…and so another also-ran fairly average singer who was never a star but thought he might be, leaves X Factor and its like we’re watching a small pond drain away week by week and as we peer through the slime on the surface we are starting to realise that, actually, there are no big fish in there this year.
We’re also starting to realise, although some of us have held the opinion for several years, that messrs Cowell and Walsh know lots about providing a mulch of pseudo-glamour entertainment to pre-pubescent girls, but are clueless when it comes to spotting a singer who can stand still on a stage sans distractions caused by choirs, dancing and fireworks, and just hold an audience by use of their vocal chords.
Its a really simple formula is X Factor, you do not profess that you are looking for the next Bon Jovi or Maria Carey, you simply allude to something called the “X Factor” and you don’t tell anyone what this is. You then take a mixed, hand-picked bag of young people who you believe will appeal to your target audience, that very small tranche of the public who buy into a strictly regimented formula of what is now called “a performance”, that very small tranche consisting in the main of young schoolgirls who are virtually the only people bothered about a singles chart these days, hence the singles chart these days sounding remarkably similar to the any of the singles charts of the last ten years.
And just so that this doesn’t sound like another Grumpy Old Man rant, lets compare a random chart from a random year of my youth, the random year being chosen by Dale Winton on Radio 2 this Saturday afternoon just gone, 1969.
In the chart in question of November 1969 was The Beatles “Something/Come Together” from the album that George Martin cobbled together from scraps of recording tape that had been thrown away during a couple of years recording sessions with the band, the fact that Martin managed to cobble together what, in my opinion, is the best Beatles album of all time from bits that had been thrown away as not complete or good enough for previous albums is testament to his and their undoubted skill – would Louis Walsh be able to boast the same about West Life ?
Motown was reaching its peak in the UK in the same year, we won’t even start to name all of the acts who charted from that record label (and Stax Records) that year, suffice to say that you could select any one of them and any single one of them will have sold more records in that one year than the X Factor Christmas Number One will this.
At number two in the chart of November 1969 was Fleetwood Mac, the original Peter Green line-up with the single “Oh Well”, its a classic of its time, listen to it and if you were there you can smell 1969 again, (it smells of sandlewood and petula by the way), and if you gave the single to a 16 year old male in 2009 without telling him what it was he will still love it and he will not believe you when you tell him that its 40 years old, and he will question your sanity when you tell him that it was once not only in the singles chart but at the top of the singles chart, and he will thirst for more knowledge of an era when the world of popular chart music was open to application from any genre of music, right across the board.
Right across the board ?
Frank Sinatra was in that same chart as Fleetwood Mac and The Beatles that week, “Loves been good to me” being the single he released into the UK top ten, Leonard Cohen, King Crimson, Family and Jethro Tull also charting with singles that year, Eric Clapton disbanded Cream and went on to Blind Faith, The Nice were still in the UK singles charts shortly before they would crash and burn and Emmerson Lake and Palmer emerge from the ashes.
Led Zeppelin released their debut album in this year, the third best seller of the year was Johnny Cash’s “Boy Named Sue” , The Rolling Stones released their classic “Honky Tonk Woman” , a song that they still include in t heir sets today, which of us 13 year olds in 1969 would have believed that we’d still be watching The Stones live in 40 years time due in the main to the complete lack of anything since to challenge them ?
And yet, and yet, had he been around in 1969 there was an opportunity for Louis Walsh, for eight weeks in October and November of 1969 the number one position in the UK singles music chart was occupied by a band that Louis Walsh could have created himself, a band created purely to appeal to the record buyers who had not yet reached puberty, a popular music group put together, nay designed, to appeal as much for their image as their music prowess, indeed a popular music group that was put together with no heed for musical ability at all, yes, for eight weeks the small people of the UK held the likes of Fleetwood Mac and The Beatles from the coveted number one slot by buying The Archies “Sugar, Sugar”.
The Archies were a cartoon pop group in the genre of Scooby Doo.
Maybe Walsh and Cowell should consider exploring this genre in future and leave the real life karaoke singers where they belong, in pub tap rooms.
Timely post. As just this morning I was lamenting the Disney pop drivel that my kids are being exposed to. I mean what is wrong with the world today where my kids can give you the name and favorite color of each of the Jonas brothers but can’t name the Beatles?
Do you know the thing that is really tragic ?
The distance in time between your kids not knowing The Beatles is the same distance in time between me as a teenager listening to The Beatles in 1969 and my dad being born in 1924 – well all but five years anyway.
When you put it like that I feel very old.