Cheryl Cole: Shocking Debut

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by admin in Entertainment, Film & TV, Music

What do you get when you cross a pretty, pint sized pop star with some dreadful vocals? You guessed it Cheryl Cole’s X factor debut.

For weeks the newspapers have fed our minds with nonsense about “national treasure” Cheryl Cole’s eagerly anticipated debut material from her forthcoming album 3 words. Clearly a cleverly timed publicity move which would see the release coincide with.. you guessed it… the X Factor live shows; and killing two birds with one stone by showcasing the Geordie judge’s new single and first solo performance, on the Sunday night live results show.

Since arriving on X Factor’s judging panel in 2008, Cheryl Cole hysteria was everywhere; girls wanted to be her and men wanted to be with her. Her down to earth northern charm melted viewer’s hearts and amazing looks took our breath away. However being blinded with our rose tinted glasses firmly stuck on our heads we let slip from our minds the incident of “toilet gate” where Cheryl Tweedy (as she was known) punched a toilet attendant in the face and seemed completely unapologetic towards her actions.

But back to the issue at hand.

Since Cherylmania swept the nation and Girls Aloud were on a break, record bosses had a bulb light idea to cash in on the hype. Her seat as an X factor judge was firmly secured and now she would embark on a solo career; however many were people were baffled as to what she was doing judging hopefuls on their singing abilities when we had never witnessed any great vocal credentials on her part.

Hmmm! This did not make any sense, surely anybody who was going to be judging others had to be able to sing themselves? But in the world of show business this was irrelevant, X factor needed to be revitalised and what better way to do this than to include a beautiful, young pop star as an additional member of the judging panel.

Ok so we accepted that she wasn’t the best singer in the world and hypnotist I mean fellow judge Simon Cowell convinced us into believing that following her experience as a contestant on Popstars: The Rivals she would be able to relate to the hopefuls as she knew what they were going through.

It was almost as if we were spell bound and under Cowell’s control. There was nowhere to hide with X Factor, Britain’s got Talent, American Idol, America’s Got talent shown on nearly every channel. Is there anywhere we could go to escape the wizard that is Simon Cowell sucking us all into a reality TV spiralling hole? There was no channel you could turn to without seeing Cowell’s overly tanned grin on our box sets.

However when we learned that Cheryl’s debut performance would NOT be live we all gasped in disbelief. It seemed ironic that she would be placing judgement on others for something she could not do herself, and then the backlash began. Cheryl performed her single “Fight For This Love” to over 5 million viewers on the results show and instead it appeared that she had to “Fight For This Breath”. Her vocals were weak and in fact managed to make gruesome twosome John and Edward sound like Andy Williams. The military inspired jacket and see through top were a little on the tacky side, and even with a million back up dancers crammed on the stage like sardines the performance lacked energy.

What was baffling was that as a member of Girls Aloud, Cheryl always seemed to manage singing live with vigorous dance routines so what happened this time? Then I remembered that she always had Nadine Coyle on her right to drown out the sound of her screeching. In fact I’m beginning to wonder if the production team “forgot” to turn on her microphone so we were actually never hearing her voice.

It may be harsh and you can call me old fashioned but there’s something about buying music and getting pleasure from listening to a talented singer, and with mediocre voices so available to us, its no wonder everybody thinks they’ve got a shot at being the next big thing.

Written By A.I

Tags: Highlight