The X Factor Vs. The 'X' Factor

Another year on, another blow to the world of music as the X Factor has graced our screens yet again with another group of mostly talentless, hysterical nobodies trying to crack their way into the music industry with virtually no effort or integrity. Before you go and pigeon hole me as one of those anti-consumerism/capitalism/whatever hippies, I love the X Factor. I watch it every week without fail unless my boyfriend switches it to Futurama and hides the damned remote (bitter? Me?). But you’ve got to admit, it’s the same thing year after year; one girl that can sort of sing, one super cute guy and one joke of an act that makes you want to tear out your hair and send it to them in the post as an act of protest. But this year, there is something different.

Kitty in one of her less revealing outfits

I am of course speaking of the love-her-hate-her-but-mostly-hate-her contestant, Kitty. Everyone I have spoken to launches into a bitter diatribe of “oh, but she loves herself and she’s just so weird and what is with her eyelashes?” I have to agree that Kitty is a very strange act, but that is what makes her brilliant. She has been criticised for dressing “like a hooker on holiday” but her outfits aren’t so different to those that Britney has worn in her on going Femme Fatale tour (which is coming to Birmingham next week!) and her styling is not too far from the likes of Lady Gaga or Nikki Minaj. As for her voice, it’s actually rather good as she proved from the off with a Queen power ballad in the very first show. Moreover, she’s entertaining, she has the “whatever will she do next” factor and she’s got something different. A certain je ne sais quoi. The ‘x’ factor, one could say.

Predictably, this different quality is what got her boos on last week’s results show, and what will inevitably get her booted off the show in week five or something because she’s just not conventional enough. The show is called the X Factor, but it really is just a massive hypocrisy. Every year, the winner becomes unidentifiable from the hoards of other X Factor winners that have shot to fame before trickling back down to join the rest of us in the dregs of society. Except they’re worse because they actually thought they could escape us, for a little while at least.

Kitty’s talent could have launched her somewhere great, maybe not in the charts top ten, but perhaps in the direction of a much loved esoteric artist (that’s for you, Will) that performs at favoured haunts UK wide such as G.A.Y , Glee Club or similar. It’s stupid to think that anyone will vote for her, that’s not what the X Factor is all about, but before she gets mercilessly ridiculed and then thrown into the shit heap of the ‘marmite’ ex X Factor-ees, take a minute to appreciate her truly different style and rather good talent before pixie girl goes and wins it and we can all start going out on Saturday nights again.