It's week three, and we're all still clinging on, like a shivering, frostbitten Leonardo Di Caprio desperately grasping hold of Kate Winslet's plank. It’s kind of nice.
We began with a rare montage of previous X Factor successes ?dominating the charts?. Cher Lloyd, JLS and Olly Murs. Meanwhile, last year’s winner Matt Cardle is co-writing his debut album with David Sneddon.
Also, every single music video of the ex-contestants shown in this sequence employ the use of LIVE ACTION and ANIMATION and subsequently look like various scenes from Space Jam. Every single one. It's bizzare. Somewhere out there, Thom Yorke can be heard hastily adjusting the black and white settings on Windows Movie Maker.
This week! The judges said no to a contestant! And then in a shock twist, they said no to someone else. Which obviously, on a normal occasion would seem pretty rare, but seems perfectly adequate when you realise that the X Factor has got to the point of desperation where it is now written exclusively by M Night Shyamalan.
Absolutely nothing happened for five minutes, and we broke out of our respective comas to hear Kelly Rowland say she's looking for ?the next Destiny?s Child x 10.? Pssh. Kelly has CLEARLY not been introduced to a little superstar group called Belle Amie. Sorry, our maths has always been terrible. Meanwhile, Tulisa carefully explained the whole process of forty years of hip-hop stylistics with the popular chinese proverb ?Obviously, being from N Dubz I'm hoping to find someone urban on the X Factor.? Gary Barlow was looking forward to the hairs standing up on the back of his neck, even though male pattern baldness is perfectly natural for many healthy 40-something year old men, and Gary should just accept that.
?42 year old David? ?took to the stage first. The Darkness were picked as his theme music to represent his personality, which we can only conclude might mean 42 Year Old David is a little on the eccentric side. He possibly says some sort of rhyming couplet along the lines of ??Dance a lot. Time to rock.? He also appears to be wearing Steve Tyler?s skin, both on his face, and as a decorative scarf.? He discusses his musical aspirations with a man who looks the spitting image of Dermot O’Leary, and then writhes around for a while in the skinny jeans that Donny Tourette carefully laid out for him earlier that morning next to his bowl of Rice Krispies Multigrain.
Upon arriving on stage, 42 Year Old David gurgled to Louis Walsh that he is ?42 going on 18.? Louis ignores the rushing horrific memories from a Smash Hits party back-room incident from 1998 that this comment brings, and changes the subject by asking him if he's doing this all for the fame and the girls. 42 Year old David earnestly explains that ultimately he is doing this for the music, and everybody in the auditorium is blown away by how a man could be so down to earth. In keeping with this utmost respect for all things musical – 42 Year Old David launches into his stupid rendition of Life on Mars – ?mimes orchestrating a David Bowie guitar solo written forty years previous – and most impressively of all, does it ALL in front of Gary Barlow. It literally is like Tchaikovsky?just never gave a toss. Kelly Rowland is just impressed that a man approaching middle aged can still walk, let alone administer vibratory patterns of the vocal folds. Because dreams CAN come true.
Delightfully, Gary Barlow gets his first Cowell upgrade with his very own ?Having said all that? of the series, and this terrible man gets through to the next round after taking up twelve minutes of a forty four minute show. 42 Year Old David celebrates with another friend who looks a bit like Dermot O’Leary. Just imagine the heaving, sexual gravitas of one of their lad?s nights out. If you want. You don't have to do that if you don't want.
ITV1 use both slow motion and fast motion to portray time passing, (which stirs Rufus Hound to the point of writing on Twitter that “You can say what you like, X Factor is incredibly well made”) as they explain to us carefully through the medium of montage that 16 year olds enter the X Factor. The whole point of the segment appears to be to show that there is a living breathing human being out there who uses the term ?boss? as a verb. Katie Melua also makes an appearance, masquerading as a 16 year old boy called Max McKay. Max sings ‘Ordinary People’, which always just sounds like it was written off-tune anyway, so that could be seen as counter-productive. On a singing audition that wasn’t the X Factor of course. As it is – he has incredibly glossy hair. So he gets through.
Luke Lucas (played by Kathy Burke, under-study Micheal McIntyre) is next. You may have heard of him – probably mentioned by idiots if you enjoy social networking. Luke is one of those vaguely overweight kids that dare to have a personality and aspirations. Also, he professes to having an overwhelming sadomasochistic lust on Tulisa Cornonthecobbonjovi. Because X Factor might not have had much luck securing the record deals it's promised over the years, but as far as genital stimulation goes, everything is A-OK.
Following this lovelorn confession – a horrific pair of scenes are spliced together in a match cut Stanley Kubrick could not muster in a million years, involving Tulisa suggestively tapping her cheek, and Luke Lucas nodding, ravenously. He looks like the cake that that kid ate in Matilda. Luke?s parents cheer manically from backstage over their son?s throbbing erection. The mass carnal guilt we all feel for Luke escalates as he sings some ?Motown?. Everyone reminds Luke that he is SIXTEEN, and he gets through as a reward for the mean feat of singing a song from an entirely different decade, defying every single law of metaphysics ever established. Despite that 12 year old mental singing the same song slightly better in Britain?s got Talent a few years ago. You know the one. No, the other one. No, not the one from Waterloo Road. The one that sang at Micheal Jackson?s funeral. No, not Usher. The other one.
Hey, that's a good point, isn't it? Michael Jackson?s still dead. As such, the next contestant is A MAN ACTUALLY CALLED MICHAEL. Michael auditioned in 2010 and was shit and angry. More importantly though, he once took part in a Michael Jackson live s?ance with Derek Acorah. What an enthusiastic young moron. This year, Michael is allowed back despite?benefiting?television in neither a positive or negative way, but with a catch! This year, he's dressed a bit not-like Michael Jackson. You know, like how a professional musician may do. The camera pans upwards to reveal his new look, which consists mostly of pleather, heroin, and idiocy. From what we can gather, Michael promises that this audition will feature ?New vocals, and new ?out of tune?.? He is concerned that Louis Walsh will not like him based on his behaviour from last year. Louis doesn't remember him. He sings Geri Halliwell which? must be the greatest transition of musical genres since Plan B discovered trumpets. As it transpires, despite buying a gold belt and a comb, Michael doesn't get through, and calls the judges ?Shallow and sentimental.?
Burn.
In another moment of meta genius, ITV1 play ?Beat it? over the top of Michael as he gets angry again, and goes home to watch Moonwalker, eat Dairylea, and see if Derek Acorah has emailed him back yet.
On the basis of the fact Michael was an utter scrote, ITV1 show us some more utter scrotes, presumably to fulfil some kind of quota they’re contractually obliged to fill thanks to showcasing all those amazing, wonderful, special human beings on Red and Black sometime previous. A woman who has the audacity to wear a hat has an argument with Tulisa, that confusingly gets edited down to the point where we are simply viewing a woman yelling ?YEAH WELL THAT?S YOUR OPINION? ?to another woman. Saucer of milk for no-one!
Eventually we reached the final crowning spot which this week was dedicated to Jade Richards. She wore ‘ironic sportswear’ because she is a satirical mastermind. In the most emotional, amazing piece of information we've ever heard about a living, human woman, it transpires that Jade is not only from Fife, but that her grandmother actually physically loves her. She doesn't like Fife that much unfortunately, which devastates everybody. If you missed Jade’s audition, just imagine Joan of Arc. And double it.
She sings/inhales Adele?s Someone Like You. Her version sounds so amazingly similar to the original that the audience spontaneously rupture into a mass of?synchronized?orgasm followed by floods of regretful tears, just to try and handle it. Understandable. Then – if things weren't amazing enough, Kelly Rowland comes out with some sort of Martin Luther King-esque monologue about how she had a dream someone would sing that particular Adele song today, and that she has been thinking about that song all weekend. Absolutely fucking cosmic. It’s not as if everyone in the United Kingdom hasn’t been thinking about that song all weekend due to it being the only noise that has successfully been transmitted into our airwaves for the past three months. MAGIC IS REAL, JK ROWLING WASN’T MUCKING ABOUT.
Twenty minutes later, everybody is still in tears. Even Louis musters some sort of liquid constituent for the occasion – to which everybody cheers at, which is admittedly pretty funny. Honestly, you'd think that Dusty Springfield had barged on to the stage singing You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me whilst skinning live hens. Everybody is a mess. Tulisa tells Jade that whilst she was singing ?It was like she could hear her whole life story in that song.? which is a bit of a silly thing to say when you definitely couldn't whatsoever. If we heard correctly, (AND I SUSPECT WE DID) that was just the same lyrics as the regular version. Oh right, she meant emotionally.
Come to think of it, if you listen again to Jade?s rendition of Someone Like You, yes, you may HEAR the words ?Never mind I'll find someone like you?, but what you actually FEEL is, ?Never mind, I look like I was trampled at a festival but I have quite a pleasant grandmother.? ?It truly is an incredible feeling.
NEXT WEEK: Someone is good at singing. Someone is bad at singing. Let's call the whole thing off. Also, there will be two whole episodes for you to ignore instead of one. That infamous three second clip of Tulisa crying about something gets shown yet again.
It better be triple malaria or something.
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