‘The X Factor’ UK live review: Matt Terry, Emily Middlemas, and 5 After Midnight take on Louis Loves
Louis Loves is the theme for this weekend’s new episode of “The X Factor,” and the fact that we opened the show with Louis Walsh doing a terrible rendition of an Irish gig made it very clear just how seriously we were supposed to take this.
Still, we gotta take it somewhat seriously since otherwise, we may as well just give Honey G the title now! We’re going to have our take on all of the performances as the night progresses; be sure to refresh the page throughout the night for our take on every performance that comes your way! We’ll also be ranking them in two separate categories.
Louis Loves
5. Honey G, “Can’t Touch This” – We’re not going to deny that most of our attention on this performance is overshadowed by someone crashing the stage after the performance, and we feel sorry that this happened to her. Yet, at the same time we’re not going to pretend like this was good just because we feel bad that this happened.
4. Emily Middlemas, “Toxic” – This is where things get interesting, since we personally feel like all of the next three performances were rather fantastic in their own right. Louis picked a great song, but he’s completely out of his mind if he really wants to see Emily dance. That’s not her style! It was nice to see her back with an instrument; our only issue is that the background dancers were completely stupid here and served zero purpose.
3. Matt Terry, “Secret Love Song, Pt. II” – For those of you conspiracy theorists who thought that this was Louis and Syco forcing Matt to sing a song from the label, this was actually one he really wanted to sing — and he did it justice! Amazing song, but his voice matched that and we genuinely feel like this is the sort of record that could end up being a hit for him.
2. 5 After Midnight, “Uptown Funk” – We’re really splitting hairs here between Matt and 5 After Midnight, because they were both really great in different ways. This was a celebration of high-energy, dance, and performance. We’re giving the slight edge to the guys mostly because people on this show often aren’t praised enough for going uptempo.
1. Saara Aalto, “The Winner Takes It All” – Does this mean that Saara took it all? This was a winner-worthy performance. STUNNING vocals. The fact that she played the piano with it was all the more impressive. If she was to win this show, it’d be one of the greatest underdog stories in the history of the series, someone who started off in danger but became more and more popular as time went on.
Round Two
Honey G, “Push It / Black Beatles” – Yes, Honey G did the Mannequin Challenge, but she really didn’t sing the majority of the lyrics of the song! This entire ordeal just felt for the most part like a stunt to get a little bit more attention, and the overall performance we were looking at here was not any better than what we’ve seen as of late.
5 After Midnight, “Sorry / One Dance” – This was certainly entertaining and we really like both of these songs. Yet, at the same exact time we cannot just ignore the fact that there were some obvious / major tuning issues throughout a good portion of the “Sorry” part of this. These guys are the best entertainers on the show, but they still have some work to do on their vocal consistency.
Emily Middlemas, “Human” – It is a lesser-known song, but we’re glad that Emily took it on and tried to something a little different from the standard ballad. We’re not sure that her voice has quite the authority or the power to match the edgy, throttling pulse of the track, but she did hit the majority of the notes and tries to present herself with more aggression.
Saara Aalto, “Diamonds Are Forever / Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” – This is at times where Saara gets herself into a little bit of trouble given that she is such an incredible singer, but she can at times get too campy for her own good. There are some people out there who’ll feel way too much like this was straight out of Broadway versus something meant for the music charts, but it was still well-sung and thoroughly entertaining.
Matt Terry, “Alive” – The vocals were certainly there, but we’d be lying if we were to say that we absolutely loved the arrangement. The pacing for it was unfortunately somewhat weird since it couldn’t quite figure out whether it wanted to speed things up a little bit or instead start to slow them down.
Who was your favorite tonight? Be sure to let us know, and of course head over here to check out some of our other “X Factor” coverage. (Photo: ITV.)