Well, Elyar Fox is, I believe, a songwriter as well as a singer. I read something somewhere that he hawked himself around record companies in school holidays or something, so apart from anything else that determination will have impressed the execs. Whether they can make him happen, who knows? Number 5 isn't a bad placing for a debut single, even if it did drop quickly afterwards.


Like anything that involves fashions, the music business is perpetually cyclical. Remember when 1D were on the show and everyone was saying 'Boybands are over', 'The US aren't interested in boy bands' etc? Yeah, that.

I don't really get Elyar Fox either. His single was ok production wise, but I forgot it instantly. From an aesthetic point of view, he's good looking, but in a very bland, slightly insipid way. He'll need some exceptional material to get any bigger, I'd imagine, though the support slot on The Wanted's tour may win him new fans ready for his album in the summer.


Totally agree. Though, of course, that brings us back to the dilemma in marketing him. There definitely is a split in his fan base between the tweenies who mostly adore him for 'Nickyness', for want of a better term, or being 'omg perfect' and older people who recognise what he brings with his voice. Concentrate only on one set of admirers and you risk losing the other - I do worry that's going to be a problem regarding sales.

twitter:


Is this what he wants to do?
bree - I'm The Boss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-IECVvwyfQ

Put it this way, I think Conor Maynard is 100 times better than Elyah Fox...and I don't particularly rate Conor Maynard either. His last single R U Crazy was just a sheer embarrassment and I'd hate to see Nicky end up doing a song like that.

A track I liked a lot more than I expected by Conor Maynard (following 2 crap songs) was Turn Around featuring Ne-Yo. Now if they could get a song similar to this for Nicky, that would be brilliant for him.

I think Nicky should be able to do the pick n' mix type of album where there's a mixture of different styles. Like they did with Olly Murs second album where tracks like Heart Skips A Beat and Dance With Me Tonight couldn't be more different if they tried, but both tracks won over new fans for Olly Murs and gave him two UK #1 singles in the process.

I bloody hope not. What an absolute slice of shite is that?

Haha. I don't think he's referring to that. I think he's just being Nicky. That's exactly the sort of thing you can imagine him saying with a cheeky grin.

Does anyone know what that '100' emoji means/represents. I don't get it.

Cf. url:
http://emojipedia.org/symbols/hundred-points-symbol/

Oh ok, ta. Useful resource, that

And to put the 'I'm the boss' tweet in context, he's recently tweeted that he's bored. I think he's staying at a hotel with Luke who's busy doing a Q&A at the moment so idle hands and all of that…

Going by earlier pictures, Nicky should be leaving his idle hands firmly on the table where we can see them and out of mischief.

Haha. I agree with you. Wait, no, no I don't. MORE OF THAT SORT OF THING PLEASE.

No doubt it's been posted in the other thread but it looks like Luke has signed to Sony Music Global and Crown MGMT.

I know it's been discussed here already but I do wish Nicky had more of a professional manager who can get him out there helping him make a name for himself, and help promote the aingle/album.

After 5 days on YouTube, the video for Answerphone has only had 53k hits...but he has 326k followers on Instagram (the 193k followers on Facebook are likely to be the same people (teenage girls) as Instagram). I would've expected the video to have been closer to 100k by now.

Yep, the management thing is definitely a worry. What happened to the Daybreak feature, for instance? You can definitely see machinery behind Luke's activity outside of the XF tour, a clear strategy, but nothing is quite so apparent with Nicky, who's activity seems a lot more ad hoc. They're really in danger of losing the advantages coming fresh off of the XF has for launching a new act. I'm sure they've already lost a fair bit of momentum

Happy for Luke.

Someone in MF reckons Sony just distributing it and it's being produced independently?

I doubt that very much, given who he's been writing with.

Glad all 3 been signed now. Be interesting to see how it all pans out. I'd imagine this is the optimum time for all 3.

Yeah. Still no news on Rough Copy though I'm less interested in seeing what happens with them tbh.

Also, now that Luke's finally confirmed he's been signed hopefully some of the nastier minority of friendies will stop bitching at Nicky on twitter.

I try to avoid that. I get so pissed off at folk dissing him. Is there something about being a Nicky fan that means we have to have a morose and apprehensive psyche?

Anyway, I'm away to bed, humming mega upbeat 'answer phone'

Night night

Haha. Well there might be something in that. I mean, a combination of his upbeat positivity and the extraordinarily emotive qualities to his voice could be thought to be appealing to those of us with a slightly higher than average propensity for empathy and hand-wringing. Who knows?


Night night singlefish. Sweet dreams

How to count for foreign language versions of Youtube as e.g. RuTube?
http://rutube.ru/video/68ded97b37b4f...4e4e6d1500b3f/
They don't give statistics though, un,fortunately.

I presume there are also YouTube versions in Japanese, Corean, Chinese....

I completely misread that as redtube

I'm not sure how you'd count them, there were only about 220 views on the rutube version so unless it takes off particularly in any of these areas it's maybe not that big a deal.

It's on Muzu as well, with 12,000+ views last time I looked. The most popular video on there is Sam Smith with 30,000+ for comparison.

FWIW I've seen Answerphone come up on various radio stations 'now playing' tweets in random countries - Venezuela for one.

I do wonder about the strategy of going with such a frivolous pop song for first single. It's unlikely to appeal much to the older voters who backed him during the show, and I suppose there's a danger that if they hear that and don't like it, it might put them off from buying the album. I guess it depends on what their thinking is: If the thinking is to release something that cuts the XF baggage up to open up possibilities in future direction without worrying about chart placing so much, then job done. If the pressure is on for a high chart placing, I'm not sure how it will fare. The tweenies may be the loudest fans on twitter, but we don't know what proportion of his fan base off the back of the show they make up.

*wrings hands*

I think there may be different strategies in play:

- RCA needs more presence on the market of the teens. Teens are very volatile and tend to be fans of all potential idols they encounter (just look at the names they use for themselves on twitter). I'm very curious to learn what kind of songs "Smile" and "Solid Gold" will be.

- Nicholas may want to get rid of his image of a singer of ballads. I think he wants to get and develop appeal in the pop market of youngsters.

- He may not sufficiently be aware of his strenght (his voice) and be drained away from songs for which the vocals count and can be heard.

- The McDonald family may be surprised by the quick development and tend to protect the family. Bieber may be an example for being a success in the market, but I doubt the family will take a risk of Nicholas ending in the gutter.

- While his mother Eileen is a finance agent, it is not visible how this translates when negotiating with potential managers or with RCA. We all know the age of Nicky. She may not be in a hurry and keep a long term career for Nicholas as target. They just may loose the momentum created by the X Factor adventure.

- One should not exagerate the X Factor momentum. People outside Scotland may think Scots voting unfairly was advantageous for Nicky and dislike him for that. So he may have to create a new unbiased momentum in England. Can "Answerphone" give hime that? Just one song doesn't last for long. As Dumont sung: "A song is three times nothing, it's a bubble in the champagne, it hardly survives one season.." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQ8LJai8Ig

- What will Nicholas do after the X Factor? Re-enter the market of gigs at weddings in the Lanarkshire area? While others appear on posters of summer events, Nicholas has not yet much visibility for April and later.

I hope so. But I would like to see more evidence of a two-pronged push. I still think the double A-side would have been a perfect way to kick off his recording career. Answerphone coupled with one of 'grown up' tracks (A Thousand Years or Superman, perhaps) that would appeal to the older demo. I suppose A Thousand Years was only released very recently in it's original version, so I get why that may have been discounted but yeah, something that would build awareness of the album's contents, maybe get him some radio play on R2, for instance.


Yes, me too. I'm guessing Solid Gold will be a mid-tempo 'anthemic' track, given that it closes the album. Smile may well be a bit fluffy and throwaway, being placed right in the middle of the track-listing - I wonder if that was the one he co-wrote?


Yep, I think that's about right. He clearly doesn't want to be pigeon-holed as a ballad singer (what 17year old would?) and I also think he probably doesn't realise just how good and affecting his voice is. So there's more than likely a conflict there in terms of his actual strengths and what he would like to be.

In many ways he'd be much better placed a few years down the line when the pressure to be singing songs 'his age' (i.e. fluffy) has diminished.


Again I think this is about right, and an example of the counter-productive focus on his Scottishness the show put on him. One only needs to look at the MFs during the show to see how many people made the assumption that Scotland would be voting for him by default, despite evidence to the contrary. Whether they believe that genuinely, or it's part of the tendency many have to try and influence other people's perceptions to be more in line with their own preferences, who knows? If the perception takes hold and reaches a critical mass it can be difficult to overcome.


Oh God. I hope you're joking with that first sentence! He's going on holiday with his mates after the XF tour which I'm guessing will be April-ish. If talk of bringing out a second album of original material before the end of the year is actually planned rather than just enthusiastic optimism on Niky's part then perhaps he's due to go into the studio after that.

I do wonder how much his Long QT affects the plans for activity/live appearances etc. The medication causes fatigue as we know (hence all the napping) so perhaps they're playing it gently and avoiding over-booking him because it may simply all be too much. Red went to the Manchester gig the other night and mentioned that he looked tired It may be that he simply cannot commit himself to the usual hamster-wheel of promotional appearances. It'll be a real shame if that negatively impacts on his career prospects scale-wise, but of course ultimately his health has to come first.

"A THOUSAND YEARS, CHRISTINA PERRI, (ATLANTIC)"
is still in the charts, momentarily ranked 94th.
It's in the charts for 89 weeks.

Thinking ahead and long term I'd really like to see Nicky make a transition from being a "pop act" to more of an album's artist.

That way he would be able to do the pop stuff as well as the soaring ballads where his voice excels the most.

Of course, Nicky's health is important so we shouldn't frown upon the fact Nicky simply can't do the workload that Luke, Sam et all are likely to continue doing.

I guess we'll have a better idea say around September time if Nicky is indeed going to release a second album. I'm hoping this is true but on the flip side, I don't want Nicky doing all these slick productions with little in the way of a song (imagine Nicky singing Confident by Justin Bieber which is an absolute massacre of music, it's that shite!!!)

I'd still love to offer some of my own songs to Nicky but I know this is never going to happen.

I can't comment on the Justin Bieber songs as I've never listened to any of them, at least not while being aware of doing so.

There's no reason he can't combine the frothy pop singles with more expansive stuff on albums etc. I would still really like to see him hook up with a good producer/writer team, someone creative (as opposed to radio-hits-by-numbers) who'll write specifically for him and his voice and help him find his sound, but whether RCA are going to put resources into that, who knows.