I am in awe of people who can, at the flick of a finger, sing a tune off the top of their heads, lyrics and all.
I am able to sing harmoniously in a choir with a hymn sheet in hand and music playing in the background, but if I’m asked to suddenly hum any random top 10 ditty, the oddest thing happens: I promptly play it in my head, but the tune just won’t travel to my mouth.
And that’s not mentioning lyrics – there is no memory compartment in my brain for lyrics, and as a result, I always end up improvising (read as totally invent). You can therefore correctly guess that I am the worst person to play Sarabanda with. When it’s my turn to think up a song, I blank, and all that flashes in my mind is Happy Birthday.
For this reason, I have every admiration for people who can sing beautifully, confidently and capably. And a good thing too, seeing as my daughter is always making me watch You Tube clips of auditions or semi-finals or finals of Britain’s Got Talent or America’s or Australia’s or Japan’s or wherever, of people singing. If it’s not that, then it’s X-Factor of some country or other, of more people singing. Every week there’s something we “must most definitely and absolutely watch!” because “It’s soo cool!”
Talent show programmes are, of course, nothing new. Readers my age would have grown up on the Corrida, the Italian television show that ran for years and years. The highlight of every Saturday evening when we were little was this talent show presented by Corrado (I just googled him and found out that he actually had a surname!).
His programme was a bit like a village festa in which 10 participants exhibited their talents and were then judged by the studio audience in the form of heartfelt applause if they liked it, or raucous booing and crockery banging if they did not.
The judges come across as way too serious, and so focused on empathising that they can’t even crack a single joke
I remember all my family chuckling as we watched Corrado’s body language in reaction to the various acts. An eyebrow raised, eyes popping, mouth gaping, stifling laughter – he was like a live emojiman. It was that fun, the humour that made us return to it time and time again.
In today’s sleeker, more modern version of talent shows, we have Simon Cowell (to be pronounced, according to the daughter, as cow-ill, think mooing cows feeling unwell) who’s everywhere because it seems he has the production rights to all of them.
Cowell, back in the day the creator of the Spice Girls, is the one who raises his eyebrows, the baddie, the spoilsport and the one whose face keeps altering with every new facelift. He’s flanked by other judges, who jibe and tease and make us laugh. There are times when an achievement-against-all-odds of a participant pulls at the heartstrings, and we shed a tear or two out of joy. However, the dynamic is always one of jest, of woo-hoo let’s have fun with the production brief clearly aimed at making viewers feel good and cheery about humanity.
Which brings me to the Malta X-Factor. I watched some clips on You Tube, and erm, ahem. I felt like I had found myself by mistake in the cupboard of a shrink’s clinic listening in to people’s lifetime traumas when I really, really shouldn’t.
If people want to open their hearts to the camera before an audition, by all means, let them do it – but surely the nitty gritty details can then be edited out for the viewers. I don’t need to know the details of a boy’s parents’ marriage breakdown. I don’t need to listen to a man advertising the stupid River of Love. I don’t need to listen to a year-by-year account of a woman’s tribulations.
Weirdly, it felt that if a participant was bullied, was lonely, was unloved, or in general was in a bad space in life, then the chances of him or her being chosen soared sky-high, irrespective of the talent. Which is a pity because there is some really good young talent out there and maybe – just maybe – it is not being sifted properly.
I don’t know if it’s to do with the editing but to me the judges look like they need to chillax a bit: they come across as way too serious, and so focused on empathising that they can’t even crack a single joke. So, Malta X-Factor can we please stop squeezing out lifetime baggage sob stories? We all love success stories, but they cannot be couched as therapy sessions – at the end of the day, talent shows work only if there’s a fun factor.
As things stand, if I went along for an audition, poured out my life story and then sang the happy birthday lyrics to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, I feel certain I would make it through the final. When in reality that would be a sight for crockery banging.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece