Here is the difference between the X Factor and American Idol:
1. Idol has strict age limits on contestants (over 30 -go elsewhere), XF doesn't.
2. AL has no musical accompaniment to mostly solo singers. SF includes full groups and has musical accompaniment.
But otherwise? Based upon yesterday's two hour premier, it is the same thing. A bunch of auditions, some good, some hideously dreadful, a yes or no vote to the next round, family back stage waiting, some background stories, and finally they will move onto the next round, so on and so forth. The winner gets a record contract and $5M.
And the quality of Factored Xs's are really, really bad.
Look at it this way: tens of thousands of auditions for American Idols and they've found Kelly Clarkson so far. really? You could find more throwing darts at rows of names. But how could it be otherwise? These are cover artists in a songwriters game, if they can't write their own material, how far can they go?
Simon Cowell is the same as always, maybe a little better. Of the other three LA Reid is testy as fuck and seems to be scowling even when he is impressed and Paula Abdul plays the same foil for Simon as she did on AI. They should've stopped at three, and # 4, Nicole Scherzinger, is so much a fifth wheel it is embarrassing. Even when a contestant covers her former band the Pussycat Dolls song, she can't get out of her platitudes.
Nothing expresses where this show is going better than a midway forty-two year old woman with two children who had been been abused by her boyfriend. Blubbering like a baby, whining about how he killed her confidence., she performed an atrocious over the top "Natural Woman" and Cowell said it was one of the best auditions he has ever heard.
Well, now, that explains a lot.
So how bad was it? It was better than last seasons AI but not by much.
Will I watch it again? I sincerely doubt it.
Grade: B-