WTF?<\/p>\n
Mariah Carey troops out and does a very ordinary slow R&B number in a totally lacklustre performance.\u00c2\u00a0 At the end of the nonsense the camera panned across the audience to show the judges (Louis Walsh, Danni Minogue, Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell) doing a standing ovation.<\/p>\n
But two minutes later Simon Cowell – in the most deadpan (insincere?) delivery I think I’ve heard him make about any X-Factor performer – what a ‘star’ she was.<\/p>\n
I’m beginning to think that ‘star’ might be a euphemism for shit. Four letters, both begin with ‘s’.<\/p>\n
And what is it with Mariah?\u00c2\u00a0 Has she had a little surgical lift or is her makeup artist drunk?\u00c2\u00a0 Or perhaps the lighting wasn’t quite right, because her face seemed a little… uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
The first contestant to take the stage was Eoghan Quigg. He’s a little Irish guy with, to date, a little Irish voice. I was pleasantly surprised. He stepped his voice up a whole range of gears and gave a very credibly large performance. Well done!<\/p>\n
Ruth Lorenzo, the Spanish contestant, came on stage and performed in a dress that revealed – and flattered – her figure. After the song Simon Cowell remarked ‘There were two things I liked about that song. And the singing wasn’t bad either.’ Unfortunately Simon went on to say ‘No, I’m only joking’. So he thought Ruth’s singing was shit then? Or he actually thought her breasts weren’t worth remarking on and only said something to make a certain someone else on the panel of judges jealous?<\/p>\n
Laura White magically came out and performed Endless Love. I say ‘magically’ because when she stood up from the piano the instrument continued to play itself. Magic! And what is it with this song being ‘a Mariah song’? If I remember things correctly this number is actually a Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie duet from 1981 (written by Lionel too). But hey, as this song was also recorded by Kenny Rogers in 1996 have I accidentally wandered in to Kenny Rogers Night? Notwithstanding these factual problems with the television show, Laura delivered an accurate and powerful performance.<\/p>\n
And then it was time to listen to Rachel Hylton. In the intro, before she came out on stage, Rachel introduced (conversationally speaking) her kids and she tells us that she’s singing for them. I’ve got a newsflash for you Rachel. You’ve had three of your five offspring taken off you because you’re such a wonderful role model. So stop talking about your kids. Stop saying ‘It’s about my children’s future’, you don’t get the pity vote from here, you get judged on your ability.<\/p>\n
When Rachel wandered on stage she almost but not quite performed a song that was written and recorded by Phil Collins; Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now). I didn’t realise that Phil Collins was secretly Mariah Carey’s alter ego – because this is ‘Mariah Carey Night’, right? Well how about giving us a night of songs that Mariah Carey has written (and performed)? But back to Rachel, unfortunately. Rachel’s performance was dire. She failed to hold most of the long notes, and even at the shorter end of things her intonation was dubious; her breathing was absolutely awful and when she went for the higher register she comprehensively failed to hit any of the targets. My ears are still bleeding! I’ve castrated better recording artists with my reviews than she performed tonight. It was absolutely shit.<\/p>\n
Diana Vickers (the slightly left field kind of hippy chick) was the focus of the big sympathy number. She has laryngitis and gets a bye through to the next round. I’m happy for her. It means she doesn’t have to perform a cover of a song that Mariah Carey covered that was first written and recorded by someone else.<\/p>\n
Then JLS came out and fell at the first hurdle. In fact they didn’t even climb over the first hurdle. This British version of Boyz II Men really didn’t cut it. Not so much Boyz II Men as Boyz II Boyz. They comprehensively failed to meet my expectations.<\/p>\n
Daniel Evans, the guy who many people have said resembles Ricky Gervais, sat on his stage step and performed a fantastic number. Right from the outset his breathing was perfect. And through good breathing comes good singing. So far, this is the best performance from any of the competitors.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Burke came out and performed Without You. Look, I thought this was supposed to be Mariah Carey Night? At the risk of repeating myself, if it’s Mariah Carey Night let’s have a night of songs that Mariah Carey has written. Without You was written by two Welsh guys, Peter Ham and Tom Evans, and was first recorded by the Swansea group ‘Badfinger’ in, erm, 1970 – which was, coincidentally, the year that Mariah Carey was born!<\/p>\n
So two things to close with…<\/p>\n
1. I don’t get the Mariah Carey thing. This is one of the biggest cases of The Emperor’s New Clothes that the music industry has attempted to sell us in recent years. And I’m not buying it.<\/p>\n
2. For me the best performance of the night was the gorilla who drummed to the Dairy Milk advert in the part 2\/part 3 commercial break.<\/p>\n
B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WTF? Mariah Carey troops out and does a very ordinary slow R&B number in a totally lacklustre performance.\u00c2\u00a0 At the end of the nonsense the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}