27 September 2007
The final three months of 2007 see the Irish number one spot taken by three winners of The X Factor in a row, making it four Irish chart-toppers for UK TV talent show winners that year alone. And there’ll be three more in 2008 and four in 2009. To put that in context, there have only been five Irish number ones from Irish TV talent show winners in total, ever. As I’ve said here before, this is understandable given the pop-cultural clout of our bigger neighbour, and it’s not a problem for me in theory, but it’s a problem for me in practice when those UK TV talent show winners’ singles invariably turn out to be the flatpack turn-a-buck merch of simpering boyband ballads, like applied Westlife.
That’s the winners’ singles, though, where they’re obliged to round out the TV show narrative by releasing something uplifting and inspirational about their journey. By contrast, ‘If That’s OK With You’ is a past winner moving on to uptempo ’00s R&B-pop with a swingbeat rhythm and modish warped vocal effects. Max Martin’s name is in the credits. And Shayne Ward has a bit more personality and presence than the next few shy-boy X Factor winners. Still, for all the grown-up urges of lines like “we’ll keep the neighbours awake too late” there’s an awful lot of Westlife-style lifelong-commitment schmaltz, from “I’m gonna saint your mother just for giving you birth” (get in well with the mammy in true Irish boyband-lad style!) to “I wanna keep your toothbrush at my apartment / Make a second set of keys and ask you to move in”. Also, I want to make your packed lunch every morning and do your laundry. Our next X-Factor-winner number one, though, will have higher stakes than toothbrush ownership and be a whole lot better for it.
