X Factor 2007, painful showoffs, blah blah blah

He's cried at the end of every one of his performances, iirc.

I really fucking hate Austin.

Hannah out?

Right, officially not interested.

Props to Hannah for striding straight past Dermot O'Leary with a muttered "Yeah, I'm fine", rather than collapsing into his arms for the statutory weepathon.

I thought Cowell was clamping down on weepathons, and specifically on Cheryl-originated weepathons, this series.

apparently cheryl's place on the show was originally intended for charlotte church.

Last night's show was basically an hour's worth of more or less uninterrupted weeping. If reality TV = emotional pornography, this was where the medium went gonzo. Skip the set-up, let's get to the cum shot!

Does anybody remember "Boys will be girls", a reality tv programme from a couple of years ago where they found 3 boys from failed boybands who were so desperate for fame they let the crew turn them into a girlband?

Austin does.

(xpost) Max Hardcore should be out of prison in time to do X Factor 2010...

I bet Austin tearfully recounts the whole 'ordeal' in about six weeks.

The stench of desperation is even higher this year.

Tonight, should you wish you can watch continuous X Factor content from 7:15 to 11:30.

At least an hour of that will be people crying.

I knew I recognised Austin, I had him down as being part of a boyband in a previous year.

really really overdoing the Old Spice theme

OK this girl needs to stop doing this start-the-song-in-Spanish thing.

Is it wrong to want to punch the Irish kid in the face?

No, although by now there's a long queue, with John Lennon at the front of it. Ono sued a filmmaker for using 15 seconds of "Imagine", she do something with that Eoleeurgh too.

(xpost) I thought they screwed up and put on a tape of the Eurovision cong contest

...which is a pity because Ruth was my favourite to win.

I don't care what he does to "Imagine" since it's a Top 5 worst songs ever written candidate. What's really depressingly predictable is that JLS, because they are waaaay the most talented guys on the show, will be lucky to last 4 weeks.

Well Eoleararagh has taken a bad song and made it badder

Me and my wife trying to figure out what we didn't like about Laura tonight--she says, "the problem is that she looks like Super Nanny."

Yeah JLS definitely do not deserve Louis (or this country, tbh).

Deserve to go home after tonight's perfs: Daniel, Scott, Bad Lashes.

I really think that Bad Lashes deserve to stick around for another week, because despite their tune free performance, they have something, a real personality, rather than the "sing in a fake American-ish accent" thing that most of the others are doing.
Maybe Yoko could punch Eoghan in the kidneys until his balls drop?

I guess I see that, but it's pretty clear that they have zero chance of going far in this competition.

For me, it has to be Austin to go. During his performance I caught myself thinking "I wish Sting were singing this instead". Which is a very very bad sign.

Only caught a bit of the JLS performance, the arrangement seemed pretty poor, a lot of dull unison singing. Mrs V confirmed that it wasn't v. good.

I thought it was a shitty song choice, but apart from the beginning, they showed that they're just miles ahead of most groups on these shows in terms of harmony singing.

I think their harmonies are great, and I love the Boyz II Men version of that song, I just wonder who's responsible for working up the arrangements and I suspect it mightn't be the band.

"With Every Heart Beat" was a terrible choice, I like the record but it isn't much of a song.

Yeah, but--in contrast with Scott, Austin, and Diana--Rachel actually made it work, I thought. I think she's smart enough to know that that narrative (she may not agree with her mentor, but she'll soldier on, keep her head up, give her all anyway) will keep her in for a while.

"a twist... it'll be really good" TRANSLATION "a twist... it'll be really shit"

Leon is either desperate for a piss or he's about to have an epileptic fit.

i actually really liked that song.

leon's

Yeah I was feeling it.

He looks like he's aged ten years.

Awful song choices tonight, for the most part. This household voted for JLS and Diana.

Awful and obvious choices. Eoghan particularly, as well as JLS. Although I think that this week it's going to be Girlband in the bottom two. They almost needed a Jarvis Cocker lookalike to come on stage and moon at them.
As for the others... ALEXANDRIA! IS! JUST! SHOUTING! BUT! THAT! IS! NOT! WHAT! SINGING! LIKE! WHITNEY! IS! ABOUT!
Austin is this year's Rhydian, except even more irritating.
And Rachel reminds me of Adeva, which is actually a good thing, my favourite performance of tonight.

Yeah, as bad as Scott and Daniel are/were, Girlband are in a class by themselves.

haha, that version of Billie Jean, OMGWTF x 1000000000000000

prediction: Girlband screw up the harmonies on "Don't Wanna Miss A Thing"

Well, OK, so they didn't...

They didn't a lot of things...

I don't like MJackson's stuff, but boy did I appreciate his talents after seeing all those people sing less well and dance insignificantly to his songs!

Having never watched X Factor before, I'm thoroughly enjoying it this year.

(xpost) same with Girls Aloud - their performance on Saturday was only average, but they still wiped the floor with Girlband and JLS.

The new Girls Aloud single now reminds me of the Polyphonic Spree. But not as promising (ahem) as that sounds.

Eoghan was pure eurgh and Ricky Gervais was like an uncalled for missing link between Val Doonican and Billy MacKenzie (if only) but they'll survive because of The Sympathy/Underdog Vote; Eoghan definitely, Ricky for another week or two at least.

Lot of hamming and stupid choices for covers and enough of these stupid 1975 "dance routines."

Generally Michael Jackson Week was a bad idea. How about a Gary Numan Week to make up for it?

Cowell not remembering the names of the contestants - is this deliberate?

My picks - Diana and Rachel but they both need better material.

I think he was genuinely embarassed: At first he bluffed a "excuse me" but later apologised properly, and made damn sure he referred to his (auto)/cue cards which he had obviously been ignoring, previously.

'Came out of character' as it were...