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Trollheart's
There were some raised eyebrows at my first choice for this section, even though I made it clear it was the two songs I was picking, not the artiste. I don’t know enough about Steve Miller to consign him himself to Room 101, but I did hate those two songs. Anyway, whether you agreed with it or not, or cared, it was and is my choice. This isn’t a democracy. There’s a reason why my username is before the title of this section.
Today’s selection however I feel sure few if any people will have a problem with.
From the earliest days of television there have been talent shows. Before TV even there were talent shows, places where people with, you know, talent, could go and display it, and maybe win a prize. But then Popstars came along, and the whole format changed. Now it was go and audition, and a panel of judges who supposedly knew the business would tell you if you were good enough to go through to the next round, and so on until everyone had been eliminated and a winner emerged. That winner then ostensibly received backing and finance, and possibly a recording contract. Popstars was the first, God help us, giving birth then to the more streamlined and glitzy Pop Idol, which in turn paved the way for American Idol and finally, the big one, the grandaddy turd of reality television, the X Factor.
I remember when they were plugging the X Factor. They said they wanted not just another bunch of singers, but people with --- wait for it --- the x factor, that unknown, unquantifiable quality that made them stand out from the crowd. They were looking for contestants with something special, something you couldn’t quite put your finger on, a
je ne sais quoi that would single them out as someone to watch.
Initially, that sort of happened. While my sister was able to make it downstairs in the early stages of her illness I spent almost all my free time with her, and invariably we watched the TV. I was subjected to more soaps than I care to relate, and reality shows such as this. I suffered through, I think, about the first four seasons of the X Factor before she got too bad to come downstairs anymore, but that’s another, sadder story. The point is, my knowledge of this show is not based on the fact that I was ever a fan, but neither is it blind ignorance, in that I have never seen an episode. I have, and I know how it runs, or at least how it ran, up to about 2007, when I gratefully was able to stop enduring it.
Now, I should make this clear: I’m not against someone getting their chance to shine on a talent show. However, it irks me no end that this show, and others like American Idol, are seen as short cuts to fame. Most bands who are worth anything --- solo artistes too --- have come up the hard way: playing the pub circuit, gigs in every local dive that they could get, hawking demos around various record companies, hoping for the talent scout to be in the audience that one fateful night, which is how most of them were discovered. Now, with the rise of X Factor and American Idol, all a prospective star has to do is head on down to the auditions, get the judges to listen to them and if they’re good enough (yeah…) get picked for the selection process.
Not only that, there’s now increasingly an emphasis on “sob stories”, which drives me mad. Or did. When I watched it. I assume it hasn’t changed much. This would be when a contestant would tell a sad story, perhaps about a parent who has passed on, or being a single mother or, in the case of American Idol maybe having spent time in jail, and all the while crying crocodile tears and insisting how much “I want this! This is my life! I’ve nothing else!” etc. It often seems that, talent aside, contestants get through purely on the basis of their sob story, how sorry the judges (or audience, or both) feel for them.
Is that any way to decide who gets a shot at fame? I’ve no problem with sob stories per se, but they should be related AFTER the decision has been made as to whether the auditionee has been chosen, not before. The sob story should have no bearing on the decision, and it often does. Someone who’s not a great singer but who impresses the judges, audience or both with their sad little tale of how they got here and how they “must have this!” will stand a better chance of getting through than someone who happens to be a great singer but has no tale of woe to relate? How’s that fair?
Then of course, it’s not the person who shows us what they’re made of, shows us how good they are. No. Each of the judges mentors a certain section of the finalists, which are split into groups --- boys/girls/bands/whatever --- and gives them the benefit both of their expertise and their resources, essentially training them and moulding them into what they want them to be, or what the show demands. Sometimes there’s a well-known music star as a guest judge, and they too offer their advice, which is okay I guess as long as they don’t end up helping to train them as they do in American Idol, which really goes a step too far.
But the real thing that annoys me about X Factor is that it has now become, after more than ten years of the show, ingrained in the minds of youth that all they have to do to become famous is audition for this show. So why bother gigging any more? Why spend long nights travelling places in vans, to dingy nightclubs and dodgy pubs, playing cover versions or your own songs, trying to get a record deal? Why make all the effort, when you can have it all if you cry enough tears or compliment the judges, or can sing a little? Hey, if your family and friends think you’re a star, you must be one, right? And don’t get me started on all the contestants who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket (like me) and yet still think it’s a great idea to go to the auditions and essentially humiliate themselves on national television! Of course, in the end, the show's vaunted "search for people with the x factor" turned out to be nothing more than a list of generic singers, many of whom don't even deserve the title. So much for being different!
For the “quick-fix”, easy way out. For the simpering, smiling judges whose words can cut to the quick and destroy dreams. For the eternally annoying cliched phrases --- “You killed it!” “You made it yours!” --- and for the seemingly endless stream of no-hopers and to-be one-hit-wonders this show has foisted upon us, most of whom will do little but add to Simon Cowell’s gigantic bank balance, oh and for Cowell himself. And Louis Walsh. For all the bands who try to make it for real and snort at the “instant, manufactured pop stars”. For the lack of intelligence of its audience, who actually think this show is fair and not fixed!
For Saturday nights wasted watching this tripe and for every
fucking sob story under the sun, oh yes, and finally, for making kids think that Carl Orff’s “O fortuna” is the bloody X Factor theme tune and nothing more.
For all these reasons, and many more, Cowell, Walsh, take your simpering platitudes and your cutting remarks with you as you go. As you’ve said so many times to an unlucky, unwise or, in some cases you would have to think, plain stupid candidate: the door is that way!