We’re still getting used to the new rhythm of the show. It has some plus points, but one thing we suspect producers will be rethinking today is the “prize fight” singoff format. Twitter and the Sofabet comments section were united in bafflement at why the show thought viewers would care which of Grace or Rak-Su goes to a Pink concert next April. We understand the desire for positivity, but a survival singoff is a lot more interesting. No wonder more than twice as many people were watching Strictly instead.
One bright side from the show’s perspective was that it gave those who were watching a chance to hear the two original songs again, which probably contributed to an impressive performance on iTunes – Grace charting at 2 and Rak-Su at 3. But from a punting perspective, we’re wondering where we go from here. Surely we can’t have Grace and Rak-Su battling it out with original numbers for each of the next three Sundays? But then, how much can they mix it up to get new faces at the top without risking too much damage to Grace and Rak-Su, who still appear to be the most-favoured acts? We can’t help wondering if TPTB may have played their hand too early.
Our midweek article will look at some treatments in greater depth. Summarising here, Sunday’s show opened with Shereen and the Woo-Woo Brothers. Having been physically separated from their sister by instruments at judges’ houses, this time the boys were imprisoned in boxes high up at the back of the stage. At this rate, next weekend they’ll be Skyping in their contribution from Lanarkshire.
Next up was Kevin, whose backdrop of a sign reading “sorry, no vacancy” caused much merriment in the Sofabet comments section. The question with Kevin appears to be whether the judges reacting to an adequate performance by ladling on the superlatives was intended to leave viewers at home thinking “huh? What are they on about? He wasn’t that good”.
We chuckled at a couple of visuals in Talia’s VT – the image of her apparently abandoning her partner and child in the middle of the night to get in a taxi, and vocal coach Annabel completely ignoring her rehearsal. Viewers took the hint.
Immediately following Talia’s dirgification of One Direction with a fun, upbeat VT for Jack and Joel made good use of the contrast principle. There aren’t many acts this year capable of putting a smile on viewers’ faces, and it will be a shame for the show if they find themselves in the crosshairs this weekend.
Tabloid stories about Matt sowing his wild oats around Southend were followed up with a laddish VT that arguably made him come across a little sleazy. The objectification of the “blue-eyed boy” continued apace, with Sharon slavering and coquettishly branding him “trouble”, which Dermot helpfully reinforced.
You could query whether or not the Prices’ song was chosen to be cool or dull, but the staging appeared to us that it was intended to be helpful. Unfortunately, their vocals couldn’t quite live up to it and a market drift indicated that they’re in need of a gamechanger sooner rather than later to re-establish themselves as contenders.
Our 1-16 pre-lives prediction was totally wrong in suggesting producers would be gunning for TracyLeanne, who instead got a sympathetic everywoman edit, Amy Winehouse comparisons and discussion of how deserving she is. She’s certainly one of the bigger characters of this year’s crop and it looks like TPTB would like to get as much value from her as they can.
Rak-Su got a full-on pimp-slot pimping for their original number, which they got to reprise after the break in the prize fight. Dermot solicited applause for the top two acts of the weekend having performed their own material, a point Grace reiterated in her interview. Which brings us back to where we came in: where does the show go from here?
In the voting information published on the ITV website, the “prize fight” format is described as discretionary so perhaps it will quietly disappear. But they do appear to have committed themselves to not bringing back the survival singoff, for the first four weekends at least – the rules state that the bottom act in the vote per night, or per category, will be the one leaving until the semi-final stage.
As ever, do keep the conversation going below.
TPTB went to a positive thinking guru, who told them to get the negative things out of the way quickly (elimination) and concentrate on the positive things (à la cbbuk weekly task for a luxury V basic shopping budget). The guru, however, was oblivious to the fact that TV FEEDS ON DRAMA AND PAIN OF OTHERS.
I would be surpised if the prize fight returned. It has been a bigger flop than last years saturday night flash vote, and we know what happened to that.
The top 2 vote winners means nothing at this stage anyway as last year all the main contenders topped it at least one. What I would do if I were the producers is put the groups with the girls this weekend to avoid the same result. Although they could easily engineer alternative winners to the vote anyway.
Last year was the lifeline vote not the flash vote. In fact the lifeline vote was a good twits it allowed more people in danger and made sara in the bottom 3 even though she was never in the bottom 2.
I reckon some of those prizes were lined up in advance (e.g. the Pink prize was probably some sort of agreement between Pink’s team and the XF team).
I’m starting to wonder if Holly did relatively badly in the vote. She was on early, the song choice was a bit anonymous and bland, the staging a little odd. Unlike most of the others she isn’t charting on iTunes.
Does anyone know if the Yorkshire regional vote has been tested much on this show? I can only think of Jake Quickenden, who couldn’t really sing that well and so isn’t a fair comparison.
I thought Alisah completely overshadowed Holly in terms of vocal performance, song choice, staging and running order. I think she could be a bit of a dark horse and make it quite far in the competition.
As someone from Sheffield, I can tell you the idea of a ‘Yorkshire regional vote’ is a bit ridiculous. There are three counties that make up Yorkshire, so if anything it would be a test of the *South* Yorkshire regional vote- and I don’t imagine that’s very strong. Plus, she’s just a little too Louisa for them to want her to contend for the crown this year.
Thank you Edie.
Interesting Edie. You’ve got a War of the Roses scenario here between Grace (Lancashire) and Holly (Yorkshire). Does this rivalry exist on any level these days, or is 650 years long enough for it to be forgotten?
All things being equal would a North Yorkshire resident be totally indifferent to one contestant being from South Yorkshire and one from Lancashire and equally inclined to vote for both of them?
Technically speaking Rak Su topping the vote on the Sunday doesn’t mean anything.Lloyd and holly may have got more votes than them so they could of came 3rd or 4th overall if it was the normal format. I think they have peaked to soon and the novelty of them will wear off and I feel they will end with a more rough copy type run. Matt I think will coast a long like Marcus Collins did and end up in the final without actually topping the vote but never being bottom of the vote.
It’s impossible to compare between the two nights. The viewing figures were probably lower yesterday with SCD Crossover. The voting window was shorter. The share of the vote dependsupon the mix and strength of the acts that you’re up against which was different across the two nights.
That’s a bit of a strange comparison. Marcus and Matt are completely different acts and appeal to different demographics. Matt is a pretty boy, has a strong vocal with this husky soulful/folksy tone and he even sounds quite contemporary. He’s a much stronger act demographic-wise than Marcus. I can’t see an age group/gender not voting for him? He’s also got Essex on his side – and Essex acts traditionally do super well.
Marcus had none of these attributes. He was just an easily nukable act who was also fun. Easy to keep around, easy to nuke.
Easy to nuke? He had one of the biggest hatchet jobs in a final, ranked alongside Nick Mcdonald to stop him from beating Littlemix. They needed every little bit of help they could get to beat him in the final.
His support is not as reliable as Nicholas, though. He once got a bottom 3 with a pimp slot (Little Mix won the week with crying Misha in second)
They knew they sabotage him easily in the final though, especially with that opening song where he was half off camera while LM were centre stage with their 4 voices drowning him out. Even with the treatment he still came close.
Imagine if that had been Janet in the final.
Hey Ya by outkast is a shocker. They wasn’t finished with him though, just to see him off they gave him the lead balloon of the festive songs last xmas by wham. On a level playing field he would have beaten littlemix comfortably.
I’m thinking similar of Holly – she’s just a little anonymous. They certainly hammed up her northern roots, but there’s a lot more they could do for her if they wanted to. I’d be interested to see how she did with a better song choice and a stronger slot in the running order.
The overall vibe of the show seemed as if they were more keen to create a “positive” feel, and push their favoured acts rather than actively bury anybody. Whilst there were some subtle dampening techniques used, there wasn’t an out and out kill and when there is such a positive feel to the show, those little pepperings of dampening techniques on a chosen few seem more effective.
It’s like the opposite of the little mix year where everybody was nuked to hell.
They hammed up northern roots, but they were pretty specific to say Barnsley over and over again, a small town that no-one in the big city in the region (Sheffield) is going to be motivated to vote for someone because they’re from there.
Yes you’re right. I have a few friends in Barnsley and they were more excited about seeing their football team on Itv on a Saturday night than anything to do with Holly.
After watching back the shows, o think the following is an interesting thing to note: the focus on ‘original’ material.
I think grace went a little off script when she said ‘this is what it’s all about, writing your own original material’ (while all
Others bar Rak Su are doing covers)
I think tptb are setting a path for one of the other acts to suddenly ‘release an original’… then we’ll see the real winner?
I think they want an orginal winners single this year so if grace wins they just record Roots her audition song save time and money same with Rak Su.The others they would have to write one or it would be another cover this year which I don’t think they want. It gives a bit of credibility to the show if the winners single is written by the contestant. Also if it doesn’t chart very well, it’s not the producers fault it would be down to the contestant then.
Interesting note. That said, this for me reinforces the idea that Ratsu and Grace (even if I had her falling short in 5th) are the preferred acts. After all, besides Grace and Katsu, who has original material? Only The Cutkelvins + Sean and Conor + possibly Matt and JJ look like the type that have something up their sleeves.
We know S&C write songs, they sang a couple of them at 6CC. Cowell implied at Matt’s audition that he doesn’t – he said something like “we’ve had so many contestants like you, unless you’re writing your own material it’s difficult”. I’m not sure we’ve heard about any of the others having original stuff up their sleeves. Can anyone remember anything?
Kevin and Spencer also did original songs at some point
Writing songs is one thing. Anyone can do it. Writing good songs is another matter entirely. If any of the other acts had any decent material we’d have been told about it by now.
Let’s not get carried away with “good” considering that the talent pool going to XF is becoming smaller. TPTB see Grace and Rak-Su as the best conduits for the show new “original” direction, that’s it
Imo the votes for Saturday was the following
1.grace
2.lloyd
3.alisah
4.holly
5.rai Elle
6.leon
7.sam
8.spencer
For sunday it went the following
1.raksu
2.the cutkelvins
3.matt
4.sean and connor
5.kevin
6.tracey Leanne
7.jack and Joel
8.talia
I’m surprised they made their top 2 the first week prize fight i thought it would be less predictable. Personally they should let the judges choose who wins we then could’ve seen alisah/lloyd vs raksu a bit less obvoius. Personally I could see grace winning again next week and if either Matt the cutkelvins or sean and connor get pimped they could also top. I just hope they scrap the prize fight
The point I was trying to make wasn’t about having an original winner’s single.
It’s about how only 2 have pushed original material all the way through the show, when another act debut original material before the final, probably about week 4? Then that will be their moment and carry them to the win…
Especially after graces outburst
I would say it would need to be an incredible orginal song for someone to go on to win it by singing their own song when they haven’t been anywhere near topping Grace on the votes
Grace’s outburst could work in the show’s favour.
Her comment fits with the idea that the show wants originality, but puts it forward in a way that makes it look like Grace and the public wanting originality versus the show always pushing covers.
Therefore, by voting Grace you’re getting what you always wanted but never realised.
By “original”, I’m assuming you mean written or co-written by the act? What if none of them have any talent for writing songs?
Some of the songs they sang last weekend were so obscure they might as well have been original songs anyway.
It was basically somebody else’s song Grace sang, Grace probably only added about two words to the song, enough to get a writing credit on it. Can’t believe it took at least 3 people to write that “masterpiece”.
Do people give away song-writing credits so easily? If Id written a song I wouldnt let someone else take the credit for 2 lines.
It’s more like a development curve.
Rather than the basic journey, it’s changed to a musical one of… “you don’t know who you are musically,now you do musically and you’ve finally written your own song…. which is what this show is all about”
Somebody in the pub earlier was ‘criticising’ Rak-Su for singing about Fajitas…. they then recited some lines from the song… before saying Grace was much better.
I asked them what the name of Grace’s song was… they remembered the word “Too”
So they agreed with the majority of the public then.
Winning their respective days & reaching numbers 2 & 3 on iTunes is a better indicator of how they will do on the show than someone in the pub.
People vote on the show, pubs are where you find a wide range of people… However, the point I was getting at is that for all of Grace’s supposed great song writing ability, almost constant two months of pimping nobody can actually remember her songs. That may be great for five weeks, it’s not gonna help her career long term is everything she writes/sings is forgotten about after a week.
Does the show really want that?
Maybe they’re only interested in getting her to write songs for other artists.
Your sample size of one isn’t exactly convincing though.
True mate, unfortunately it’s difficult to get a bigger sample… However I think it’s something worth considering.
If you’re honest with yourself, can you remember a line from Grace’s Key X Factor song… what was it? Roots?
If this was a ten week show, I’m pretty sure she’d get turned over… probably by a Matt/Lloyd… shorter format suits her if she’s going to perform the same song every week, so she/they may pull it off
I’ve heard Too Young 3 times and can hum the melody and remember some of the lyrics. It’s really much better than you are giving it credit for. The fact that she won the weeks vote suggests other people liked it too surely. Just out of interest what artists do you like?
I’ve been seeing a lot of pieces on how the new format has made the show worse. Any way the show will try to get out of this, considering they’ve backed themselves into a corner
They’ve got their ‘Simon Cowell was ill’ card to play with that. He’s good at the honest-sounding “you know what, I watched it at home and it just wasn’t working” spiel that will no doubt be used to go back to the old setup.
There were quite a lot of changes and they weren’t all negative. I thought that overall the song choices were more recent and varied than usual. Together with the couple of original songs this was an improvement.
Personally I didn’t mind the format of splitting over two nights. This was better and probably fairer than having 12 – 16 acts performing on the first night.
The biggest problem for me was announcing the top act each night – and the pointless sing off.
I agree – a lot of changes were fine but the sing off was ridiculous and it’s going to reveal more of production’s hand than they need to. Whilst I understand the desire to have a positive finish they need to bring back the elimination sing off and perhaps have the public decide that instead.
The new production was generally better BUT I think they just need to have the loser of the televote go home and that’s the end of it. You can still have an upbeat ending by allowing them an encore. The Prize Fight is going to suck energy out of the show later on if there is a runaway winner.
I like having a complete show both nights, I think its too soon to blame this for the ratings tumble. I think the best option is to have the two winners sing a new song rather than give us a stripped back version of the one we have already seen. Otherwise go back to the sing off for survival. The judges’s vote provided the true drama of the weekend. Losing that is probably a mistake.
The top two sing-off is the one part of the new format that they really should get rid of but changing it is tricky. Dermot pretty much said that the old bottom two sing-off is gone at the start of Live Show 1, but ridding the top two sing-off with nothing screams Pop Idol, which may lead to Simon Fuller taking time off from remaking SKAM to sue.
A group will probably never win the sing-off to be top dog, they don’t get the backing dancers or stage set razmataz to cover up how shit they are in the sing-off.
They don’t need that in the sing-off because the sing-off is symbolic, the Live Show vote they got determines the winner.
Yes, whereas having no production at all really suits someone like Grace.
I know we’ve only had one week of live shows, but who does everyone currently think will make the Final 3? After all, there are only four more weekends left of live shows before we find out who gets there.
I think Grace is a given. Even if she loses some momentum or faces a backlash of sorts, I still think she’d end up making it to the final and finishing second or third.
There’s probably room for one of Rak-Su or The Cutkelvins. I would give Rak-Su the edge right now because of the original material factor, though I wouldn’t entirely rule out them both being taken to the final. The Cutkelvins are also currently awkward to watch as the two guys clearly are Sheereen’s extras. If Sean and Conor don’t have a big improvement this coming weekend then their chances are probably gone.
In the name of diversity and based on what they usually go with, there should be room for a solo male in the final. That seems like it would be Lloyd or Matt. Based on their treatment in the first weekend, I would currently favour Lloyd, plus he is the much stronger singer. There did seem like there was an attempt to get him to top the vote as well. Matt has a weaker voice but would bring sex appeal and a more credible sense of artistry.
Seeing as Reggie N Bollie and Saara Aalto both made the final in the last two years, you could probably make a case for almost anyone left to make it there. Unexpectedly low or high voting percentages could change producers’ plans, as could events. As I’ve said already, my dark horse is Alisah because she is an incredibly professional singer and very reliable performer. Oh, and she’s a much better singer than Saara Aalto.
Maybe I’ll change my prediction next week, or maybe I won’t, but I currently think we’ll be seeing Grace Davies, Rak-Su and Lloyd Macey performing at Wembley Arena next month.
For some reason, I think the final will have four people. Grace is a sure thing. It’s possible to have both Rak-Su and The Cutkelvins, but I fear that with Rak-Su’s win on Sunday, the siblings may be sandbagged with bad running orders and an overemphasis on Shereen. Not sure what to make of Lloyd, he seems contradictory to the “original” direction the show is pushing, but his treatment was glowing for a performance that was meh. Matt makes a better shout unless he becomes too threatening for one week or something.
So as it stands, based on Week 1 treatment, I have Grace + Rak-Su + two of Lloyd/Matt/The Cutkelvins. For the unexpected finalist in the mould of Saara and Reggie n’ Bollie, I pick my girl Tracyleanne. Her new elegant look + her mum-ness + her Amy-esque voice (which I think the UK loves because they should’ve treated Amy Winehouse better when she was alive) can help her pull through.
Totally disagree Mr B. The Cutkelvins are a cut above Rak-Poo i mean Rak-Su and I expect to see them in the final.
Can’t disagree with that Tash.
Biggest question for me is are the producers still happy with a Grace win? The expected scorched Earth policy hasn’t materialised. Does this mean they’ve gone off her? And if so can they stop her and will they even try?
Alan I think that is the main question.
I can’t decide, part of me wants to take a huge position on grace for the win, but something at the back of my mind is stopping me.
The main things to consider:
– with only 4? Live shows left, who can they manipulate a journey and momentum for?
– with the new format and possible increased eliminations will the last 2 weeks see all acts perform on both nights?
I think if Cowell is back this week, there will be some changes as mentioned using ‘I watched it from home and it didn’t work’ line.
I can see a final 3 from grace/Matt/raksu/cutkelvins/Lloyd.
However, with the shortened run, if they don’t handle Alisah right and nobble her in the next 2 weeks, she could be a dark horse if she gets to Wembley.
I’d expect to see Grace and Rak-Su early on in the next show, to see just how strong the support is for the supposed front two.
The producers must be extremely confident that they can manipulate the voting sentiment enough to ensure that we don’t have the same top two every week, otherwise they would never have run with it. Expect to see the format abandoned, however, if results next week reinforce the view that its clearly a 2 horse race (3 horse if the Cutkelvins are still on the bridle)
One way to avoid a repeat of this week’s Prizefight is to put the Girls and Groups on the same night, so only one of them can win the night. Unfortunately, that would mean 8 singing one night and 6 the other.
If Grace and Rak-Su are on early, or during a SCD crossover, it’ll be interesting to see if they still have enough support to win their respective votes.
Great insight as ever, cheers everyone. The prize fight went down like a lead balloon and nobody cares who wins surely. There is still a twist to come in this series I think.
Surprised Grace won as I thought Lloyd with the pimp slot and star staging would do it. Kevin was a goner, sang in darkness, terrible denim, parents were there in the audience ‘waiting for him to come home’ (that was the last line of music at the end of his VT).
Grace has peaked too soon. Her songs sound the same and surely week after week people will want something different. Rak-Su only topped the vote as they performed last. I wonder how close the Cutkelvins were in the vote after opening the show. TPTB were testing their support and I suspect this week they will push them closer with a helping hand.
To those that have pinpointed originality as the theme of this year, I agree that an act will emerge from the pack, to complete their journey with their own song and go on to win the show. Cutkelvins were my bet after their first audition and feel that their storyline has room to grow. Her lead vocals are brilliant, but her brothers need to improve of course. But is there enough time?
Anyone think this is a possibility?
Kevin? He’s still in the competition!
Slightly OT, but none of you of you can convince me Holly isn’t just Emily Middlemas returned from the grave. They feel identical, both in appearance and inability to find a key with both hands, a flashlight, and a locksmith.
Emily has a dainty voice; Holly doesn’t. If anything, she’s Louisa without the X-Factor machine’s backing
@MylesRakSu: “Guys quick heads up… we’re performing on Sunday again this week!!! In case any of you wanna come see apply via @ApplauseStoreUK ”.
@MylesRakSu: “Hi guys, CHANGE OF PLAN: We are now on this SATURDAY’s live shows! Saturday 4th November ❤️ #RakWhatRakSu #RakPack”.
This will change every 3 hours until Sharon falls off the stairs during a gangbang on Friday.
Given that Princess Grace and the Girls will be on Sunday, they’re not pitting the loaded categories against each other yet
I dont really understand why people would be thinking that someone’s going to come from the pack and win the series. Particularly with some original material they’ve decided to keep under wraps until now.
The two acts that were favourites in the betting and had received the most favourable pre-live edits have won the first two shows so what is there to indicate that someone else is going to win? Surely this is exactly where TPTB want to be and assuming they’ve not gone cold on Grace they can probably let the show play out with relatively minimal interference and get a suitable final and winner.
Aside from wanting to start Sunday’s show with an uptempo number what was there to suggest that Cutkelvins are the chosen group? In the death slot with Rak-Su in the pimp slot and the latter receiving the better comments. Rak-Su won the vote. They are very much in the driving seat now in terms of “alpha” group (cant believe I used that term). Personally I dont think it’s looking good for the Scots.
Very much looking forward to the mid-week article. There’s clearly not a lot of love for Grace on the site and I cant help feel this is making people ignore the cold hard facts.
Thank u for an injection of logic Alan. Agree on all. No overanalysis needed. It it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
Agree with all this.
All depends what happened with the vote. Id be willing to lay money on it Raksu didnt win by more than 5% despite the pimp spot and the ott praise. Makes no sense to make this a 2 horse race between the 2 acts with the most screen time in the shows. If as suggested that the producers dont shake things up then they will end up with even more distastrous viewing figures than they already have. Also why do you guys think that original music is suddenly so important. I fully believe the right cover sung to perfection will blow one of them original songs out of the water.
Craig David Seven Days remix 😉
“Id be willing to lay money on it Raksu didnt win by more than 5% despite the pimp spot and the ott praise.”
5% is a very high amount between 1st and 2nd with 8 acts left, nothing has come close to being 5% ahead since the app vote. Its normally less than 2%.
I think its clear from every episode of X Factor this year Original Music is the focus/theme to this series. Following that since both winners were originals I dont see any reason for producers to have to change this.
Agreed! Occam’s Razor needs to be revisited. Given the short Live Shows period, convoluted plans are very risky.
Maybe the producers put the 2 well featured acts as they did on the first shows to measure their vote as is and as expected. In order to establish their popularity as a bar for getting another act over the line.
I say grace gets the pimp slot with huge production this week then a deramp, now they have good measure of the votes and it’ll be next week, week 3 or week 4 we’ll see the real winner
Cutkelvins are shortening across the board as we speak. Write them off at your peril peeps.
@ The Juan
So in order to get a different winner they will build up Grace’s support even more this weekend? And then de-ramp her after that? Really?
Why would producers spend 8 weeks favoring two acts to then ditch them after they had topped their votes, in order to push someone else ahead of them?
I don’t get why everyone thinkRak-Su are so great? They were awful Saturday?? They reminded me of Rough Copy who were equally as bad and got pimped to the high heavens! The song was awful too?? Grace just reminds me of another Ella Henderson. Cutkelvins all the way for me. They’ll go on a journey, albeit a shortish one what with the final being so soon. They’ll all come closer together and have almost ‘equal’ roles for a song and then boom, head straight for that finish line. Just like little mix did after they sang ‘don’t let go’
No-one is saying they’re good. People are saying that having been favoured by the producers in the build up to the live shows and then winning Sunday’s vote they appear to be more likely to win than almost all the other acts including The Cutkelvins who were put on first and finished below them in the vote.
Im struggling to hear any convincing arguments for the Cutkelvins other than people sticking to their original predictions. I had the Cutkelvins to win but thankfully didnt back them. Id say that they were given a fair crack of the whip on Sunday and will probably be given another good crack this weekend.
But Im also thinking that if they finish below Rak-Su again this weekend TPTB will have no further interest and decide to fully support the act that the public clearly prefer and who can also write their own material. The first album’s already getting promoted by Rak-Su. Back the Cutkelvins and Cowell has to bring someone in to write their album for them, then it needs promoting. Why try and push an act to the win if you’ve got an alternative lined up that you’re clearly happy with?
Everybody loves Fajitas though lol
The song was very rap heavy and not that great either. Im very surprised they topped that vote.
Last standing over – surely it is Matt? Tracy Leanne and Kevin i would think will be gone this weekend or the weekend after?
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
I think my girl Tracy (biased!) can eke out a week or two more, if treated with love
Easily Matt for me. He’s odds-on to be Top Over too.
8/11 looks to good to be true.
I don’t know how the twitter search algorithm works but if you type Grace XFactor into the search bar and look at all the top tweets it’s difficult to find many positive ones for her…
same with th CutKelvins, everyone just seems confused by them, as I said earlier in the week, SyCo will not be signing them as a group. Shareen as a soloist, yes, which is why they cannot win the show.
Do the same for Rak-Su and it’s mainly positive… like I said I don’t know how they target the tweets I see when I search
If they wanted her as a soloist they would have snapped her up when her last band split up.
Maybe she had other stuff going on in her life, the death of her dad (I don’t know when that was, but assumed 2016)
Whats confusing about The Cutkelvins?? They ‘cannot’ win the show?? Are these statements factual or merely your opinion??
People are confused as to wether they are a band/group or a soloist with some backing DJs doing no actual DJ’ing..
They cannot win is my opinion, I would give them a sub 6% chance of winning this show… if you believe they have a better than 11% chance of winning, there’s plenty of places they can be backed…
I’d be happy enough if they won, I backed the Groups/Simon before the pre lives, I was positive about The CutKelvins at that stage, however their treatment since then hasn’t been preferable and comparable to an act they want after
http://www.cherryanalysts.co.uk/2017/09/x-factor-strictly-come-dancing-2017/
Id ignore last weekend’s show in terms of ranking their chances. There producers will have been testing the power of their vote from the coffin spot. No doubts at all that they polled well from trap 1. Im sure we will get a more prominent part from the other brothers in weeks to come. One of them actually has a pretty decent voice.
Yes thats another great theory. They want her as a soloist so they put her through as part of a group. The convoluted schemes that TPTB think up! On top of having ITVs flagship weekend show to produce. Where do they find the time?
If they put her as a soloist it would harm Grace… this way they can have Grace and Shareen, not damaging each other..
Do you really believe the edit and staging that The CutKelvins have been given so far if prefernecial?
The judges started giving their comments before the boys had even joined their sister on stage on Saturday ffs… the show have zero interest in the boys
I think TPTB took a punt on them. Stick them through to lives and see if the public will bite. They look the part and that’s half the battle. Based on the hard evidence of week one’s vote though it looks like Rak-Su are more popular.
Rak-Su only seem to be more popular because of the almighty pimping a la Rough Copy.
Had they not been given a lot of air time and then the pimp slot would they be as ‘popular’ i think not
You’ve basically just agreed with my point… the show are backing Rak-Su, not The CutKelvins
All popular acts are partly popular because of extra airtime and attention. That’s one of TPTB’s strongest weapons.
It baffles me why they didn’t put her through as a soloist a scot girl with a great voice and extremely commercial. Shes also uptemp0 and producers always seem to want a girl who can put on a performance like gifty from last year or misha B from 2011. Shareen could’ve gone far and most likely won. She could’ve gone like tameera a group split lead to her journey. But if there was no grace maybe that could’ve been an option. A Scottish act like that could be backed. Nicholas and Emily were both boring but still made it to the latter stages of the competition shareen is Scottish from a quite popular girlbands commercial and appeals to the r and b and pop voters also she is uptemp0 so can get a crowd going. Big misstep by the producers
Maybe she’s not like the lady in the New Girl Group and acually wants to work with her brother?
Maybe that’s not part of the show’s plans AT ALL? Given their fondess for “positivity” this year, splitting them up may be a lose-lose situation. This isn’t plucking a talented daughter from her past-it mum or splitting siblings and giving each a fair shot.
it will also hurt Shereen. She was 1/4 of Neon Jungle, a group that performed at VSFS just before Taylor Swift. Having her brother tempers the potential backlash to this because they’ve become “family-oriented” in some respect
Having said that, long game. We questioned why, in 2011, they didn’t put Little Mix Perrie through as a solo girl as she seemed like a more relatable Amelia Lily. Or look at the ex-One Direction boys, now all solo artists where there would not have been room for them all to be on the Live shows in their year.
As to why not make her a solo girl, let’s think of reasons:
x Maybe she has no story
x Maybe they want other girls for their category more
x She is a young, confident, competent mixed race woman. That archetype has never placed above fourth (Misha B), and even then, she had to be dragged that far. Talented though she is, I’m unsure an ex-girlband member and seasoned performer would have been able to fake being shy and unsure of herself, as worked for Rebecca, Leona, Alexandra, and she doesn’t have Fleur East’s excuse of being older and last chance saloon
I agree with everything stoney just said in his last post
For me, the thinking with The Cutkelvins is that a lot of acts who are doing well in the charts in the current climate are DJ featuring PRODUCER featuring SINGER and RAPPER. I think TPTB could be experimenting with that, to see if it works on the show.
where do the DJ and the producer and the rapper come in, though? Pretending to stand over a turntable does not a DJ make
So that would be a bit like LiTek feat Grace Davies or Chainsmokers feat Daya – as covered by Grace Davies.
As India says why bother with a pretend version.