This is the first series of the X-Factor that I have watched. Before, I was of the opinion that it wasn’t my sort of thing so I ignored it. Now, I love it.
Before, the slings and arrows of its pop-rageous misfortune were as mysterious to me as the controls of the Hadron Super-Collider. Now, the faces of the contestants are more familiar to me than some members of my own family. Before, I used to be the sort of person who went out on Saturday nights. Now, I am not. I am married and have a child.
It is popular to knock the X-Factor. Many would criticise it for being a flimsy and insidious blemish on our otherwise golden TV schedules. But hang on, the X-Factor is a talent show! And all talent shows have a bit of whiff of shitness about them, don’t they? To criticise the X-Factor for this is rather like complaining that your grandfather is old. Or that Monday would be better off in the middle of the week. Obvious. Pointless. Lazy.
The very idea that the X-Factor is dong any real damage to our children/culture/musical heritage is to ascribe it with way, way too much heft and muscle. According to some, the show must be stopped or the Earth will fall – as if animated by the hand of Terry Gilliam – into an intergalactic sausage mincer of Armageddon.
A recent critic of the X-Factor has been Sting, who referred witheringly to the contestants as karaoke singers. Now, I really like Sting records. I own several and even listen to them but that doesn’t make me agree with him. He seems to think that shows like the X-Factor (and excuse me, but how many others are there anyway?) are the death of popular music. And yet I bet Mrs Sting has a Will Young CD in her car. Sting has kids; I bet one of them really likes Girls Aloud. And so a tiny fact sustains me… That even though he’s made a mountain of money from making ‘proper music’ the teensiest fraction has probably been spent on a Leona Lewis tune or two for one of the 47 ipods used at Sting Towers. And that fact ought to eat away at his insides like a giant bubblegum-pink tapeworm with Dannii Minogue’s face on it.
The other evening I heard Stuart Maconie and Mark Radcliffe grumbling about the X-Factor. They’re two gentlemen whose views I usually find are worth hearing but not on this occasion. They moaned about how the show was doing real damage because it was the only way the ‘the kids’ were able to find out about music. They made a kind of mewing noise, like two pensioners who had both just picked two particularly acidic sherbet lemons from a paper bag and were in mild dental discomfort. They said that proper music like Kate Bush and whoever would just die if the only place music could be found on TV was the X-Factor. What rubbish! When I was a kid, I listened to the chart show on a Sunday night and I watched Top of the Pops once a week and THAT was the only music I listened to. My record collection was not built thanks to Arena or The South Bank Show. Then I liked Rick Astley and Erasure and ABBA. But I was fifteen for goodness sake. Now I’m older, I still like all that stuff but I also like Tom Waits and Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin. And John Coltrane and Puccini and Mahler for that matter. It’s OK, don’t worry. A generation of X-Factor viewers won’t grow up thinking Mariah Carey is the one true God.
Anyway, the ways you ‘find out about’ music in 2009 are very different than they used to be. I still listen to Radio One occasionally and hear something new. But mostly I’ll explore iTunes, where this year I’ve discovered the XX, Devendra Banhart and Little Comets. I’ll still listen to ‘We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off to Have a Good Time” by Jermain Stewart and the world won’t end! Plus Later… with Jools Holland is still doing good business on BBC 2. That’s pretty accessible.
The X-Factor underlines the trouble with talking about culture in general and music in particular. Even the smartest minds and sharpest pens seem unable to avoid falling into the most obvious trap. Surely you should be able to say that you like something without having to proclaim its relative merits? The critics’ ego can’t help itself. “If I like it, it must be good. If I don’t like it, it must be shit!” If you criticise the X-Factor for being lowbrow and somehow corrosive it doesn’t matter how many syllables you use to do it, its still basically just playground name-calling.
I love the X-Factor. I think it’s very entertaining and my wife and I are glued to the TV for an hour every Saturday and Sunday night. I was so impressed by one of the singers this week that I even voted for him. On the red button. SO THERE!
And then when it was over for another night, I decided that I’d quite like to listen to some Muddy Waters. So there, too!
To all you X-Factor haters out there, I would say this: I reserve the right to like what I want to like and not to be made to feel inferior if my preferences don’t meet the exactingly uptight standards set by the barons of taste. And besides, The X-Factor is only on for a couple of hours a week anyway, so if you’re that worried that it’s going to take us all to Hell in a handcart, why not spend that time volunteering at a local day centre and try to fix the fucking world that way instead.
