They really need to scrap the sing off in the semi




not quite as matt won every week bar the first week which he was second/

I'm surprised at how badly they did. I did get the impression that they weren't especially popular but still, they narrowly escaped the Bottom 2 so many times..

The natural assumption would be that OTY/SK would have been attracting a good proportion of the teeny-tweeny vote. They may have figured that if they could break Fleur out as a 'current and relevant' act, compared with Ben the Leather-Jacket Van-Man, then she could pull a lot of those votes back away from him. Hence, the risk taken with 'Uptown Funk' the following week. Realistically, how else could they have closed the gap at that point?

As I like to number crunch the stats in full detail, I think we can all assume that once certain acts were shown the door at Bootcamp, we were heading for the same old stuff we see every year.

It was clear that Andrea, Lauren and Paul all had the positive hype for the first three shows. Now considering that the producers (Simon included) had thier eyes on Fleur and Stereo Kicks, they didn't want threats to thier favorites to be in the comeptition. Which is why on show 4, we saw the knife turning on Paul, along with Andrea and Lauren who slipped a little.

At the time, I thought the game changer happened on show 5 where Fleur was starting to gain momentum as the others continued to get treated badly by the producers influence with Paul taking the fall that night on what was his best performance in the sing-off against Jay who was never really in the running after all.

As for the entertainers of the Top 16, it wasn't a good Series for those act types either. Blonde Electra only getting just 1% is an X Factor record I believe and Stevi was always going to be a marmite contestant on both sides of the voting public so it's no surprise that he came middle of the leaderboard every week, apart from Halloween week where he polled third.

Highway To Hell was probably the "Summertime" moment of the Series where Ben opened the show and topped the vote in one swoop which I also think is a first for the show's history, looking back now, he was right to play that card so he could start winning the underdog vote whilst the early top 3 favorites were getting sidelined in favor of Fleur.

Stereo Kicks were never going to have a One Direction type journey, so I guess the producers gave up on them and switched to support Fleur to the highest degree instead, similar to how Simon hyped Gareth Gates WAY back in the Pop Idol years and we all know what happened then.

Andrea simply peaked too early, similar to how Danyl Johnson peaked early way back in Series 6 and he too had to go through two sing-offs, the producers weren't even trying to cover up the bus throwing on him, I can imagine how frustrated and angry Mel B was being, when the sabotaging began.

Fleur's journey to the final without winning a week does speak similarity to Olly and Marcus, the former which went on to have many years of success whilst the latter flopped. Uptown Funk was a must win moment for her and I thought we were looking at our winner as well, but Fleur not winning however will save her career in the long run as she'll have all the freedom she wants when making her debut album.

As for Ben, I'm not sure what kind of career he'll have knowing that he'll need to get to work on his music as quickly as possible once The X Factor Tour subsides, he could do a Matt Cardle like some have pointed out, but only time will tell I guess.

In summary, the boys and overs won the weeks for the second Series in a row. That's gotta be really demoralizing to anyone who's in a group or is a female and under 25, the focus for the next Series should be to find a way to get rid of the curse of the girls category.

Makes more sense that Paul, Lauren and Andrea were all deliberately sabotaged and ruthlessly picked apart one by one knowing that they were the top 3 for the first two weeks...

They seemed to do about as well in the vote as you'd expect for where they finished in the competition.

They were never the sort of act that was going to do particularly massively well in the votes.

It's interesting to see more generally how little differences the actual performances made to the voters though. Ben easily beating Fleur in the semi-final is particularly hilarious, given that Fleur was so popular with the music buying public that she was topping the iTunes charts that week…!

Yep that's how I see it too, Fleur never really had any chance of winning if you look at the votes. I am not sure if Andrea would have won without the derailing but he certainly would have finished ahead of Fleur.
I really don't get ben's popularity at all, I just don't think he's anything special, for me Paul and Andrea were far better but then I am not part of the demographic that tends to vote.

I didn't need to see the votes to know that


Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke, Sam Bailey er . . .

People who brought Fleurs single may not be voters on show and wait for actual material. I suppose wel find out soon enough.

BIB. How did they get skrewed by the producers? its a public vote so if the public really wanted the in then they would have voted for them.

Yes robbed and we knew it at the time.


Yes


Cowell had to have his way.


Cowell clearly lied when he saids it was close.


Nope.


But she was your favourite


In all but 2 years, they have done but Cowell likes as much controil as possible.


Very true. That why she had to go.


Have to agree. She cane 3rd.


I totally disagree.


Exactly


The public got bored with Andrea.


Cowell has realised that it takes control away from him.

Oh come on, it's easy to screw the acts! Yes the voters vote but what they get to see/hear and vote for is down to the producers!

BIB. I agree. I think next year in the semi final there shouldn't be a sing off

Ben trounced Fleur in 'Uptown Funk' week. That is HILARIOUS

That's pretty much the reason for his popularity.

By far the biggest voting demographic consists of middle aged women who don't buy music. They're just looking for somebody inoffensive who can fill their evenings and won't do anything too shocking or modern. And Ben fit the bill ideally.

I keep seeing this but am none the wiser as to what it actually means. Some think it was fixed for Fleur to win, well did think this, some that it was fixed for Ben but also kept pointing out how unsuitable Ben's songs were for him and how much they didn't like him

I just don't get why people cannot understand that taste is the significant factor here. I like Fleur and enjoy her singing but Ben has a great rock voice that I love. He is the first ever winner of X Factor that I am actually interested in

For the record, I used my free votes week in week out for Ben and Fleur though Ben mainly. I feel like I personally brought them to the final

I just hope the voters for Ben and Fleur actually buy the material else its just a waste of time.

It is pretty funny.

Just shows how irrelevant voting in the X Factor is when it comes to the real world of the music industry. Though everyone should be well aware of that already!

I'll ignore the uber offensiveness of this to just happily tell you that you are wrong, wrong, wrong

The point that's being made is Fleur was dragged to the final she would not have made it that far on a level playing field looking at the votes.

I was expecting much more. The judges' overwhelming praise and the reaction on here suggested they had some hope but, in reality, they scraped through week on week. Fleur wasn't the type of act expected to do well on this show either yet, even after very low exposure pre-lives, she wasn't scraping through the early weeks.

Other than that, this is Series 7 all over again - the 'typical' X Factor winner shoots out in front in one of the early weeks and remains untouched in the votes until the end, regardless of the strength of his performance. Fleur's semi-final performance still made history though, being the first non-winner's single to reach #1, and created the biggest buzz seen this year. Ben was simply as unstoppable as Matt, something I called in another thread.

Almost like a re-run of 1D's year, where they eased 1D's journey by shooting down the whole boys category by Week 5 - even the rather talented Aiden Grimshaw. This year, they couldn't get rid of Andrea so easily (although they targeted and whacked the other three in just three weeks)- so they turned him into a grotesque caricature instead: a camp, chubby, cake-guzzling, lapdog-snuggling, beardy Italian mummy's boy. Hardly what teen girls want for their bedroom wall posters. Having achieved that, they kept him around for entertainment value.

Fleur being a 'must-win' is interesting. After the amount the show gambled with the OTT mega-pimp over the last two weeks, you do get the feeling Fleur *had* to win or risk becoming a fizzle, if not a laughing-stock. Presumably, SC has a plan to recover her. One to watch for the future to see how it goes.

You are aware that most albums are brought by the over 40's? And that a lot of the 'middle aged women' who get so disparaged on this forum are the ones who were there at the birth of hip hop, the ones who started the weekender scene (and still go now), the ones who were the rave generation who spent their weekends at 24 hour raves, the ons who were there at the start of the Chicago house boom and have continued to follow the genre through the years?

Hitting your 40th birthday doesn't mean you forget everything that's gone before and knit along to Daniel O'Donnell albums. My mum is a pensioner and she's been to see Usher

BIB. I agree Alexander Burke came 6th 3 ties, 7th once, 4th twice, 2nd twice and 1st twice. JLS came 7th, 3rd, 4th, 2nd, 4th 5th, 5th, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 2nd. Little Mix were 4th, 6th, 2nd, 4th, 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 1st and 1st.

Well he was hardly ever going to be a pin-up type pop star.