is old, or as So Solid Crew’s funky slang terminology would probably deduce: a terrible person. Tulisa says something god awful to her like “I’m sure there’s a nice person in there somewhere underneath all the dickhead vital organs and bitchjuice.” Seriously, stop looking at us. We have absolutely no idea. Check Urban Dictionary, your mum probably has it in her favourites.
Frankie Cocozza was next and we?ll keep this short, because we don't give a crap about this stupid kid who just keeps ejaculating and ejaculating until he aesthetically articulates every BNP campaign slogan from now until the end of time. He sang Primal Scream in an incredibly terrible manner and it's not very good and it's also like chewing polystyrene and/or just good old basic famine. Look, we’re not saying this Frankie guy is a bad person. We’re just saying he’s a moron who probably eats just the sad faces from Milky Way Magic Stars and then laughs manically as he pretends that they’re sad that he’s eating them.
The Urban mayhem continues (Which is a bit like rock music if you think about it for a few years under Tulisa Contostavlos?s bewitching amber glare, and a dripping tap) with The Risk! We hate to be the ones to say it, but we thought The Risk were pretty risky this week with their song choice, what with singing an R&B version of a categorically well known R&B song on a rock-themed edition of the X Factor for instance. RISK BY NAME, RISK BY NATURE, EH BOYS.
God, it was so incredibly risky. Especially when we found out by absolute accident/being interrogated thoroughly by Louis Walsh until they told him that after the performance that one of them was suffering from crippling acute laryngitis yet soldiered on with a definitely switched off microphone anyway. We don't know, boys. Sounds a bit TOO risky, and not in a fun cheeky Dennis the Menace kind of risky either. More like, putting up the Berlin Wall risky. That kind of risky. Some would go as far to say ? quite hazardous in fact. Maybe they should start calling themselves The Not Quite So Sure That's A Good Ideas. Just a thought.
Johnny Robinson was up next with I BELIEVE IN A THING CALLED LOVE BY THE DARKNESS, and it was impossibly brilliant, and it doesn't matter that every third of his entire speech patterns are clogged up with metaphors for impotence, because impotence is the new Micheal Jackson, and Johnny is our lord and saviour.
Last to sing was Misha B or ?Bitch? as you may be more familiar with her being called. After singing Purple Rain to the utmost Purple Raininess of her Purple Rain singing abilities, Tulisa summons the Gods of Shitstorms (we're ill and don't have time to google Greek Mythology for you) and starts telling the universe and national television and most importantly, gullible idiots who might have spent 20 quid on voting for Misha that Misha is in fact a heartless lord of horrible things and cancer, and also a big meanie-pants mcmeanie and if she had a scrap of human decency should just stop existing anymore. It's properly lame. But not as lame as:
THE RESULTS
Yeah. The results. YEAH.
The bottom 2 consisted of two of Louis? haggered old women, Kitty the Famous One who has probably done SO MUCH WEIRD STUFF for money and is properly mentally unstable AND The Bindi-wearing Natalie Cassidy one who has been forced to sing nothing predating 1984 with back fat.
Guess who went.
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