It’s been several weeks since there has been a major singing competition on broadcast TV. How have warbling dreamers coped? So here’s The X Factor coming back for a third season to fill that void,
No longer expected to be bigger than Idol or even The Voice, it merely rolls along chiefly on the strength of being Simon Cowell’s sole show in the states. Last season, it also had Britney Spears, but she’s long gone, with fully half the judging staff as newcomers.
Joining Cowell and the returning Demi Lovato is Kelly Rowland, who has had some experience at judging The X Factor U.K., and Paulina Rubio, described as a “Latina pop princess” who sold 20 million records worldwide.
As such, Rubio gets to chat with Latino hopefuls in Spanish and murder some of the show’s usual English cliches. At the start she talkes about wanting to find a “soaperstar.” Later, she complains that some singers are too “peachy.” Which sounds pretty nice, except that she actually means “pitchy.”
The premiere of the third season only got a measly hour, and was cut to look like more of a promo for the audition portion of the show than the show itself. Judges talked as giant captions flashed on the screen; audition sites jumped from Los Angeles to Charlotte to New Orleans, sometimes after hearing only one singer in a city.
As sole male among a young female judging panel, the X Factor plays like Simon’s Angels, with Mario Lopez as Bosley.
Lopez is working as a solo act this season, after the amateurish Khloe Kardashian was herself dashed as co-host.
The show began by boasting that “The X Factor has created more global superstars and any other singing competition in the world,” though a montage only shows a couple of acts that are recognizable, notably OneDirection and Leona Lewis.
If they want to find another star, they may want to work faster. Only a handful of singers got full attention.
So here they are: Carlito Olivero, 23, was a charming barista who said he was from Chicago (though a caption put him as being from L.A.). He sang a slow burning version of Rihanna’s “Stay” that had the female judges cashing in their superlatives. “I adore you,” Demi gushed. “We are witnessing a star,” Kelly said.
For his part Carlito exclaimed, “I didn’t expect all four would say yes.” But he didn’t know the X Factor very well — the judges almost always vote unanimously yes or unanimously no.
And the bad ones were that obvious. The cheery, self-confident 55-year-old nurse Sally Hessnice, who warbled a version of Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” never had a chance. But they let her sing the full version of the song anyway. Maybe so they could have Simon say there were 8,000 dogs trying to get into the venue.
Valeria Colombo, 41, a karaoke DJ from Boca Raton was way off key on a version of “Without You”; a family trio called “Konnected with a K,” were even worse trying to do TLC’s “Waterfalls.”
The arena crowd squealed when a cute high school grad John Tanner Davis, 18, came on stage in shorts. But he sank “The Heart Will Go On” like the iceberg did the Titanic.
The spotlights fell to the good singers in feel-good segments that went way over the top in amping up the emotion by pumping recorded pop songs during the judges’ guessing remarks.
Lillie McCloud, a 54 year old grandmother in sleek leather jumpsuit and a big Afro, nailed a gospel song from BeBe Winans, “Alabaster Box.”
A cute young lovey-dovey duo from Orlando named ALex and Sierra did a slow, sexy version of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” that won everyone over and Demi saying things like “I’m in love with your love.”
But the big prize went to a sunny 13 year old with big hair and tiny hands that couldn’t grab a microphone. Judges were blown away by her version of “Blown Away” by Carrie Underwood, but clearly in part because she had “overcome so much” with her birth defect. She’ll go far on X Factor, but she will also put an definitive end to that Kristin Wiig Lawrence Welk character whose main joke is her tiny hands.
A flash forward to coming scenes this season show more stirring auditions, several terrible ones and a surprising shot of Cowell wearing wire rimmed glasses. Is he finally showing his age?