20 December 2007
The 2007 series of The X Factor wasn’t a vintage year: no dazzling winner like Leona Lewis, no breakout finalist like One Direction or Olly Murs, not even a people’s leftfield favourite like Jedward. Small-boyish Leon from Scotland beat big-boyish Rhydian from Wales, the two of them essentially distinguishable only by the colour of their brushed-forward ’00s hair. Neither gave the impression of being capable of a ‘Bleeding Love’ or even interested in one. I don’t recognise any of the other finalists – by name or by hair.
In the final, both competitors sang ‘When You Believe’—a previous Irish and UK top ten hit in 1998 for the power ballad duo of Whitney and Mariah from the animated movie The Prince of Egypt—and left it up to the UK public to sort out the admin. Leon’s version is really just a function of the show’s obligation for a follow-through single: a vaguely inspirational ballad, accompanied by the usual In Memoriam-style video to mark this pop career’s imminent demise. He has a pleasant sonorous voice, and as someone who has listened to all 13 of Westlife’s Irish number ones for you, I can’t say ‘When You Believe’ is bad – just nondescript. If this is what enrages you against the machine, drives an annual reflux of ‘Fairytale Of New York’ and enables LadBaby, it seems to me that you’ve all been wildly overreacting.
