ITV1 launched a new reality TV show called PopStar to OperaStar, where popstars are given the chance to sing opera, and the weakest singers are eliminated week by week by the viewing public and the judges.
Katherine Jenkins and Rolando Villazon, who are both opera singers, acted as both mentors and judges. The judging panel was beefed up with Meatloaf and Lawrence Llewellyn-bowen.
Of the singers in the first show I thought that Kym Marsh was the best, followed by Marcella Detroit (of Shakespeare Sister) and Bernie Nolan (of the Nolans). I was a little disappointed by Vanessa White's performance (she's from the girl group The Saturdays) - her voice is lovely, but she clearly didn't put in the work. Darius of PopIdol fame gave a surprisingly competant performance.
Alex James (of Blur) and Vanessa White ended up in the bottom two, the judges tied on who should go and Alex was eliminated by the the viewer votes.
Of the judges, I was disappointed by how lame Llewellan-Bowen and Meatloaf were. They clearly approached the show as an audience member would, and thus didn't add anything that the viewer couldn't add themselves. Meatloaf in particular came across as hammy. The two professional judges were good though, and judged critically. If this show is to have a future, they need to ditch the non-professional judges. The rival show X-Factor works because all four judges know the pop business either as performers or as managers and producers. The "audience" view is provided by the viewers who vote.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Saturday, 19 December 2009
X-Factor Results
So Cheryl Cole won again! Not surprising - see my previous posts for an explanation of why she's the best mentor (though in terms of pure judging, Dannii Minogue offers the best feedback).
The highlight of the results show for me was the duet between Alexandra Burke and JLS. It was edgy and cool and I very much hope that they do further collaborations.
I'm already suffering X-Factor withdrawal syndrome - if only the show continued all year round. There's nothing else to watch on Saturday night!
The highlight of the results show for me was the duet between Alexandra Burke and JLS. It was edgy and cool and I very much hope that they do further collaborations.
I'm already suffering X-Factor withdrawal syndrome - if only the show continued all year round. There's nothing else to watch on Saturday night!
Monday, 7 December 2009
X-Factor penultimate show (the live semi-finals)
So Danyl Johnson got the least votes and left the show. I was a little surprised, I thought it would be Olly who left.
Danyl should console himself that leaving is probably for the best. Looking back on his first audition, when he was uninhibitedly enjoying performing, he's clearly got something, and that something got crushed when the dead hand of Simon Cowell was applied to him. So he's probably better off doing his own thing.
It looks like Cheryl Cole will win X-Factor again with Joe McElderry, who has been coming on leaps and bounds under her guidance.
My prediction is that Joe is likely to face Stacey in the finals. At the start of the whole process it looked like Stacey might have won, but this now looks unlikely. Her mentor Dannii Minogue has been trying to force her into a Leona Lewis style mould, which doesn't really suit Stace. But it's now too late to find out where Stacey's niche is. Hopefully she should get signed up by someone who actually understands her after the show ends.
Danyl should console himself that leaving is probably for the best. Looking back on his first audition, when he was uninhibitedly enjoying performing, he's clearly got something, and that something got crushed when the dead hand of Simon Cowell was applied to him. So he's probably better off doing his own thing.
It looks like Cheryl Cole will win X-Factor again with Joe McElderry, who has been coming on leaps and bounds under her guidance.
My prediction is that Joe is likely to face Stacey in the finals. At the start of the whole process it looked like Stacey might have won, but this now looks unlikely. Her mentor Dannii Minogue has been trying to force her into a Leona Lewis style mould, which doesn't really suit Stace. But it's now too late to find out where Stacey's niche is. Hopefully she should get signed up by someone who actually understands her after the show ends.
Monday, 23 November 2009
X-Factor 2009 week 7
So John and Edward finally exited the competition.
Dannii Minogue was the last judge to give her verdict on the bottom two, and I thought she was brilliant the way she asked rhetorically, "Is this a singing competition or a popularity competition, I need to know before I can make my decision". Simon was squirming at the far end, he must have thought she'd take it to deadlock out of revenge - and of course because of Jedward's popularity it was likely they got more votes than Olly, whose performance yesterday was mediocre.
Cheryl Cole again managed to keep both her contestants in the competition. Lloyd keeps improving and Joe gave a fabulous performance. As mentioned in my previous post, though Cheryl is getting a lot of criticism from the press and others about her mentoring skills, she actually really knows what works - as witnessed by the fact that despite her having the weakest category, she still has two acts in the game, and Joe looks like he's on his way to being a winner.
The answer to Dannii's question is that No, it's not just a singing competition. Yes, singing is important, but so is image, the songs picked and the fans you have. Stacie, who I thought would be a shoo-in for the winner a few weeks ago, is being given songs that just don't suit her - nothing she's sung so far compares to her audition. Being a good singer, she pulls them off, and having lots of fans, she keeps getting voted in. But the poor song choices will tell when it gets to the final show. By contrast, both Lloyd and Joe are miles better than they were in the auditions - and with Joe's intrinsic talent, this puts him in pole position.
Finally I must say something about Susan Boyle's performance. It was sublime, better than Leona Lewis's a few weeks ago. She's another example of talent plus strong fan base making her a superstar.
Dannii Minogue was the last judge to give her verdict on the bottom two, and I thought she was brilliant the way she asked rhetorically, "Is this a singing competition or a popularity competition, I need to know before I can make my decision". Simon was squirming at the far end, he must have thought she'd take it to deadlock out of revenge - and of course because of Jedward's popularity it was likely they got more votes than Olly, whose performance yesterday was mediocre.
Cheryl Cole again managed to keep both her contestants in the competition. Lloyd keeps improving and Joe gave a fabulous performance. As mentioned in my previous post, though Cheryl is getting a lot of criticism from the press and others about her mentoring skills, she actually really knows what works - as witnessed by the fact that despite her having the weakest category, she still has two acts in the game, and Joe looks like he's on his way to being a winner.
The answer to Dannii's question is that No, it's not just a singing competition. Yes, singing is important, but so is image, the songs picked and the fans you have. Stacie, who I thought would be a shoo-in for the winner a few weeks ago, is being given songs that just don't suit her - nothing she's sung so far compares to her audition. Being a good singer, she pulls them off, and having lots of fans, she keeps getting voted in. But the poor song choices will tell when it gets to the final show. By contrast, both Lloyd and Joe are miles better than they were in the auditions - and with Joe's intrinsic talent, this puts him in pole position.
Finally I must say something about Susan Boyle's performance. It was sublime, better than Leona Lewis's a few weeks ago. She's another example of talent plus strong fan base making her a superstar.
Thursday, 19 November 2009
X-Factor week 6 show
So Jamie left and LLoyd survived another round in the bottom two.
For all the controversy (Lucie leaving in the previous week and John and Edward surviving), this programme just goes to show just how much popularity and having a fan base helps you in the music business (not just on TV shows like X-Factor).
Because here we are, more than half-way through the series, and the two judges with the strongest categories, Simon and Dannii, have seen their contestants get voted off the show. The judge with arguably the weakest category, Cheryl, still has two acts in the contest.
Yet in the forums people keep going on about how Dannii is a brilliant judge for the way she focuses on "the singing", while criticising Cheryl for picking weak songs and Louis for keeping John and Edward going. Clearly Dannii can't be that brilliant a mentor if she keeps losing acts despite having a strong category. So where is she going wrong?
Her problem is that she is focusing too much on the singing! In the music business there are three element at play in making a hit record - you need a good song, you need an artist with a strong fan base, and it helps if the artist can sing. But the singing ability is the least important. A good song with a mediocre singer will still sound great, and if that singer has fans, it will sell. A bad song sounds dreadful no matter how great the singer's voice, and if they have no fans, no-one will bother to listen to their output let alone buy the record.
Both Cheryl and Louis understand this. Louis from day one understood that Jedward would survive or fail on their fan-base and he does everything to play to what that base wants to see from the twins - which is fun and irony.
And no-one understands better than Cheryl the importance of fans - her whole career is built on her nurturing of her fanbase - and when she picks songs for her contestants, she picks them with the fans in mind. So Lloyd always gets something that will appeal to teen girls, and despite critics deriding the choices as "weak" they've clearly done the business. Joe always gets something that shows off his voice, but Cheryl is always careful to emphasise his northern roots when she makes comments, which means some of her own fanbase from the north are inclined to support him out of loyalty too.
Dannii by concentrating solely on singing left her contestants vulnerable. Stacie has survived because she developed a fan base of her own very early on. Dannii should have helped Rachel and Lucie develop fan bases too, perhaps emphasising Lucie's Welshness for instance, but she overlooked this side of things.
In a way, she's made a similar mistake to the one Pete Waterman made in Popstars the Rivals. Pete Waterman made his name churning out an assembly line of bubblegum pop - but when he was a judge on Popstars the Rivals, he seems to have been embarassed by his own history, and decided that he wanted to create a "vocal harmony group" with emphasis on the singing, ignoring everything he knew about what made acts succeed. As a result, his boy-band flopped.
Cheryl also gets stick for critisising the contestants for how they look. What has image got to do with a singing talent contest, people ask. Everything! We are in a visual age, with the music video or the visuals of the performance being as important as the vocals. Rachel proved that her aggresive Grace Jones style was so off-putting to viewers that they couldn't see past it to give her a chance. Cheryl Cole Fashion Queen understands the importance of image more than most.
So who will get to the final? I'm predicting Joe versus Stacie. Stacie currently has the bigger fan base, but Joe has the better voice. It will be interesting to see what Cheryl will do to boost his support.
This years X-Factor has been the most fascinating for years. I can't wait for next week's episode.
For all the controversy (Lucie leaving in the previous week and John and Edward surviving), this programme just goes to show just how much popularity and having a fan base helps you in the music business (not just on TV shows like X-Factor).
Because here we are, more than half-way through the series, and the two judges with the strongest categories, Simon and Dannii, have seen their contestants get voted off the show. The judge with arguably the weakest category, Cheryl, still has two acts in the contest.
Yet in the forums people keep going on about how Dannii is a brilliant judge for the way she focuses on "the singing", while criticising Cheryl for picking weak songs and Louis for keeping John and Edward going. Clearly Dannii can't be that brilliant a mentor if she keeps losing acts despite having a strong category. So where is she going wrong?
Her problem is that she is focusing too much on the singing! In the music business there are three element at play in making a hit record - you need a good song, you need an artist with a strong fan base, and it helps if the artist can sing. But the singing ability is the least important. A good song with a mediocre singer will still sound great, and if that singer has fans, it will sell. A bad song sounds dreadful no matter how great the singer's voice, and if they have no fans, no-one will bother to listen to their output let alone buy the record.
Both Cheryl and Louis understand this. Louis from day one understood that Jedward would survive or fail on their fan-base and he does everything to play to what that base wants to see from the twins - which is fun and irony.
And no-one understands better than Cheryl the importance of fans - her whole career is built on her nurturing of her fanbase - and when she picks songs for her contestants, she picks them with the fans in mind. So Lloyd always gets something that will appeal to teen girls, and despite critics deriding the choices as "weak" they've clearly done the business. Joe always gets something that shows off his voice, but Cheryl is always careful to emphasise his northern roots when she makes comments, which means some of her own fanbase from the north are inclined to support him out of loyalty too.
Dannii by concentrating solely on singing left her contestants vulnerable. Stacie has survived because she developed a fan base of her own very early on. Dannii should have helped Rachel and Lucie develop fan bases too, perhaps emphasising Lucie's Welshness for instance, but she overlooked this side of things.
In a way, she's made a similar mistake to the one Pete Waterman made in Popstars the Rivals. Pete Waterman made his name churning out an assembly line of bubblegum pop - but when he was a judge on Popstars the Rivals, he seems to have been embarassed by his own history, and decided that he wanted to create a "vocal harmony group" with emphasis on the singing, ignoring everything he knew about what made acts succeed. As a result, his boy-band flopped.
Cheryl also gets stick for critisising the contestants for how they look. What has image got to do with a singing talent contest, people ask. Everything! We are in a visual age, with the music video or the visuals of the performance being as important as the vocals. Rachel proved that her aggresive Grace Jones style was so off-putting to viewers that they couldn't see past it to give her a chance. Cheryl Cole Fashion Queen understands the importance of image more than most.
So who will get to the final? I'm predicting Joe versus Stacie. Stacie currently has the bigger fan base, but Joe has the better voice. It will be interesting to see what Cheryl will do to boost his support.
This years X-Factor has been the most fascinating for years. I can't wait for next week's episode.
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