So, it’s over at last.
The dreams are dashed, the masses satisfied for another year, the tinsel that was everywhere is now crushed under foot and unwanted. No, I’m not talking about the end of Xmas I’m talking about the end of the X Factor.
Completely unsurprisingly, Joe McElderry triumphed and we now have yet another manufactured pop non-entity to pollute the airwaves and to come unwanted into our homes on the covers of countless celebrity magazines (we also have another unwanted Geordie to go with Ant, Dec, Cheryl Cole and one of the Hairy Bikers…)
Why does this show continue to hold so many people in its spell? Why do fairly reasonable people become obsessed with the antics of such talent free puppets (and I’m not talking just of the judges here) for so many weeks every year? The X Factor has nothing to do with talent (just as most of the pop industry has nothing to do with talent) and everything to do with self promotion. The competing artists are merely a sideshow to the aspirations of the judges. There isn’t even a need for judges when the public choose the winners by phone vote.
The sole attraction is that it offers a chance at fame. No hard work. No effort. Just wait for the yearly circus to come around and go and audition. People who say they live for music and only exist to be singers turn up to exhibit their meagre abilities when they should actually have been sending demos to record companies if they were that serious about wanting to get into the music business.
And that is the attraction to the audience as well. The realization that you need no talent at all to make a fortune these days (look at Cheryl Cole). And soon, we’ll be plagued by Britain’s Got Talent (surely there should be a question mark at the end of that) and the hype will begin all over again as desperate wannabes turn up by the thousand to be judged in the hope that they’ll get their fifteen minutes of fame. And the country will be enthralled once again.
At a time of goodwill to all, it makes you despair. Or it should.
