http://vimeo.com/37649226

He looked very different, and be warned it's a bit disturbing but obviously it all had to be toned down for Saturday night viewing.

Just for those people who didn't know about it before tonight.

To be fair, James Arthurs version has about as much in common with this version as the original Eurthymics version.

Sorry, here's my missing apostrophe.

'

True, but not for the correct reason.

I thinking of drawing up a shortlist actually for the next songs to get the 'tortured artist' treatment, there's quite a few strong possibilities out there.

Yeah that is Marilyn Manson. His early industrial stuff was decent, but for me will alwys live in the shadow of Nine Inch Nails.

You do realise OP that James is not Marilyn Manson? Just the way you have worded your post...

If he touches Joy Divsion though I will not be held accountable for my actions

I think they know... I think that's their point.

Meh. I don't get why people get upset by cover versions. The originals are still out there. They're not diminished just because someone does a version you don't like.

Well it just bugs me when they do a version of a very famous cover of an original song, but then dress it up as the 'original' contestant 'making it their own'. Happens nearly every year and people start wetting themselves, who hadn't heard the cover before.

Just be honest about it, same as when Aiden did Gary Jules' cover of Mad World.

These covers were significant because they were at the time quite inspired to do, let people know where they came from. It wasn't from James, or Aiden, or XF.

I don't think James' version sounds anything like this, but as someone pointed out on my twitter feed the riff/baseline of James' version sounds very similar to the Muse version of Feeling Good

The actual arrangement would have been borrowed from somewhere as well.

The style though, that's wholly Marilyn Manson. Which is why it surfaced for the Halloween Show of course.

If the arrangement was one original to the xfactor, it's bloody unlikely that the singers themselves had anything more than a passing say in what it actually sounds like ...
"I think it should be quite dark, quite rocky..." is the likely input from them; just like celebrity perfumes; "Yeah!.. can it smell fruity?", none of them are trained perfume-making-guys

With a few exceptions (when they do one of their own songs) ALL XF performances are covers.

Atributing the cover to another cover on the live show only happens if one of the judges decides to mention it.

From a strategic POV the votes lost from this ommision are approx zero vs votes gained from people thinking its 100% original - could be quite a few.

This assumes that you and folk who think it matters were not fans in the 1st place. Fans like myself dont care.

You do the maths.

Of course this forum once wanted to cheat Leonard Cohen out of his dues in favour of Tim Buckly, now THAT did upset me.

Not this again.

Let's face it, bananafish, you're never going to like anything James does.

If you rewatch both video's they are clearly different versions but i can see why everyone is making this assumption, if you don't watch the two versions back-to-back they do seem on the surface to be very similar.

The intro for both is extremely similar granted, but they are not the same.

Mansons style is quite different, but it is clear this is why it was used for the theme, because of the Manson version.

Going the whole hog with the MM version would have just ended up very silly, he's a character and James is meant to be James even if he is really over-doing the tortured artist thing.

As alluded to in the OP, you sort of ended up with a Diet version of it. Less challenging, easier to digest, but where it's sprung from and why it fits with the character and sales-pitch they are building for James is obvious. As well as why it fitted with the Halloween show.

Respect you for admiting that it was not a verbatim copy as I tried to point out on a previous thread.

Most things on XF end up diluted down or tampered with, even the Sugababes last night! Quite how they managed to mangle Freak Like Me as much as that I have no idea.

So the chances of a full-on Marilyn Manson appearing were quite slim

^
This

I don't think he ever claimed that he did the arrangement to the song himself. He came in for the same criticism on here last week but he never says he is arranging the songs himself. It is likely he looks around for different versions of the song to see what he thinks is most current, and most relevant to him.