X Factor adds a ‘Wall of Songs’ challenge and it sounds hilarious
There will be running and fighting and a general sense of what the bloody hell is going on at this year's Bootcamp
Forget singing auditions, X Factor’s barely bothering with them at Bootcamp this year, instead it’s brought in (prepare your best Peter Dickson voice) the WALL OF SONGS.
It’s as simple - and thought up in the pub on a Friday - as it sounds: there’s a wall (well, a sort of mesh contraption, but Mesh Contraption of Songs isn't as catchy) covered in bits of paper with song titles written on them. Towards this wall the singers, who will be held back until the appropriate time, must run and try and grab a song they want to sing.
Imagine those few moments before Tesco opens its doors on the last day you can buy a Christmas turkey and you’re about there.
“Carnage” is the word insiders used to describe it, telling us that people were “obviously fighting” for the song they wanted to sing. Obviously. What’s a singing competition without a bit of hair pulling?
Apparently there are cameras behind the wall to catch both the running (guaranteed in slow mo, right?) and the frantic WHAT SONG AM I GOING TO SING SO I CAN CHANGE MY WHOLE LIFE FOR EVER AND EVER thing.
God only knows if host Dermot O’Leary’s OK. He must have felt like Simba in The Lion King as he desperately tried to avoid getting trampled. The wall itself, at the mercy of the frantic contestants, probably hasn’t made it through to Six Chairs.
Of course, you may wonder what this has to do with a singing competition. As my editor quite rightly pointed out, even if I could beat Taylor Swift in a 100m dash, I’m not going to better her in the charts.
But the point of the whole thing is to sort them out into groups for the traditional Line Challenge. As such, once they’ve all stopped ripping bits of paper out of each other’s hands (iced their black eyes, seen a medic about their trampled feet, found Dermot) they buddy up with those who picked the same song. Then they begin the rows about which lines they’ll each get to sing before finally getting in front of the judges.
And they’ll need to work better together this time around as there’s no solo audition to follow. Nope, this is it. Their next individual audition (if they make it) is at the Six Chair Challenge where they face a booing arena crowd. While most have to wait for the judges to deliberate over their auditions, we're told some of the groups are sent home as soon as they're finished as they're just not good enough. It’s easy this singing lark, isn’t it?
See The X Factor Sunday at 7:30pm on ITV
