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Tag: The X Factor USA Season 2

  • The X Factor USA Season 2 Finale: Live Blog

    My prediction is locked in even if who I think is going to win isn’t who I want to win. I’ll be happy with either Carly Rose or Fifth Harmony winning. Tate Stevens somehow gets away with doing karaoke, but because they’re country songs, no one calls him out. Actually, Fifth Harmony probably won’t win because of X Factor karma for SIMON SELLING OUT EMBLEM3!

    While I found season two a little on the boring side compared to season one, who I found most entertaining all season were Demi Lovato’s eye brows and Britney Spears’ facial expressions.

    This one has to be my favorite:

    I may or may not just randomly post Britney gifs throughout this blog. Shout out to one of the greatest tumblr accounts of all time, logically titled, Britney Spears Gifs.

    Before we get going with the live blog …

    8:01PM: Mario and Khloe are on a fake red carpet while the mentors come out for a quick interview.

    The highlights:

    – Khloe interviews LA Reid and she’s only about 5 inches taller than him.
    – Mario pulls Demi out of her automobile and she nearly pulls a Britney by almost flashing her underwear.
    – Khloe talks to Simon and she compliments his chest hair.
    – Britney gets the most cheers and has the least to say. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
    – Pitbull walks down the red carpet and it took me until Khloe said “Pitbull” to figure out who he was.
    – One Direction threw me off. I thought the Jonas’ mother birthed two full-grown kids while we were away.

    8:18PM: In a great host moment, Khloe nearly kills the punchline by laughing while Mario tries to introduce a segment that shows LA Reid conducting performances in the background. Khloe’s the best and when I say the best, I mean the most annoying.

    8:22PM: After an entire season where all Tate Stevens talked about was his wife, they put him with four sexy dancers for his Christmas song performance. He looked about as comfortable as a criminal in church.

    8:35PM: I have so many questions about Fifth Harmony. Who is the lead singer? Which one is the prettiest? Are Normani and Arin Ray still dating? And why hasn’t anyone else asked if the little one is related to Nicole Scherzinger?

    8:45PM: In what had to have been for me, Mario and Khloe introduced a short video package with all of Britney’s funny faces she made on the show. But they forgot to include her rockin’ out to Vanilla Ice!

    8:48PM: Carly Rose performed All I Want For Christmas Is You and it would’ve been fantastic if Mariah Carey came out, but then Nicki Minaj would’ve tried to steal both their shine.

    8:53PM: Khloe just said, “The atmosphere is amazing in here Mario!” Hmmmm.

    8:59PM: It’s kill some dreams time. Taking third place is Fifth Harmony. I hope they give their hearts a break. They did much better than I thought they would. Maybe they can go back to being LYLAS? Or does Bruno Mars’ sisters still own that group name?

    By the way, how does Britney feel having Carly Rose in the top two?

    9:08PM: Khloe and her leather long sleeved dress just interviewed Carly Rose’s mom and she was able to look two directions at one time. She’s scary.

    9:23PM: Still trying to figure out if Pitbull should qualify for “special guest”. It’s the special part that I’m having trouble with.

    9:27PM: Every time Mario talks about looking back at the season that was, my guess is that they’re short on programming.

    9:34PM: I totally get why One Direction is so over. However, if there was a girl group as goofy as these guys, they wouldn’t work right? By the way, One Direction is not a good description of Carly Rose’s mom’s eyes. Her eyeballs go everywhere.

    9:45PM: Carly Rose and Tate performed The Climb together. Of course Carly Rose sings in Tate’s genre. Why couldn’t he have performed Judy Garland with her?

    9:54PM: Before they announce the winner of the show, Britney looks a little nervous. Maybe not as nervous as she was here, but still nervous.

    And the winner is …

    Tate Stevens

    That one wasn’t hard to call. Even though I found him bland and less exciting for a country artist than someone like Scotty McCreary, I think he’ll still sell a few records. It will be harder for Carly Rose to sell records. Emblem3 and Fifth Harmony should do better than most of these show groups though.

    Hopefully next year will be in one word, “Hot, hot, hot.”

    9:58PM: LA Reid wins. But it doesn’t look like he’ll be back to defend his title. He’s already said he’s not coming back next year. Who should replace him?

    Well, it was another fun year of blogging singing competitions and no, I’m not going to start watching The Voice. But I’ll be back in a couple months once American Idol starts up again. Mariah Carey y’all!

    Peace out!

  • The X Factor USA Season 2 Top 8 – What You May Have Missed

    Well, at least Mario let us know this time on the Wednesday show that they were eliminating two acts again. He failed to let us know about this last week and it came as a surprise. They’re really speeding through the show to get it done before American Idol comes back. Just based on how many acts are left to eliminate, I think we’re going to see at least one or two more double elimination nights.

    So what happened?

    Like last week, they quickly sent home the lowest vote-getter who turned out to be Arin Ray. It wasn’t much of a surprise as I predicted that he’d be one to go home. But my second prediction wasn’t correct as Paige Thomas went through to next week and she was just as surprised as I was.

    In the bottom three were Emblem3, Beatrice Miller, and CeCe Frey. And one of those three was not like the others. They predictably sent Emblem3 through as they should’ve. It was down to Beatrice and CeCe.

    On Wednesday night, Frey was super-emotional talking about her older sister who passed away from complications of cerebral palsy. Her performance wasn’t good and it was a bit heartbreaking because after her story, you wanted her to do well. But it’s time. She deserves to go.

    Beatrice was good, though I think the show and the opportunity are too big for her. Unlike Carly Rose who seems to be built for this opportunity, Beatrice can’t seem to handle the pressure and the bigness of the show.

    In a terrible strategic move, CeCe decided to sing “Because Of You”. Did Demi’s eyebrows help her choose this one? When your vocals are nowhere near as powerful as Kelly Clarkson, it’s bad meaning bad, not bad meaning good.

    It should’ve been easy money for Beatrice to go through after CeCe’s off-key performance, but she couldn’t keep her composure. She cried throughout the song and vocally wasn’t sharp.

    Who went home?

    LA Reid chose to send home Beatrice and Simon did as well. And it was such a huge mistake. Simon was right in that Beatrice might not be ready for this. But that’s not his job. It’s Britney’s job. If you shape Beatrice up, you can sell her to the masses. No one is ever going to buy a CeCe Frey record. She’s just a terrible, terrible singer.

    What was the voting order?

    1. Carly Rose Sonenclar
    2. Tate Stevens
    3. Vino Alan
    4. Emblem3
    5. Diamond White
    6. Paige Thomas
    7. Fifth Harmony
    8. CeCe Frey

    What does it all mean?

    It shows that Carly Rose is becoming a much better performer. Early on, she was uneasy, but now she’s piling up the votes. Unless someone stumbles, next week looks like CeCe Frey’s last ride. Emblem3 is also creeping up the fan voting as well. If Simon can give them a bit more tenderness, they may get inside that top three and I think Tate Stevens is the one who will fall.

    See you next week.

  • The X Factor USA Top 12 (Again) – What You May Have Missed

    One Direction via Creative Commons

    Wednesday night’s X Factor live show was an improvement over last week’s show. Last week, the acts looked nervous, sounded nervous, and the mentors weren’t on their A games. Now they know their acts a little better and we’ll see more Vino singing soulful stuff and less of him singing wannabe rock.

    If I could describe Wednesday night’s show, like Britney, I would say in one word, it was hot, hot, hot.

    In my recap of the performance show Wednesday night for Popblerd, I opined that CeCe Frey was deserving of being eliminated. She looked like a fish out of water singing a song that she didn’t feel. She should’ve performed more Christina Aguilera.

    As good as Wednesday’s live performance show was, Thursday’s elimination show was all over the map. Instead of saving all the drama for the end, they eliminated someone in the second to last segment. Why? Well, this year, they have a rankings system. At the end of the show, they displayed the order in which the votes came in. Why? They didn’t really explain. I have a theory.

    I think it’s about audience participation. A way to get the ratings and participation up is to get the TV viewers even more attached to their favorites. Before, the voting audience didn’t really know how much their votes counted. They would only know if their favorite left the show and by then, it’d be too late and it’s possible they’d tune out.

    Now, if they see their favorite at the bottom of the pack, they’ll probably vote often and be a bit more invested in the results show which is the lesser rated show every week. But it also begs the question – if they care so much about how the votes were sorted out, why don’t they just eliminate the lowest vote getter instead of making the final two sing off? My guess is that they didn’t really plan it out because even though the audience now knows who is the top vote getter, it’s not like it makes any difference in the competition.

    So what happened?

    Since Diamond White came back to the show on Wednesday, there were thirteen to choose from rather than twelve. After One Direction opened up the show with their catchy song Live While We’re Young, Mario Lopez and Kourtney Kardashian Odom quickly went through the first six acts that made it to next week. One Direction came back to perform again and they quickly named three more who made it to next week.

    That left CeCe Frey, Jason Brock, and the newly named Fifth Harmony. There’s no way that Fifth Harmony deserved to be anywhere near the stench that was CeCe and they happily were pushed through. Thus, we had a quite predictable final two. Jason Brock hasn’t looked comfortable for a guy nicknamed Mr. Entertainment. Last week he was horrendous. This week he was fine, but his look is what may hold him back. The loud jackets and faux hawk aren’t endearing. Vocally, he’s better than CeCe, but she’s a much more interesting character for the show.

    For the mentors, CeCe performed You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me. It was a strong performance, even if it was vocally uneven. She looked determined, but worried. Jason’s performance of Total Eclipse of the Heart was exactly what he needed. It was heartfelt and authentic.

    Having the mentors whose acts are on the chopping block be part of the vote is dumb. Of course Demi wanted to send home Jason and of course LA wanted to send home CeCe. Britney decided that she wanted to send home CeCe and Simon wanted to send home Jason which made it a tie. To break the tie, the lowest vote-getter would be eliminated, which again begs the question, why doesn’t the act with the lowest votes just go home every time? If the mentor voting is dumb and you want the voting audience to feel more invested, why not just put it completely in their hands? Oh, because that’s how American Idol does it. And American Idol still nearly doubles the rating of the X Factor. Okay.

    Who went home?

    America voted wrongly and they hated Jason Brock just a little bit more than they hated CeCe Frey. My man Jason didn’t deserve to leave this early. No way.

    What was the voting order?

    12. CeCe Frey
    11. Arin Ray
    10. Beatrice Miller
    9. Lyric 145
    8. Paige Thomas
    7. Jennel Garcia
    6. Emblem3
    5. Fifth Harmony
    4. Diamond White
    3. Vino Alan
    2. Carly Rose Sonenclar
    1. Tate Stevens

    What does it all mean?

    I think it means that the country demo is hot and heavy for these shows and some of these acts will be singing country next week. But I wouldn’t take these too seriously. It’s clear that Emblem3 is far and away the best act of them all and they came in sixth behind Diamond White who the mentors didn’t even think deserved to be on the show. It also means the acts with an urban sound may be in an uphill battle. But I think we already knew that.