Music matters: And the winner is . . Cowell

Published on Friday 20 November 2009 14:45

THEY can't sing, they can't dance, but somehow the British public are fascinated to the point of obsession by John and Edward Grimes, aka Jedward.

It would be too easy to say folks just have bad taste. Yes, they do, but on this occasion it seems like they're intent on having the last laugh.

You see, people aren't so dumb as the media like to suggest – they enjoy a good joke and the X-Factor is just that, a good joke with songs and fireworks and bright lights and shiny suits. And how to make this great big pantomime even more fun than to watch its chief villain squirm every week?

Who won't love it should Simon Cowell hold true to his word and leave the country after Jedward win the X Factor? I, for one, would be all for that.

The X Factor has put British music back years by steering the public away from genuinely talented musicians in favour of glorified karaoke singers who are told what to wear and what to sing, and for that I point the blame in the direction of one man.

I blame Cowell. It's all his fault. The Don King of pop music has a frightening stranglehold over the entire music chart in the UK at the moment – and he's achieved it all by creating this 21st-century Opportunity Knocks. He must be stopped.

Right on cue, it seems as if underdog-loving Britain is silently conspiring to break the dark lord of Saturday night television's monopoly on the charts by allowing Jedward to hijack this year's X Factor talent search, the aim being to show it up for what it really is - a load of old tosh.

Genius? Er, not really. The truth is Cowell has it set up so he wins even when he loses. Just look at the tizz the public are currently in over Jedward. Record audiences are tuning in to see if they stay in the competition, while trees are having to be cut down at a rate of knots to cope with the column inches devoted to the whole sorry debacle. Cowell loves all this. Getting people talking is the lifeblood of X Factor.

Should the unthinkable happen and Jedward go on and win the show, who do you think is going to be laughing all the way to the bank? Cowell's in a win-win situation, and all he has to do is stay in character, pretending to be oh-so-outraged every time viewers vote to keep the terrible twins in the competition.

The multi-millionaire music mogul has the nation over a barrel, then, but you can be sure it won't last forever. History tells us that.

I can remember when Stock, Aitken and Waterman had a similar stranglehold over the charts with their formulaic pop in the late 80s and early 90s. At the time I worried that these guys were going to be around forever but, mercifully, they were eventually put out of their misery when people tired of their dross. That's the same fate I can see befalling Cowell.

Yes, he may be orchestrator-in-chief of all that's bad about British pop right now, but you can be guaranteed one thing – like Stock, Aitken and Waterman before him, Cowell and the clones he creates will be utterly irrelevant a decade from now. Pity it's such a long time to wait.