The X Factory

The X Factor has been going for a decade now and people still can’t seem to get enough. I feel a more accurate title would be the X Factory as year after year so called ‘stars’ are churned out of the machine that is the show, with no real special talent that the X in X Factor is supposed to stand for. Rather, the show has been going on for so long that its as predictable and mundane as Simon Cowell’s overuse of superlatives. There is little hope that we will ever get to hear someone that has the X Factor, the thing that sets a singer apart from the rest. Maybe, the show should just be called ‘The Factory’, but I guess a title that reflects what the show is really about may put people off.

I guess I am surprised that people still care. I lost interest years ago, and thought for a moment the rest of the British public had come to their senses too, when the campaign to stop Simon Cowell getting Christmas number one again happened in 2009. At the time it felt like a real revolution! People were standing up to the Syco brand and showing that not all power over the music business belonged to the soppy X Factor winners who knew the Christmas number one was their only good chance of ever being in the charts. Most X Factor winners often won because they were likeable, and not because of their talent. In a way I feel sorry for the people who go on X Factor, as many are talented, but on a show like X Factor, the rest of the music industry and the public in general are unlikely to take them seriously. After seeing them bust out their best moves to a Take That song that Louis Walsh will have picked for them, because they remind him of a young Gary Barlow, it’s unlikely they’ll have anything but the Christmas number one. Part of what made the campaign to get Rage Against The Machine to number one so great is that I think many people probably didn’t even like the rap metal song, but just wanted to spite the X Factor, making the situation all the more comical.

The X Factor is one of the few places where it seems OK to laugh at people for being bad at something (this moment was pretty special though).

The show has been running the same format since it started, trying to get people to fall in love with the contestants who take over our TV screens for about a quarter of the year. The main way to do this is with a sob story. The sob story has now become an integral part of the X Factor and it seems that the more people you know to have died a slow and gruesome death, the better. You hold a true trump card if you yourself have almost died, and it is almost a sure way to at least get to judges houses. Now though, some of the sob stories are beyond pathetic. In desperation for some sympathy, contestants whine that they work in Greggs or their local chippy. That’s no reason for you to get a chance! At least you have a job! And the fact that they are one of the few that get to go on TV means that they already count as privileged. They should be grateful that when they inevitably end up back at Greggs, someone will occasionally recognise them, unlike the poor sod in the back making sausage rolls who will never get the chance to tell his moving story. Luckily though, I don’t care anyway. Unlike the humble sausage roll, the X Factor will not be loved forever and for me, this day can’t come too soon.