Omg. I'm a monster.

You are.

I think you should write a thousand lines (tweets) to Nicky to get him to follow Chris as an apology .

Yeah. I might just about manage to forgive her if she gets me a follow.

A standard exercise when hiring someone, or starting a new business, is to make a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).
It is difficult to do that in a forum of fans, but I take the risk of being excluded from this club.

X Factor may be a very stange exercise, take Johnny Ruffo
At the audition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jataSPhTZDs
Mel B: "There is no doubt that you look good … but you can’t sing."
but he made the final:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=925SGkyNZzU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Yl3DhasmI
He actually ended 3d:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X_F...ralia_series_3)
I guess the public liked his appearance on TV, and even Mel B had to accept that.
His singles didn't do that well though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Ruffo

I tried to start a little SWOT for Nicky with my own perception:

Strong points
He CAN sing (even Gary Barlow admits that)
His voice has a very personal sound
He can remember the words of his songs
He has ambition and want to go "all the way"
He is a cute young man
His mum will protect him from wrong decisions for his future
He can build on his X-Factor reputation
He gets some experience with performing on stage through X Factor.
He will have some records on the market soon
YouTube certainly helps. (Searches on "X Factor" worldwide may make him pop-up)
He is breaking out of just being a singer of balads
He has a significant fan base.

Weak points
He must have some limitations (was "rubbish at school")
Talking Scots English is cute, but ..
He is focussed on singing to perfection, but still has to become more relaxed on stage
Short term view: Nicky wants his "album" as if it were some fetish thing to get in a rush, and what afterwards..?
Now he has to organize things on his own, without family & friends around him, even without motorbike (staying at some hotel in London?)
He cannot easily be contacted for inviting him for a gig.
On TV he is mainly known by viewers of UK cable TV (itv, stv)

Question marks
The financial picture: The McDonalds family has 4 kids to raise
What costs are covered by RCA (and eventually by X-Factor for the next two months).
Does the McDonalds family have a strategy? a plan? (The X Factor outcome may have been a dream, but in reality it may be something completely new for them)
Do they have their business plan? (That's that stupid thing banks ask at first when you want to get a loan for business)
Does the RCA have a plan and a commitment? Or is it still "Lets do a test and see"? Then drop him or put some money on the horse?
Limitations with Nicky's condition (heart)? Stress level. Need of rest & sleep? (My father had something similar and he needed having some sleep during the day)
Who will manage him on the long term (if his plans exceed the Lanarkshire counties)?

How would you approach if you had to manage Nicky?

Aww, it was meant as a joke.

Besides, i just regard age as a number. I'm 33 but look about 25 (baby face and all that) where I also know people younger than me who look older (non baby face and all that ).

It's true, you're as young as you feel.

"Talking Scots English is cute, but .."

So you think having a Scottish accent is a weakness? What about Sam's brummie accent?

I don't see that having a Scottish accent is a weakness at all. It's mellifluous and makes him stand out. The only problem I could see it engendering is for Americans to understand him, but they hardly matter at the moment.

*sigh*

He just had one of those retweeting sessions again and lost another couple of hundred followers.

You'd have thought #NickyHQ would have explained to him why he shouldn't do that.

Yeah, it was a lot of spam, I'm surprised he didn't lose more than that.

Does it not get a bit tedious that they only ever tweet such self-absorbed stuff?

Or as young as the man you feel

I thought this was an interesting exercise, and essays are always welcome in this forum


I agree with this to a certain extent, although it's not up to him at the end of the day; they're all at the mercy of sony's decisions. But I do get the same kind of feeling as you I think.

More replies later no doubt, I don't feel very well just now

It's frustrating because his follows are continually creeping up but then he throws a whole big bunch of them away every time he does that.. I wonder how many followers he's lost in total from ill-advised spamming. He certainly lost at least a couple of thousand when he did the retweets of all the 'follllooooowww meeeeee' s a couple of weeks ago.

As for the self-absorbed stuff - well I guess so. He's caught between it being a normal twitter and a marketing tool, so he'll be expected to promote himself but he doesn't necessarily have the skills to do that effectively (i.e. the spams). Having said that, how many 17 year olds have you come across who aren't self-absorbed anyway? It comes with the territory!*

(*I actually think he's a little less self-absorbed than your typical 17 year old, possibly because of his experience with his heart condition - nr death experiences I think tend to help engender empathy in general)

I agree. It just handicaps him for participating at talks shows or interviews outside the UK. Whoever invests in him will keep the US market in mind.

Yep, I also agree with this to a certain extent, though we've discussed this earlier in the thread. I don't think there's a right answer for launching a runner up into the market. I don't think there's a right answer for the winners either, to be honest. The year wait worked for Leona, but not others. Jahmene's album didn't come out until May but was only covers. I think it's all a bit of a crapshoot, tbh.

If this album is considered within the record company as a stop-gap until one that's been fermenting a little longer comes out later on the year, or early next year, I'll be happy with that. If they're slamming this out in order to see how it does, and then decides it's not sold enough (despite it only being a covers album and therefore being subject to the same problems sales-wise as any other covers album) and then drop him, I'll be hugely disappointed and pissed off. We can only speculate as to the details of the contract, however. I suspect it's only a one-album-see-how-it-does deal, but some things Nicky has said about wanting to do an original one later in the year gives me hope that perhaps that's already in the works, and there's actually serious thought going into developing him as an artist independently of how this album does.

It's far too early to think about the US market though. He needs to be successful here, first.

If things go well, then they can soften up his accent a little later on. It's not really anything to be concerned about at the moment.

Whoop whoop!

Some girl just tweeted that she'd heard on the radio. I asked her what station. She said Capital \o/

So whoever said radio would't touch it on the MFs can go eat some crow

I see Nicky's thread now has more posts than any of the other 2013 contestants' threads.

True, I guess. I think I'm probably being a bit unfair on all of them really. It just gives me an impression of them that I dislike, but it's not aimed at me anyway so I should just shush I guess.

I'm feeling awfully cynical atm :-|

If I remember right NIcky's album has more original stuff than Jahmene's (dont' think his ahd any at all?), which is surely a good sign. Especially since they really did seem to rate Jahmene awfully highly.


Or he could go down the crowdfunding route for a second album if they did drop him? It's worked for plenty of others, and does seem to give them a bit of credibility. I'd thought of that as a possible route for Lhiss too, when i still gave a ****.

Edit: though of course that's a ton harder for him, not being a songwriter afaik, than it would be for L. sss

That's excellent, exactly what he needs. Good to see.

Oh don't worry, I totally get it. It's easy to forget how young they are because they're so talented, especially Nicky - (I can't remember a 16 year old ever getting so far in the competition before?) and that can cause a bit of a disconnect between their performances and their online presence. But then if you compare and contrast their tweets with 99% of the ones they get bombarded with from girls the same age, you can see that, despite their social media defences, they're a hell of a lot more well-adjusted than the majority of people their age. And yes, I'm talking about LHiss too

Yeah Jahmene's was all covers. I guess they might have interesting arrangements or whatever, but I've never listened to it. I quite liked Jahmene except when he went overly screechy and lost his place in the middle of one of his riffs. And also when he looked like an automaton. But I've never bothered to check out his album - just goes to show you the dangers of a covers album. I would probably have been reasonably interested to check some original stuff out.




Ah I didn't see the edit previously, but I was going to say exactly the same thing. Crowdfunding could work really well for Luke, because he could be totally self-sufficient if he wanted being essentially a WGWG and writing his own stuff. Nicky, however, would need (good) songwriters and (good) producers more.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying they should. Personally I adore his accent. But americans are notoriously bad at deciphering different UK accents (at least if the American media is to be believed). Anyway, as I said, any thought of America is completely presumptuous at the moment anyway. The focus should be on establishing him here and getting good, original material out to do so.




Yep. I did a little squee.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssss!!!!!

IKR!!!

In other news, I'm acting like a teenage girl again. One day I'm going to have to make a decision not to be mental anymore.