Over-dramatic previouslies claiming that last week, "STARS! WERE! BORN!" And some were horribly aborted. But we skip past those, and go right to the teaser for tonight's stars...and tonight's black holes.
Steve is back on the road, in one of the X Factor trucks en route to Chicago, the home for the round of auditions. He reminds us that it's also the hometown of Kanye West, Jennifer Hudson and R. Kelly. Kind of surprised they mentioned her when they usually go out of their way to avoid any word of that other show. People have come from all over the Midwest, only to be greeted with some pretty shitty weather. Steve re-explains the basics of the competition: thousands of auditioners, hoping for a $5 million recording contract, for which they have to impress the judges -- Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, L.A. Reid and, in Chicago, Cheryl Cole. There'll be categories of boys, girls, over 30s, and groups. I'm still not comfortable with people in their twenties being referred to as "boys" and "girls."
The first act to try out is Brock, 18, and McKenna, 22, a couple of blonds from Springfield, Missouri. They met doing a musical four years ago and became best friends, and they get a nice, long interview talking about their chemistry onstage. Backstage, a PA asks if they're dating, and McKenna says, "Just friends," studiously ignoring the heartbroken look Brock gives her. Brock solo-interviews, "I love her, but she doesn't know it. I think one day she'll know it." Yes, I think that day is the day this airs, Sparky.
They take the stage and explain to the judges that they're friends, and that their moms are watching backstage. When Brock gets a little schmoopy, Simon asks if they're dating, and then the whole auditorium gets to see Brock make that same face. Yeah, I think McKenna knows. Anyway, they sing "Colder Weather" by the Zac Brown Band, and do a pretty good job with the ballad. Simon calls a halt after the first chorus, but the audience loves them. L.A. does too, telling them they made his day. Cheryl compliments their harmonies and vocal control, and Paula agrees. Simon says he's not a fan, but says McKenna's voice is "sensational," although I actually thought she sounded like the weaker of the two. Damn, now Brock's going to beat me up. Cheryl and Paula say yes, Simon takes his sweet time saying yes, and L.A. makes it unanimous. So, starting on an up note tonight. Except for poor, lovelorn Brock, of course. And their long, awkward, Jim & Pam showmance is properly initiated from the White Box. Better be some kind of a payoff, that's all I can say.
Steve welcomes us back from the ads with a lame rain pun, and then we meet Kim Terek, 35 years old with ten years of voice lessons under her belt. Simon asks why she hasn't been signed yet, and Kim says she hasn't tried pop music before. When she tries Katy Perry's "Firework," it's obvious. It's also obvious why. Clearly her niche is opera, for deaf people. Simon cuts her off early, and she makes the excuse that she couldn't hear herself. "You're lucky," Simon cracks. Walked into that one. Nos for Kim. Tim Quinn is 21, and this is first audition ever, and he's doing "Kiss from a Rose," against Simon's recommendation. Should have listened, because dude cannot hit the notes, and Simon says he knew it was going to sound like that. Amazing how he can tell how people are going to sing just by looking at them.
Robin Royal, a 45-year-old woman with glasses dressed like a 19-year-old stripper impresses Simon with her look, but her sound, not so much. "What the bloody hell was that?" he demands. She's done, and she's followed by a whole montage of nos. And then they're thrown for a curve by a gray-haired woman who takes the stage and announces that she's auditioning to judge. Obviously the judges are confused, and even when she shares a few thoughts on Britney Spears it's a no. I'm kind of surprised they even answered at all.
Time now to meet 16-year-old Skyelor Anderson from Mississippi, who wants to be one of the few black teenagers who becomes a country singer, and hopes to help out his hardworking mom. This is also his first audition ever, for anything, and Simon seems impressed with his story. He sings "Must Be Doing Something Right." He's certainly not doing everything right, starting off weak. When his backing track cuts out, he pauses and then continues, impressing the hell out of Paula in particular and totally winning over the audience. He sounds better without it anyway. Paula warns him that he needs to work on his vocals, but L.A. and Simon appreciate how he kept going in the face of technical difficulties. Four yeses for him, and I'm convinced that his backing track cutting out is the best thing that could have happened to him. Maybe he only brought ten seconds of it on purpose?
Up is Mark, or "J-Mark," a 31-year-old who is studying philosophy in Europe and totally looks like it. We see him doing math, you know, for fun, as he says he's got both sides of his brain working. "I have a special formula for success: J plus Mark plus X plus Factor equals five million dollars." We'll see. Onstage, he mumbles into the microphone and when Paula asks him what brings him to the audition, he simply says, "Money." L.A. at least appreciates the honest answer. Simon asks where Mark sees himself in ten years, and the answer, "At the helms [sic] of a renaissance" totally loses Simon, and makes him ask if he's ever dated Paula. Mark isn't ruling it out for the future. He'll be singing "Creep" by Radiohead, to his own backing track. It's a techno version, and he does some slow, dreamy popping and locking across the stage while doing his best to bring the song's title to life with his vocal performance. Paula and Cheryl and L.A. can't stop smiling, and the audience slowly warms to him, but Simon is just looking up at him like, "You don't fool me for a second." When he's done, Paula says she agrees with the lyric "I don't belong here," although she allows that wherever he's actually from, she's probably visited it a few times herself. L.A. prefaces his remarks with a prediction that J. Mark might not understand his critique: "It sounded so bad but felt so good!" Cheryl says she's like to visit that place, and Simon makes a smart-ass comment about Paula before calling a vote. Paula, Cheryl, and L.A. let loose with rapid-fire yeses, and Simon keeps the rest of his opinions to himself as J. Mark moonwalks off the stage. After J. Mark is gone, Simon says they must all be on Planet Paula.
And it looks like they're staying there for a while, as we see auditioners coming out dressed as hang-gliders, and robots before a Goth chick comes on and starts yammering about faeries and centaurs and shit. Simon sets her up, asking if anyone on the panel has inspired her, and of course she says Paula. Montage of Paula herself being weird, on at least four different days, and then some dude comes out made up like Grace Jones in the Outback, and when he says "Hello" it's like a chipmunk on helium. More of Paula being weird, then a flaky chic who introduces herself as a "crystal child." Backstage, Simon blames all this silliness on Paula, who provides a bit more of her own.
After the ads, a 15-year-old named Arin Ray earns four yeses with "Ain't No Sunshine," and then there's a 30-year-old guy named Josh Krajcik from Columbus Ohio who looks like a tubby slacker from Central Casting. He brought his mom, or rather she brought him, having done all the driving. She's pretty tense about what Simon's going to do to him, and assures us that Josh is a great songwriter. I'm starting to worry about Josh myself. She gets more camera time than he does, at least until he hits the stage. He's going to sing "At Last," by Etta James, and Simon is skeptical at this song choice, if not preemptively annoyed. Josh makes everyone wait through the long intro when we all know he's going to suck and then he...doesn't. In fact, his singing sounds like what Michael Bolton was trying for all those years, even as he just paces shlubbily across the stage. The whole audience loves him, and his mom is flipping shit backstage, she's so happy. After Josh is finishes, Simon talks about how he never expects to be surprised, but Josh blew him away. L.A. says he's not fooled by Josh's "before" look, saying. "You're too good." Cheryl and Paula are also impressed, and all four of them say yes, Paula adding a thanks to his mom for driving him there. "3,335 yeses," Simon says. Josh happily heads backstage to get a big, happy hug from his mom, talk about how this is the first step, and wonder where the bar is. So I guess he'll start on his "after" look later. Might as well enjoy being the male American Susan Boyle while it lasts.
After the ads, we're back in Seattle for some reason, for a whole new round of auditions. Not sure what that's about, but Nicole is going to be taking Cheryl's chair back. Montage of the four judges getting ready before the auditions, including Paula pinching her arm in her giant bracelet. It goes around your wrist, Paula, you dingbat. The judges take their seats, and we see the "first act," two heavyset, overmade-up women in hats and sunglasses supposedly just getting off the bus. It's another mother-daughter team, and mom clearly does all the talking. And when the daughter does talk, it's to show off some Mandarin she learned for when they play in China. Getting ahead of herself a bit there, I think. They take the stage, and it's the Good Girls, who Paula remembers form somewhere. "You wrote a screenplay about Simon." Which Simon has totally forgotten, probably because so many people are always writing screenplays about him. Simon asks why they started a group, and when the mother tells her story about being an old hippie, Simon realizes, "So you're the mother." Simon Cowell: saying things out loud that nobody else says since 2002. In fact, mom is 70 and the daughter is 31. They expect to be "global superstars" and "household names" in ten years. Mom tells her, "Sing," and they attempt "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye, a capella and so badly that Simon asks, "Was that serious?" They assure him that it is, and Simon says, "It was the worst group I've ever heard in my life." Nicole adds that she likes her music with "life," rather than whatever that was, and they're sent off with four nos and Daniel Powter's "Bad Day," which, what took so long? In the White Box, they seem to think the audience was on their side. Go on thinking that, ladies. Check back in ten years when you're global superstars.
is 14-year-old Drew Ryniewicz, a starry-eyed Justin Bieber fan from Arizona. We get to visit her bedroom shrine to the Biebs, and hang with her proud family backstage. Drew's main goal is to impress L.A., who she credits with Justin Bieber's career. If "credits" is the right word. In front of the judges, she's a little nervous, and when she says she's singing a Justin Bieber song, Simon makes with the "I woudn't do that" bit he's been doing, "informing" her that L.A. signed him. She says she made the song her own, and after L.A. warns her he might be a little extra-critical as a person who's so close to the song, she does indeed sing a slow, piano-backed version of the song, with lots of really controlled vocal breaks. The audience is on her side, and so are the judges before she's too far into it. Her mom's jumping up and down backstage like she never heard her daughter sing before. After she's done, Nicole is the first speak, saying she likes the original version, "Which is why it's interesting that I prefer your version to his." "So do I," Simon agrees. I really couldn't say, not being too familiar with the original. Sorry, I'm a grown-up. Paula also likes her, and Simon tells her, "This is exactly what I wanted a 14-year-old to do on this competition." Plus he thinks people Drew's age would buy her version of the song, so, bonus. L.A. has no trouble with her version of his song, telling her she's special, and when it's time to vote, Simon declares, "Easiest yes so far today." The other judges agree, so she's moving on, and she runs offstage happily adjusting her dress. She reunites with her family, and we hear her talk about how she even held back a little bit. Whoa. Her dad literally sings to his knees on their way to the White Box for more congratulations. In fact, it all goes on so long I'm starting to expect the shot of them to be replaced by a title card saying "The Ryniewicz family was killed by a drunk driver on I-5 ten minutes later." It's not, by the way.
Steve welcomes us back to Seattle, where a young female foursome called "Jada" gets onstage. They're not terrible, but they're not good either, and Nicole puts it best: "Girls, I don't love you." So they're done. Then we meet Peet Montzingo, who says he's 21 years old and wants to be a "teen heartthrob." Okay, nobody who says "heartthrob" is ever going to be one, and when he tells an intake person in the lobby that he's from Seattle but his heart's from L.A., I'm done with him. He gestures to his parents, who seem to be sitting down across the table, but nope: 6'1" Peet's parents are dwarves, although his dad is the second-tallest dwarf in the world. So if he were only taller than two more people, he wouldn't be a dwarf any more? Peet interviews about how if he does well in the competition, maybe he can fit in somewhere. "Anywhere." Okay, that's sad. Out onstage, he cracks up Simon by saying he wants to be a teen heartthrob at age 21. He tells the judges about growing up in a dwarf family and getting made fun of and how he's using this competition as a desperate attempt to fill the howling void in his soul, although he doesn't use those exact words. He's going to sing "Billionaire" by Bruno Mars, but with the lyrics all changed so they're about being famous instead. And Peet turns out to have an additional problem, in that he's not actually good. Like, at all. Into the awkward silence after Simon calls a halt, Paula throws Nicole under the bus, and Nicole reaches pretty far to find a compliment, saying she likes that he has big dreams. Simon agrees with Nicole, although "the singing was terrible to be honest with you." He also didn't like the changed words, "but it was sort of horribly honest." L.A. says Peet might be famous one day. I wonder for what? Paula compliments his comic timing. For the vote, Simon says he likes people who are ambitious and talented. "At the moment, you're one." Nicole says no to the singing, but that he might find some other way to get famous. He heads back and admits that it was bad, although he and his parents think L.A. would have said yes. In the White Box, they put such a positive spin on it that I understand for the first time why it's there and why it looks like that: from inside, it's impossible not to see the bright side.
Coming back, after a quick vignette where Simon chases Paula out of the backstage men's room, we meet four African-American nerds from Virginia Beach who call themselves "4Shore." Simon asks if they feel like winners and if they could sell records, to which they of course answer "4Shore." They're nothing if not on message. Simon seems a little worried that they're going to sing "I Swear" by Boys II Men, given how L.A. Reid wrote it and all. They start singing, and after a weak start, they get to about 80 percent good from where I'm sitting, although everyone seems impressed, and no one more than L.A. Reid. The first three judges gush about their harmonies, and Simon goes as far as to say that they'd make America proud. Spoken like a Brit, but they've got four yeses, so they're moving on, and everyone seems pretty happy about it.
Then it's a deceptively young-looking grandmother named Elaine Gibbs, who's an Aretha-style belter (and wedding singer) who kills "You've Got a Friend" and earns four yeses and a standing ovation. Then a skinny 17-year-old named Francesca Duncan sings Mariah Carey's "Hero," getting warm smiles and yeses from the judges. Then we fast-forward through some more good singers who leave the stage happy, and another wedding entertainer (this one's a DJ) named Tiger Budbill comes on and earns slightly grudging yeses from Nicole and Paula, mainly for one long, gratuitous note he held for a long time. L.A., however, says he doesn't live up to the other amazing talent they've seen, so he says no. It's actually down to Simon now, which rarely happens, and which he pretends he's not happy about, and finally he says it's Tiger's lucky day. Way to squeak by.
Time now for Phillip Lomax, a 21-year-old waiter. He thinks he's a hipster, with his hat and all, but I'd go with "cheeseball." He struts out onto the stage with his big cheesy grin, all but demanding a cheer from the crowd for being from Seattle and getting it. "You need more confidence, I think," Simon deadpans. Philip sings "Fly Me to the Moon" like a competent Sinatra imitator, only with more swagger, if such a thing is possible. Simon says he has self-belief and charisma, and although his voice doesn't like to be pushed, "You're interesting. I like you." L.A. and Paula and Nicole all like him as well, and vote yes. Simon tells him he needs to practice: "Your voice is way off winning, but I'm going to say yes." As Philip leaves the stage, Simon says, "He hasn't listened to a single word we've said." I don't know, I think he listened to the yeses.
I swear, these crowds need to stop making that "X" sign with their forearms, like, yesterday. Rapid-fire montage of Paula and Nicole shooting down some under-30 females, to the point where Simon and L.A. start declaring members of that demographic DOA as soon as they get on stage, and even start calling Paula and Nicole catty. Simon kind of crosses a line, however, when he compares one awful 20-year-old would-be chanteuse named Ivana Steelman with what Nicole would have been like at that age. And Nicole slaps that right down, saying there's footage online of her being on Pop Stars at age 20 and singing "I Will Always Love You." Which she does, right there at the judges' table, actually singing the hell out of it, while poor Ivana stands up on the stage like, "Are we done?" Well, Ivana is. Simon, however, is equally pissed off about being shown up. Well, don't start none, there won't be none.
So here comes Tiah Tolliver, 19 years old and all lips and bangs. While she preps for her big moment, she's unaware of the battle of the sexes that's escalating at the judges' table. Sure enough, Simon intones "D.O.A." when she walks out. Paula ignores him and makes Tiah justify her existence while her fiancé watches backstage with Steve's arm around him. She starts singing "Impossible" by Chantelle without a backing track, and she has a decent voice, starting low but getting a bit yelly and repetitive as the song goes on. Some key issues, though. Simon likes her because she's cute, while Paula is visibly wincing during the performance. When Tiah finishes, Paula mutters something about Tiah not staying on key and throws it to L.A., who says he usually prefers music with a backing track, which she didn't bring any of. Simon interrupts and tells him, "I've got a real feeling about this girl." In his pants, no doubt. "This girl has got something in her. I promise you." Would that something be Little Simon, he hopes? Nicole says she would have liked to hear her singing along with a track to see if Tiah can stay on one key, and Simon interrupts her, too. He also interrupts Paula's lecture about key, saying, "If you can't see this, you're deaf." Not helping his case much with that line. Simon's getting increasingly frustrated with Nicole and Paula, and when they start voting and Nicole says no, he throws a minor snit. The audience agrees with him, booing Nicole, and he jumps the line and says "I'm saying yes, a hundred percent." Cheers from the crowd. "Of course, yes, of course," Steve tells her fiancé, trying to keep him bucked up. L.A. goes with Simon, saying they've both signed a lot of artists. Paula tells her she has to go with her gut and say no. Simon throws something and bitches, dead-serious, "This is insane...you two are not giving this girl a chance." L.A. asks Tiah if she has anything that can change a no into a yes. She takes a couple of deep breaths, raises the microphone to her lips, and there' a smash cut to commercial that's so abrupt I thought my cable had skipped something. I think the only people more desperate to differentiate this show from that other show are its editors.
After we come back from the break and sit through a sepia-toned flashback to what happened all of three minutes ago, Tiah does pretty much the same thing she did the first time, only with "Don't Mean a Thing If it Ain't Got that Swing," complete with they key issues. Nicole and Paula seem unmoved, even as Simon literally begs them. He appeals to the audience, which seems to say yes. "That's why you have an audience," says Simon, who after all was willing to let himself be overruled by them last week. Nicole says she sees the steel in Tiah that Simon saw, but she needs to work on her vocals. With that, Nicole reluctantly blurts, "I'mgonnagiveyouachanceandsayyes." Simon takes it as a personal victory, while Paula stews in her impotent irrelevance. Backstage, Tiah kisses her fiancé for roughly forever, celebrates briefly in the White Box, and walks out saying she really wants to take voice lessons. Probably a good idea.
Afterwards, Simon and Paula are still arguing, until she tips over his snack bowl. I think they're made up now, because that's how they are.
Auditions wrap up tomorrow night. Looking forward to those being over. Or am I? Seriously, am I?
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.