Alexandra Burke

[RhythmNative]

The only thing Alexandra and Leona have in common is that they are black and they have hair. (and they both won the X Factor, of course).

They have entirely different voices, personalities and strengths and if anyone has any sense, Alexandra will be sent in a different musical direction.

I can't help but think that if Alexandra was white, would people be saying "We don't need Alexandra - we have Leona!"

 

[cambodiangoatpatrol]

Amazing singer. She deserved this over anyone else there. Love her version of this classic....

Leona was the "new Mariah"
In that case, Alex is the "new Whitney"
Two opposite artists, bunched together under the loose genre "Powerhouse"

 

[Hazuki]

I'm joining all the Beyonce love. That woman came across so nicely, so warmly, and I do love Halo. I expected her to shout over, yell over and show up Alex on purpose but she seemed to enjoy it genuinely. iIiIi LUVZzZ HER.

It was Mark from Westlife who seemed to be shouting all over the place and trying to upstage JLS. He suddenly seems to think he's an opera singer! He looked really pissed off too.

 

[Disinclined]

I'm joining all the Beyonce love. That woman came across so nicely, so warmly, and I do love Halo. I expected her to shout over, yell over and show up Alex on purpose but she seemed to enjoy it genuinely. iIiIi LUVZzZ HER.

It was Mark from Westlife who seemed to be shouting all over the place and trying to upstage JLS. He suddenly seems to think he's an opera singer! He looked really pissed off too.

No, Mark just tends to shout generally. Me and my friend went to see them for funzies once, we got absolutely smashingly drunk, acted sober, and got in. It was hilarious.

 

[debord]

The only thing Alexandra and Leona have in common is that they are black and they have hair. (and they both won the X Factor, of course).

They have entirely different voices, personalities and strengths and if anyone has any sense, Alexandra will be sent in a different musical direction.

I can't help but think that if Alexandra was white, would people be saying "We don't need Alexandra - we have Leona!"

But I heard a lot of comparisons between Ray Quinn and Eoghan and you could say the same about them. I don't really think race has much to do with it. Alexandra is clearly a lot closer to Leona than she is to someone like Diana.

 

[Kufel]

It is quite good, but nothing will beat Rufus Wainwrights' version...

 

[PlayBoy]

Of the versions I know, I'm sticking Alex's at number two!
1)Buckley
2)Alex
3)John Cale
4)KD Lang

Then, languishing in fifth place is Leonard's fairly mangled arrangement and then Rufus Wainwright's neither-here-nor-there version. I just don't understand the original and I can't listen to Leonard's vocal style...it's not really for me.

Alex almost beats Buckley because six minutes is too long for most songs not called "Untouchable". (Joshing). I actually quite like the slightly misread, "obviously" spiritual arrangement of her version. It's a beautiful song in its many guises; Buckley for love and sexuality, Alex for a bit of festive uplift!

 

[Andyk]

Re: ALEXANDRA WINS XFACTOR 2008

People really need to relax their expectations for Alex, she is not going to do a Leona because she not in the same class.

I agree with this to be honest, I think if Leona had have been there she'd have won again against these lot.

Her only competition would have been Alex, where as Alex didn't really have any competition.

I agree. Alex is good. The best of the 3. But she is no Leona. She just doesn't have the range. Though she was bloody good last night.

I just wish they hadn't chosen such a beautiful song for the radio to overplay.
That raw emotion that Jeff Buckley put into it will be diluted.

She's better than Leona. Leona is good, but pretty much a carbon copy vocally of Mariah Carey (when she was good), even to the annoying habit of not pronouncing the ending consonants of words. Alexandra's got a richer tone to her voice.

Your forgetting, when Leona was on X factor she knocked it out the park virtually every single week and she didn't just sing the songs, she hit with originality, like when she sung Summertime, probably the single best perfromance on any of these shows worldwide, that performance reverberated around the internet and got lots of people talking about her in the US.

I've not seen that kind of creative interpretation in Alex at all, its the reason why "Run" is at #1 at the moment, its the reason Bleeding Love was a hit, it was a reject song until Leona got her chops round it.

I think we vastly overestimate the amount of creativity the acts themselves get to put into performances. A lot of the time the versions they sing are just nabbed from somewhere else and it's never mentioned. For instance with Summertime, Fantasia did that version first on American Idol, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was from somewhere else before that.

For the record, Leona's Summertime is my favourite X-Factor performance ever, and I wish she'd done a studio version of it!

Fantasia and Leona's Summertime ????

Never has the same song ever been sung so differently.

What on earth are you talking about? It's near enough the exact same arrangement. Singing in a higher key does not make it 'different'.

Jeez, you have got to be off your head to see any similarity in those two versions.

Its a totally different arrangement, it uses different notes.

Fantasias follows the original quite closely Leona does a powerhouse version. Different runs, the long hold note the runs up the scale.

The only way it could be any more different is if it was a different song.

and it blew tasias version completely off the planet.

 

[Alphableat]

As a point of comparison, here's Beyonce singing "Listen" with Jennifer Hudson during the Academy Awards of 2007:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=6544655

Only because beyond Alexandra's three different versions of it, this is the only other time I've ever seen it performed live.

Very good indeed. Jennifer Hudson does have a smashing voice, though it's very different from both Beyonce's and Alexandra's.

 

[type:epyt]

this whole thing makes me wanna cry ... what will any x-factor winner bring to the party ... if they were good enough then they would have done it aready ... it's not snobbishness, just a waste of your money ... how much per text/phonecall/vote? ... twice as much as a download, which none of you will get for free ... why not spend 50p calling Sainsbury to telll them you want a can of beans before going to buy them ...

 

[jruk2007]

And surely the people campaigning to get Jeff there are doing it because they have a problem with the cynical Cowell machine?

I understand this viewpoint but Jeff Buckley was signed to Sony BMG so surely the own the rights to the song and so they, and by extention, Simon Cowell will profit when thousands of people buy it? That's the irony with this campaign and the Rick Astley one (another Sony BMG artist). They will inevitiably fail and when their respective songs hit the lower end of the top 10 at best, it will have absolutly no impact other than lining Simon Cowell's pockets a bit more.

Anyway, given that the infinite wisdom of internet forum posters has decided that Hallelujah was obviously chosen for Diana, this version is actually quite good. A welcome change.

 

[debord]

Well surely the impact it has is to bring a relatively obscure (to X Factor audiences) singer and his briliant version of the song to wider attention and perhaps turn some more people onto him? And I think it would be a little embarrassing to have the inferior cover at number one and what many people see as the 'definitive' version to be a few places below it. Of course it has no lasting effect whatsoever in terms of any anti-X Factor sentiment.

 

[RhythmNative]

Simon Cowell doesn't profit directly from sales of other SonyBMG artistes - only those signed to his subsiduary - Syco.

 

[Daneeeboy]

People are already hearing the Buckley version and calling it inferior. Let it be, I say. "Hallelujah" was the chosen song and it's been done. No one complained when Leon butchered a Whitney/Mariah song. The problem is that "Hallelujah" is such a muso's song, people are worried to relent and allow it to become mainstream.

 

[debord]

On the contrary, many people whined when Leon did 'When You Believe'. But yes, 'Hallelujah' does have added weight because it's by one of the world's great singer-songwriters and is generally seen as one of the greatest songs ever written, so I guess people will feel that it's that little bit less special when it's done like this. And I've no doubt people will call the Buckley version inferior, but then I heard someone comment that 'Hallelujah' was no 'That's My Goal' also.

 

[Daneeeboy]

Does anyone honestly think of Gareth Gates when they hear "Unchained Melody" these days? No? Exactly.

 

[debord]

'Unchained Melody' had become devalued long before Gareth Gates got his hands on it, and it's that exact fate that I imagine people are worried about for this song.

 

[Hazuki]

I prefer Alex's version. jeff Buckley's is quite dull.

 

[Dag]

UK'ers should consider themselves lucky. This version (featuring the only World Idol) was a huge hit in Norway a few years ago. Whatever value "Hallelujah" once held is long gone now

 

[Alphableat]

UK'ers should consider themselves lucky. This version (featuring the only World Idol) was a huge hit in Norway a few years ago. Whatever value "Hallelujah" once held is long gone now

I know quite a few people who consider that the 'best' version. Shrek fans, mostly.