19 December 2008

X-Factor final - move over Leona

So anyway, following on my from my ranty ill post, last Saturday was the long-awaited X-Factor final. The last three in the running were horrible, horrible little Eoghan/Eeyore/Eggnog/puttyface potato baby, JLS, and Alexandra. Naturally, we wanted Alexandra to win because she has easily the best voice.

I can't be arsed to go into massive amounts of detail, but first to be executed, I mean eliminated (wishful thinking) was Eggnog. Thank GOD for that, I was getting really worried about him. He was getting far too smug and sure of himself as the weeks progressed, and he just does NOTHING for me. He's too young to be cute, even when he's older he's not going to be cute because he looks like Michael Myers, he's got a fat arse despite being 16 years old, and there's just no power to his voice. He's just awful. So anyway, he got a quick slap down, leaving us with JLS and Alexandra.

Things could still have gone either way, as lots of people seem to like JLS. In my opinion, this was the moment that finished them off though, 51 seconds into this video:



What the HELL was that??? We were so stunned when we saw it we had to rewind it three times just so we could laugh at it.

So in the end, after I'd sneakily voted six times at considerable expense whenever Chris' wasn't looking, Alexandra emerged as the rightful victor. She seemed rather more surprised than I thought she would be, she could hardly talk, and she was crying so much that her foundation went all streaky (as a friend correctly pointed out - they'd gone for expensive mascara that didn't run, but scrimped on the foundation).

So hooray! Obviously I would have preferred Austin, but that dream died weeks ago. They've since released the voting shares for each week, and to my HORROR Eehhggeeoon got the highest number of votes in 6 out of the 10 weeks. So we had a lucky escape there I think, I couldn't stand hearing him on my television all over Christmas. At least he can bugger off into Irish obscurity now.

Alexandra has released a version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah as the X-Factor single and basically guaranteed Christmas Number 1. I quite like it, I've always liked the Rufus Wainwright version, and she makes it into an uplifting song. It's brought some controversy with moany whingebags on the internet proclaiming Jeff Buckley's version is the definitive version and it should never be recorded again, and they've started a download campaign that might see us have the same song in the Number 1 and Number 2 slots by different people, which is ridiculous. I've listened to his version and don't actually like it. He sings it with a lot of pain, I'll give him that, but if I want pain I'll slam my face in the fridge door. I just find him quite whiney, his volume changes are abrupt, and his trill things are random and unstructured. So anyway, I prefer the Alexandra version.

So that was the end of X-Factor for another year. Shame the Christmas Number 1 is always guaranteed to be whoever wins the show, it's quite hollow. I like Alexandra though, she's got a great voice and she's less sappy than Leona.

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