I know I’m a light-year-and-a-half behind everyone else, but I actually watched an episode/edition/broadcast of The X Factor – the final, in fact – for the first time last weekend.
It’s made me fear for the future of Britain and convinced me absolutely that Simon Cowell is Satan.
I saw Peter Kay’s recent parody and assumed it had amplified and magnified everything but, if anything, what I saw last Saturday suggested that Kay had actually underplayed the original’s ludicrous pomposity and emotional blackmail.
As with Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin, the parody was all the more forensically cruel because it used the very lingua franca of its target: indeed the word “journey” should now be expunged from the Oxford English Dictionary, having been bsatardised out of all recognition by programmes like this and presenters like Dermot O’Leary. (Oh, Dermot: you showed such promise once. Is being Cowell’s shill really worth such self-debasement?)
Why do people lap this shit up? It’s manipulative, the sob stories are almost certainly embellished and everything about the production is just naff.
I don’t deny that the lass who won can sing a bit, though she’s Fourth Division rather than European Cup.
I certainly don’t deny that Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is an excellent song – it’s one of the five best pop songs written in the Eighties.
I do, however, believe that Alexandra Burke and Hallelujah make about as easy bedfellows as Dick Cheney and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
Let’s consider Ms. Burke’s interpretation of the lyrics in the song’s first verse:
I heard there was a secret chord…
It goes like this -
The fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall
And the major lift…
As every woman entering The X Factor competition must do, Ms. Burke asks herself: “What Would Mariah Do?”
Mariah, being as thick as mince, would recognise the words “fourth”, “fifth”, “fall” and “lift”. So if she screeched “fourth” she would display four fingers. If she yelled “fifth” she would add an extra digit. For “fall” she would point down towards the ground. For “lift” she would reach for the sky.
Needless to say, Alexandra Did Exactly What Mariah Would Do For That Is What Satan Decreed.
On witnessing this debacle, anybody remotely familiar with either John Cale’s or Jeff Buckley’s versions of this beautiful and frail little song must have cringed as I did.
On seeing the white-clad gospel choir then stroll onstage they must have started chewing their cushion along with me.
(Satan thinks: “The word “Hallelujah” appears in the Bible and gospel choirs sing religious music therefore we must have a gospel choir on a song called Hallelujah.” Never knowingly understated.)
Cue a crashing I Will Always Love You-esque snare drum and a thousand layers of syrup for a big finale – shouty lead vocals, synthesised strings, gospel choir, gloop, gloop, gloop, repeat to fade.
To quote Alan Connor:
The final chorus is more like Handel’s original Hallelujah Chorus mashed up with Cher’s I Found Someone.
I agree with Connor – the saving grace is that the quarter of a million quid about to hit Cohen’s bank account is hugely deserved. The shame is that Laughing Len’s so broke that he’s had to allow a delicate concoction that took him a year to create so painstakingly to be slaughtered on the altar of Satan.
I’ve done all I can: I spent £15.80 downloading Buckley’s Hallelujah from iTunes 20 times last night in an attempt to get something – ANYTHING – else to the top of the chart for Christmas.
If the ITV masses prefer Burke and Satan’s overproduced, overinflated bobbins, well: fuck you.
