‘The X Factor’ UK review: Union J is back; Jahmene Douglas kills it
Sometimes on singing competitions like “The X Factor” UK and “American Idol,” there is a sort of general belief that boys tend to fare better than they typically deserve to. However, this is far from the case this season. What a fabulous array of performances we had during this show tonight from many of the guys, though it is a very strange phenomenon to only see one woman still left in the competition in Ella Henderson.
We’re a little bit later than usual with our review this week, so we’ll go through our general impressions rather quickly.
Rylan Clark – At first, we were starting to think that this was going to be a great performance from Rylan; then, it went completely bonkers and he abandoned every promise to Gary Barlow that he would change it up and slow things down this week. He’s such a genuinely nice guy that you do want to root for him, but there’s not really much of an excuse for him to stay much longer.
Union J – Louis Walsh from our vantage point did a smart thing this week. He gave both of his bands current songs to rock, and these guys stripped things down with a super-sweet cover of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story.” There were just so many great harmonies in here that it reminded us how much potential that they have. Now, we just hope they are not in the bottom two again.
Kye Sones – One of the few guys to not up this game this week was Kye, who was really saddled with a bad song for this sort of of competition in “You Get What You Give.” Folks will forget about this when they are voting, and for the time being he is tragically our pick to be sent home Sunday (even if we don’t want it to be the case).
James Arthur – The judges seemed to dance around saying it, but let’s be honest: this may have been James’ weakest performance of the live rounds this season. The rap portion of “Don’t Speak” was great, but there were tuning and pronunciation issues in the vocals. Even when you are the favorite, there are things you need to be told to work on; otherwise, how will you get even better?
Ella Henderson – Poor Ella. Thanks to Lucy Spraggan’s illness, she’s the only girl left in the competition. Luckily, Tulisa picked a great song for her in Katy Perry’s “Firework” that marked a bit of a comeback from a dreary “Bring Me to Life” (ironic as that sounds) from last week. The song was a little out of her range, but it wasn’t noticeable enough to be a problem.
District3 – Not everyone online seems to like this performance of “Dynamite,” but from this standpoint it was a marked improvement on last week. The band seemed to have more fun, which in turn made us dance along to the beat. Like Kye, though, the lack of a “wow” moment here could put them in the bottom two (and probably will).
Jahmene Douglas – We don’t see Jahmene so much as a pop singer as much as we do the sort of adult contemporary artist that can have some breakthrough hits (See Leona Lewis or Michael Buble), but no matter how you look at him this guy is fantastic. He didn’t really change much about Beyonce’s “Listen,” but with this voice you really did not need to.
Christopher Maloney – Shockingly, the producers who supposedly want the Liverpool native out of the competition gave him the final spot, and this “All By Myself” was his best performance of the season. There was a little cheese, but there was also genuine emotion and some enormous notes. Louis Walsh is right that this guy can not sell albums, but this week he does not deserve to be going home.
How do you think shined this week, and who do you think struck out?