There were plenty of problems with X Factor on Wednesday night, but if you had to narrow the blame to one thing, it would have to be the song choices.
From Jennel Garcia's opening fumble on Rolling On The River to Diamond White's take on Halo, Beatrice Miller's rendition of Time After Time, Arin Ray's attempt at Crazy For You and Carly Rose Sonenclar's version of My Heart Will Go On (My Head Will Explode!), the song choices were boring and meaningless for the singers. And then there was CeCe Frey's version of the unspeakable All By Myself. LA Reid predicted CeCe would come in last again in the popular vote, and it seems likely he's correct.
With the exception of Vino Alon's soulful Let's Stay Together and Emblem 3's No One (and maybe Tate Stevens' version of From This Moment), the songs and the singers just didn't go together. The others were handed songs that were poor matches for their vocal talent. Or anyone's vocal talent. Even Beyonce can't turn Halo into something you want to hear again.
After the song choices, the second worst part of the evening was the video sob story that played out for some of the singers before they performed. Epic presentations of homesickness, poverty, unemployment, heartbreak all seemed to be played for maximum sob value. Nobody wanted to play the dignity card?
Whether or not there's any lasting talent under the costumes, hair and makeup, wind machines and bellowing backup singers wasn't really established Wednesday. We'll soon find out how viewers rated these competitors. Since nobody was sent home and no votes were tallied, the evening was not much more than an amateur hour with tons of advertisements and lots of toothless commentary from the judges. Speaking of advertisements, it's a sad comment on X Factor that the highlight of the show was that Pepsi commercial with One Direction and the NFL's Drew Brees.
On the competition front, what do you think about LA Reid predicting that Carly Rose Sonenclar would win it all? Our only predictions are that CeCe, Jenelle and Diamond White are all on their way out.
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