I gave it a shot again this year and enjoyed the initial 'audition' stage and then jumped ship after the first live show. Simon himself is damaging it, people are tired of the manipulations and he doesn't seem to recognise that.
Although I haven't been watching I still follow this thread and he basically pressured Nicole into giving away her act's golden buzzer to one of his, saved Martin over talent I think a couple of times, refused to vote when they made a deal out of deadlock being gone and then saved Vinnie over someone half talented.
Simon has become the toxic ingredient in regards to X Factor, I honestly think if he stepped down as a judge and didn't even have input as a producer then the show would be tonnes better.
Not sure that would work . Ideally it would be nice , and would be so fresh . But it wouldn’t happen as the producers would want them to perform what they want. As well as the label / station will want to own 100% of the material written by the contestants . Which a lot of the contestants would not allow that .
No I agree with you . Sadly these shows are just overdone . I always thought they should retire it for 5-10 years and bring it back .Just trying to think outside the box. It was certainly refreshing this year to have Megan singing her own material. Makes for a much better show than just hearing the same cover songs over and over with flamboyant production.
When he left for the US X-Factor (with Cheryl... so much for that) and Dannii left and it became Gary - Tulisa - Kelly then Nicole - Louis, it was such a strong panel and the show maintained strong ratings/popularity without Simon. Simon seems so think all his shows need him, when nowadays, I actually would say the opposite and in fact his continuing to be there is probably what's killing it.
I think it would only work if each contestant got to write/perform their own songs each week. Then the public get to vote for the best song.
Each week we can see the process of how they wrote the song. They can bring in popular songwriters each week to work with the contestants. You can still have 'theme' weeks if you want - ballad week, banger week, alternative week or whatever.
Then by the time the show ends, whoever wins already has an album of original material ready to release and they can capitalise on that by releasing the album right after winning the show.