I was distracted from writing tonight’s Blog by Katie Price and Kim from How Clean Is Your House eating kangaroo anus. Who would have predicted ten years ago that this would be common Saturday night TV? What kind of brainstorm in ITV’s boardrooms produced it? Maybe I should blog about that in my so far neglected Overarching Narrative.

Anyway, I was excited this week to discover a new but important way of assessing performances: whereas last week we were concerned if peoplej were “authentic”, this week they must be – new buzz word – “believable”.

Meanwhile, Cheryl Cole increased her believability by dressing as Mini Mouse.

The Empty Space Zac Efron Leaves When He Exits A Room (Lloyd):

The best thing about this performance was the audience’s awkward silence as they struggled to understand what Dannii meant when she complimented Lloyd’s falsetto.

The Puppet Masters often put the act first that they want out. However, Lloyd only sang one note very out of tune and has a new hair cut. He’s safe.

Stacey:

“I Can’t Make You Love Me” is George Michael’s best song lyrically [edit: he covered it, but is still the best song he's sung lyrically]. But a subtle song with intelligent lyrics from a little known double A side is perhaps not the best song choice, Danni.

After last week’s emotional powerhouse of a performance, Stacey let me down. This week’s VT showed the singing coach telling Stacey it was OK to cry when singing if she liked and I longed for maybe one or two perfect tears at the end of her performance. Instead, she committed the ultimate sin of grinning a bit at the beginning of a song which is all about realizing your partner doesn’t love you. She was also pitchy (less of a sin).

For the best ever example of crying on the X Factor, see below. This was a seminal X Factor moment for so many reasons. You have to watch from the beginning to the end:

Stacey’s big notes at the end had soaring power, but she needs to make sure the rest of the song is as good too.

Twin Peaks (John and Edward):

I found myself wondering if their Choose Life T-shirts were a kind of complicated ironic way of making us realize that voting for them meant some kind of musical death.

They may be vulnerable: their performance was just not horrific enough. I am, however, still fascinated by their twitching; watching it gives me the same feeling I get when I watch Nicola from Girls Aloud. I can’t take my eyes off the awkwardness.

Jedward’s parents still look broken.

Danyl:

Danyl started well with an interesting stripped down version of “Careless Whisper”. He then rapidly destroyed it by removing all subtlety and proceeded to aggressively shove massive notes in our faces. He also pointed to his feet when he sang about them being guilty which ruined everything (see Olly later).

Now merge over the top Danyl with under the top Stacey and you have something potentially great (Leona Lewis maybe? I hoped by merging their faces (my new favourite thing) I might in fact get Leona but instead got this):

I think it has a hint of Joe.

Cheeky Chappy (Olly):

Was each act encouraged to sing the first two lines in an entirely different key?*

Cheeky Chappy finally showed us he was contemporary by singing a song released over 13 years ago. It verged between being quite good to excruciating (mainly when he tried to look seductive by squinting, whilst singing a bit out of tune).

His real crime, however, were the actions he started doing towards the end of the song, like the phone hand when he referred to cupid calling him and the driving motion when he mentioned the BMW (please note Olly, when George sang “why don’t we make a little room in my BMW babe”, he’s not planning on driving in it).

Somehow I still like him.

Joe:

My Primary School Choir was ahead of it’s time: we did “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” too. How relevant/authentic/believable of my Primary School. Next week one of the contestants will be doing a song from the musical we did about a chicken farm.

Back to Joe, and for the first time he conveyed some oomph and emotion whilst singing very in tune. It was a great Musical performance. Why is it that every year the judges claim that the boys could be the new Michael Buble? Joe is nothing like Michael Buble. Did you know that the average release date of the songs Joe sings is 1980? That’s how relevant/believable/authentic he is. Can you believe that I actually worked that out?

Bottom Two:

I sadly predict Stacey (not as good as last week + got OTT judges praise = always a bad combination) and Danyl (partly because this kind of bad PR is ramping up once again). With Jedward hovering around their too. But it’s cheating to guess three so discount Jedward.

[Mathematical Formula says Olly and Jedward. That'd be a shocker]

*The Boyfriend informs me that George often sings in a tricky key and proceeds to give me a hearty performance of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On me”.