‘The X Factor’ UK: Gary Barlow on Kye Sones, Christopher Maloney

Going into the live competition rounds on “The X Factor” UK, who in the world imagined that it would turn out quite like this? While Kye Sones and Melanie Massone entered this stage of the competition as favorites from Gary Barlow’s Overs, they are now each out of the running; instead, we now have a man in Christopher Maloney who is still around despite being initially a wild-card choice, and also receiving more negative feedback and either Kye or Melanie.

So what does Barlow himself say about all of this? Speaking on “The Xtra Factor” after Kye’s shocking elimination over Rylan Clark Sunday, he admitted that even he cannot quite figure it out:

“Obviously the three acts I picked from judges’ houses have all gone home. Chris is the wildcard, he’s been brought back by the public. I am surprised he’s still here but he is and he’s doing what he does.”

As for why Kye ended up leaving, Barlow explained that the reasoning was simply something that has been said all season long in that the connection to the viewers was just not there for him:

“It’s a hard one. You put your trust into these people, you hope that people will connect with them and for some reason we’ve just not found the connection with Kye.”

This is a situation where it is really easy to feel for Kye, mostly because he does seem to be a genuinely nice guy who wants to be a star. It is probably made worse when judges and viewers tell you that there is something missing from your performance, but do not really offer you much in the way of suggestions as to what this something could be. There just wasn’t something that popped off the screen at times with him.

Why do you think Kye struggled to find an audience this season, and you really cite the massive Liverpool voting block as the real reason for Christopher’s success?