‘The X Factor’ UK review: Did Rylan Clark set off Gary Barlow yet again?

Last week on “The X Factor” live results show, we saw what was really one of the testiest situations in the history of the show as Louis Walsh decided for some inexplicable reason to save Rylan Clark over someone who was clearly more deserving of staying vocally in Carolynne Poole. This led to Gary Barlow walking off stage, and in a tabloid interview this past week he claims that he almost quit the show out of anger.

So did Gary have a reason to be as upset this time around? In a word, yes. After it was learned that Rylan was safe and not even a part of the bottom two this week, he then had to face the reality of one of his own acts in Melanie Massone facing off against a group from Louis in District 3 who had a bit of an off night with a cheese-tacular performance of “This I Swear” that took us back to the late nineties in the worst way possible.

On the surface, it seems fairly obvious that Melanie should be the act advancing here … but let’s compare the two performances regardless.

District 3 – At least with this performance they took something from Bryan Adams and made it their own, and it did not feel like it was a boy band pretending to be another boy band. With that being said, this was still incredibly cheesy and had no sort of personal identity to it.

Melanie Massone – This is one of the first times that we can remember seeing an act in the bottom two who had the final slot of the performance show so early in the season, and Melanie is fantastic and was fantastic here. What was the problem? We really think it’s just that her style is not really that modern … but she could make it modern again! She’s that good.

Really, we didn’t see there being any way that the judges could justify sending Melanie home, as she’s never had a poor performance or received really any negative feedback at all. However, Tulisa did decide to join Louis in sending home Melanie, and the vote went to deadlock. Once this was decided, we had our second straight stunner here as Melanie was sent home. Now, we’re really starting to feel bad for Gary. None of his acts have really been bad, but Britain is just seemingly against the Overs category this year.

What do you think about the result this time, and did the judges make the right choice?