Nah sorry but remember how good The X Factor used to be? How you’d sit there, in the warm comfort of your nan’s living room, bourbon biscuits stacked on the sofa arm, heating turned up to full. How you’d watch someone walk onto the stage – some regional manager from Bolton in pedal pushers who screams “Proud Mary” and everyone cries because her cousin has cancer, or some guy from your primary school who has an acoustic guitar and walnut whip hair now – and you’d think you were watching them fulfil their dreams. How every year you'd forget that in a few months' time they’d be dropped by SYCO, develop a brief coke problem then go on This Morning about it, before performing in seaside panto or touring Butlins (unless they were One Direction or Little Mix, in which case $$$).
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Then there were the live shows, which were always themed and would usually involve a “twist” on the classics. How they’d force a recent divorcée called Karen to do a candlelit version of “Like a Prayer” while wearing a dress with a leg slit, or how they’d make the “rock chick” of the season come out from behind their guitar and stomp down the stage in backcombed hair and ripped jeans from River Island. How Cheryl would squeeze a single tear from her sparkly eyes and Simon would go “THIS is why I do the show” and you’d get pulled into it, you’d get pulled into the drama.Needless to say, these performances were also really crap. That gothy Halloween cover which you thought was “powerful” was actually just someone whispering “Fix You” by Coldplay while moving their hands around next to a wind machine. But as ever – in the grand tradition of crap British telly – because it was crap, it was also very, very good.With that in mind – and with X Factor’s 15th series (?!) coming to a close – we decided to revisit some of the more iconic moments from the show’s “Golden Era” (which is somewhere between Leona Lewis and when Gary Barlow called Tulisa “Fag Ash Breath” but also not really because there is one from 2015 in here and it’s so fucking funny.)No X Factor retrospective is complete without Cher Lloyd, the bequiffed mini Cheryl Cole who took the nation by storm simply by doing “Turn My Swag On” in a military jacket in her first audition (Simon’s glazed-over look in this footage is specially reserved when people turn into walking wads of £50s before his eyes). She then rapped to Coldplay (previously thought impossible, but Cher dared go where nobody else hath ventured) at Bootcamp. Her performance of “Stay” by Shakespeare's Sister for Halloween week – next to a curséd, curséd fake tree, hunched over in the gnarled gait of a suspicious old woman in a fairytale who says “dearie” a lot – is her most memorable, and is also a masterclass in how you too can create a very gothic atmosphere with just wind, smoke machines, and purple hair extensions!
WHEN CHER LLOYD SANG NEXT TO A WIZENED OLD TREE AND EVERYONE CRIED (2010)
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WHEN MATT CARDLE DID A DUET WITH RIHANNA AND SHE ACTUALLY PERMITTED HIM TO TOUCH HER WAIST (2010)
WHEN ALEXANDRA BURKE GOT SNOT ALL OVER BEYONCE (2008)
WHEN DIANA VICKERS DID A WHOLE BLONDIE SONG WHILE SAT DOWN IN ROLLER SKATES (2008)
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WHEN KATIE WAISSEL SANG ROCK \m/ SONGS (2010)
WHEN ONE DIRECTION WERE ACTUALLY LIKE THIS (2010)
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