X Factor Blog: It gets better every week!

So the first live show concluded last night (thanks for making us wait tv3), the fate of the overs and the girls have been decided and the contestants have been whittled down to a final 12. From next week, the American public get their say in who stays and goes.

We started last night with the rest of Nicole’s over 30′s category. On mentioning Nicole it’s got to be said…what was she on? She seemed all over the place almost like she had no clue what on earth was going on. Get it together girl! It’s a shame as I think she has one of the two strongest categories along with Simon but I think she is going to balls it up quite frankly. Harsh, but true.

Leroy Bell, he of the ever youthful looks took to the stage first with Pink’s Nobody Knows. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t the most amazing performance. I think he is capable of doing better than that but I enjoyed it all the same. I fully agreed with Simon’s comments regarding Stacey Francis. I think she does have a church singer vibe and I don’t think the song choice showcased her abilities the best it could have. Josh Krajcik was the last to perform and wow did he do an amazing job! His voice is incredible. My only gripe is the amount of reverb they had going on (the same for a lot of the acts), it sounded odd and I wish they’d toned it down a little. All the same, Josh rocked that performance and proved that with a voice like that, you don’t need dancers, you don’t need a pyrotechnics show going on in the background, you don’t need anything, just to sing! Thankfully I got my exact wish with the overs, Dexter got through to the live rounds and was sent packing in the first show. Good job too, it would have been incredibly unjust had he been put through over the others.

Finally we came to my favourite category. The girls. First up Simone Battle took to the stage with Just Be Good To Me, a song done last year on UK X Factor by Cher Lloyd…and done better. Simone proved that her claim to be “like no other popstar in todays market” was a tad (read: totally) false. She looked the part, but didn’t pull it off so well, her vocals were off the mark. She was quickly forgotten when Rachel Crow (who is fast becoming my favourite this year) took to the stage with a mashup of Justin Bieber and The Supremes, Baby/Where Did Our Love Go, my favourite version (I believe Julia Nunes did it first, at least that’s where I first heard it, and it’s genius!). I loved Rachel’s styling, and her voice is fantastic. She still needs to adjust to the stage a bit more and looked a tad awkward a couple of times, but put that down to her young age. She’s a born star! Drew (she’s dropped the impossible-to-spell last name thank god) took on Flashdance, What A Feeling in a very stripped down fashion…shame as it’s not a song that works that well as a slowie, but it was a damn good performance all the same. Tiah Tolliver with a performance amusingly dedicated by Simon to “Cruella and DeVille”, it was not bad, a completel contrast to someone like Josh’s or Drew’s performance, proving that if you DON’T have the amazing voice, you do need a bit of a show. But there’s nothing wrong with that and she did a capable job. Last but not least was Melanie Amaro, who Simon originally didn’t bring to the live shows, but thank god he did. She took on Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing, and no surprises there, she owned it. If she’s not in the final, i’ll be stunned. Decision time for Simon, and despite spending so much time bigging up Simone and Tiah, he sent them home. It was the right decision, he wants to win and I think he’s picked the girls that give him the best chance of doing so.

From next week on we’ll finally get a better idea of just who the American public likes and who they don’t when they get to vote on who stays in. The judges still get final say for a few shows yet (if you don’t know the format, the bottom two compete in a sing off and the judges vote on them as to who stays and who goes, so unlike in idol you don’t get any random upsets of someone amazing being sent home from an odd public vote ala Jennifer Hudson).

What do people think of the final twelve? Did Simon make the right choices? Did Nicole? (I’m not expecting anyone to seriously argue that she didn’t). Leave a comment and let me know what you think!