The X Factor: Season 1 Finale Recap/Review

If you didn't know already, OMGWire (the site that I do my X Factor recaps for) is undergoing some changes and is offline at the moment. So that is why my recap for the X Factor finale is now online yet. But since OMGWire won't be back up for a while, I've decided to just post it here. Check it out below:

The X Factor: Season 1 Finale
Air Date: Thursday, December 22, 2011 [8-10pm]

We're here, everyone! It's the very first finale for The X Factor USA! It's down to our Top 3: Josh Krajcik, Chris Rene and Melanie Amaro! Let's see how it plays out...

The Top 12 perform Lady Gaga's "The Edge of Glory." Drew is a brunette now. And almost everyone is pitchy, dawg.

Melanie Amaro performs Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You." By the way, this is one of my favorite Christmas songs ever; I just love it! And Melanie hit those high notes effortlessly. Following her performance, we see a video of people from her hometown and from the British Virgin Islands sending messages to Melanie: friends, family, teachers, co-workers.

Chris Rene performs "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" along with a friends/family video for him, too.

Josh Krajcik performs "Please Come Home for Christmas." Each of the Top 3 cry during and after their respective videos.

Justin Bieber performs "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)" with Stevie Wonder. When Justin was promoting Under The Mistletoe in November, his voice wasn't that good. But tonight, he sounds a lot better. Stevie on the other hand? Wow! That was a vocal mess. I've noticed that about Stevie the past few years or so; most of the time he's very pitchy. Then Stevie's gone and Justin performs "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Just when we think the song is over, Justin brings Drew out and she helps him finish the song. She's going gaga over meeting him. If you remember, her audition song was "Baby."

The first results of the night are now. The singer ending up in 3rd place is...Chris Rene. I'm a little surprised by that. After he did "Young Homie" for his final song, I would've thought that song would have gotten people to vote hard for him. I guess not. Once Steve announces Chris is eliminated, here's my thought: Melanie just won.

A video is shown of the Top 5 Most Shocking Moments of the season. #5 is auditioner Zander Alexander. #4 is Astro's brat attitude when he initially refused to perform in the survival round. #3 is some random auditioner. #2 is some auditioner's dad flipping out backstage. And #1 is Rachel Crow's elimination.

Following this video, out comes Rachel Crow herself and jokingly says she's taking over Steve's job. She introduces Leona Lewis, who performs "Run" while a video plays in the background looking back over the season. It's very fitting that Leona's performing tonight, since she's an X Factor winner herself in the UK and became a global superstar because of this Simon Cowell created franchise.

Auditions are coming soon for season 2 (I believe you can audition online right now). Steve says something like, "We'll be back next year." My thought is, I don't think YOU will, Steve.

A video plays: L.A. vs. Simon - Smackdown, showing the back and forth snarky comments between each other over the course of the season.

Derek Fisher (who?) introduces 50 Cent, who performs "Waiting Until Tonight." During the beginning of the song, a bunch of stuff had to be bleeped out. What a trashy performance, what with the female "dancers" (they seem like they could be prostitutes or strippers or something like that) and the bleeping. A bunch of seemingly random people come out and join them on the stage. Who are any of these people? They didn't do a very good job introducing them. Astro joins in near the end.

We see a hilarious video of Paula vs. Nicole - The Cryoff. It kept going back and forth between showing all the times Paula and Nicole cried this season. I think it ended up being Nicole with 14 points and Paula with 10 or something like that.

Pitbull featuring Ne-Yo perform "Give Me Everything." Marcus Canty joins in near the end; I'm a little embarrassed that I actually didn't realize that was Marcus at first. All of a sudden it dawned on me who it was.

The Top 2, Josh and Melanie, perform "Heroes." Since they wouldn't have known who would be eliminated before this, I wonder if each of the Top 3 rehearsed this so they would be prepared no matter which two ended up being in the Top 2. But no matter, both Josh and Melanie sound great together, and they have excellent chemistry.

The very first winner of The X Factor USA is...MELANIE AMARO!!! Yes! It's amazing how this is the very first season and the right person actually won.

Melanie performs "Listen." She's obviously really emotional during the performance, not singing a few times because of the emotion, but is able to stay on the right beat when she starts singing again. I love her reactions during the song. These are classic moments on these singing talent shows. Kelly Clarkson's winning performance is probably the most classic winning moment. And Melanie's was just as fantastic.

I'm not trying to come off as cocky when I say this, but it's true that I predicted that Melanie would win when we first saw her audition way back when. This is only the second time that I've correctly predicted the eventual winner based on their audition (among these singing shows). The first was Carrie Underwood on American Idol. Both are stars, for sure.

3rd Place: Chris Rene

Runner-Up: Josh Krajcik

WINNER: MELANIE AMARO

Well, we're now done with the first season of the American version of The X Factor. What do we do now? Other than get ready for American Idol in January, I mean. How about we look at the Top 3 (and others) and look at marketability. Let's start with our darling winner, Melanie Amaro. It's really fitting that both her audition and winning song was "Listen." That was sung by Beyonce in Dreamgirls. And for a little while now, I've been thinking that they need to market her as a Beyonce type singer. That could be her best shot at being an accessible singer. For Josh Krajcik, he needs to go down the Daughtry route with that kind of rock music (and maybe a little of David Cook thrown in as well). I'm sure L.A. will make sure that Chris Rene is signed, and he'll obviously be doing hip/hop, R&B and rap.

What about outside of the Top 3? I'm sure Marcus Canty will get a record deal somewhere, but he won't do well. There's nothing that distinguishes him from other R&B singers like Usher. There've been rumors that Disney is after Rachel Crow. I hope she does something like that, because I could see her doing really well with that. It's hard to tell right now what they would do with someone like Drew, maybe songs similar to Demi Lovato? Astro will most likely get a deal somewhere. Unfortunately, I don't see anything big happening with the others: LeRoy Bell, Lakoda Rayne, Stacy Francis, The Stereo Hogzz and InTENsity. I'm sure most of them will try to put out music, but nothing will happen from it.

We're now less than a month away from the return of the show that started it all. American Idol season 10 premieres January 18 and 19 at 8pm on FOX.

This has been a fun few months recapping The X Factor on OMGWire. For even more from me, follow me on Twitter @TheJeffDodge, @TVWatchOnline and @Bieber_Guy (and follow OMGWire @OMGWire). I hope we can do this all over again next fall. In the meantime, it's time to sign off and say...see ya then...

BuddyTV Writer

You may have noticed some of the article links I've posted on TV Watch Online have been preceded by a mention of BuddyTV. I want to say that I am now a freelance editor and writer for BuddyTV.com.

According to BuddyTV, "BuddyTV is every TV watcher's friend. With the website, users can read news about their favorite shows and actors and interact with other fans in our rabid community. Users can also play addictive games on the sites such as Trivia, Personality Quizzes, and Celeb Rater."

I am excited to have joined their team as a freelancer. Any articles that I write for them will be linked to on TV Watch Online. I already have six articles posted online for them (one is a slideshow).

To make it easier to find all of my articles, you can click HERE my articles page with a full list of and links to everything I write for them.

The X Factor: Top 4

My recaps/reviews of this week's Top 4 episodes of The X Factor is now up at OMGWire.com. Below are some excerpts from my commentary.

Click HERE to read the entire performance show article & HERE for the results show.

Marcus Canty - "I'll Make Love to You" [Boys / Mentor: L.A. Reid]
It was a very conservative performance. This isn't going to cut it at this point in the competition. I know he and L.A. didn't choose the song (it was chosen by the public in the Pepsi Challenge, but it was still safe. What was the deal with the rose and the dancers? Overall, very boring, to say the least.

Melanie Amaro - "Hero" [Girls / Mentor: Simon Cowell]
I'm sure some would say this is safe as well. The difference, though, is that Marcus doesn't have the voice that Melanie has. Simon said she would be doing a twist on the song - what was it, that it was a tad slower? I don't know. But her voice is still exceptional.

Josh Krajcik - "Hallelulah" [Over 30's / Mentor: Nicole]
This reminded me of when he did "Wild Horses" a few weeks ago - slow, haunting, emotional. Josh seems to always do great when going down this route. This is the perfect time to pull out a song and performance like this, right when he's trying to get into the finals. And L.A. is back to doling out criticisms just for the heck of it, and not for any particular reason.

Click HERE & HERE to read the entire recaps/reviews.

The X Factor: Top 5

My recap/review of last night's Top 5 performance episode of The X Factor is now up at OMGWire.com. Below are some excerpts from my commentary.

Click HERE to read the entire article.

Chris Rene - "Live Your Life" [Boys / Mentor: L.A.]
Even though this isn't something I would go seek out to watch, this is absolutely the kind of performance we see by established artists. And you know what? I loved it. This is the avenue he needs to go down post-X Factor. And I loved the added touch of the moving floor.

Melanie Amaro - "When You Believe" [Girls / Mentor: Simon]
This is the perfect song for Melanie. We're halfway through the night, but this is by far the best of the night so far. Her vocals were flawless, and the choir coming out was just perfect. The feel of this felt like she was in the Top 2 and gave the performance that caused her to win (if not the winning performance itself).

Rachel Crow - "Music and Me" [Girls / Mentor: Simon]
This is definitely an improvement over her first song. And while it allowed her voice to shine, there was still something about it that seemed disconnected to me. I have a feeling that she could be in danger this week.

Click HERE to read the entire recap/review.

The X Factor: Top 7

My recap/review of last night's Top 9 performance episode of The X Factor is now up at OMGWire.com. Below are some excerpts from my commentary.

Click HERE to read the entire article.

Josh Krajcik - "Dirty Diana" [Over 30's / Mentor: Nicole Scherzinger]
It may not have been as strong as last week, but overall I enjoyed it. On the downside, the song forced him to sing a lot of low notes, which didn't help him. And they really need to fire the dancers. Josh is a rock artist - when do you ever see dancers like this on stage with a rock performer? You don't. Get rid of them.

Rachel Crow - "Can You Feel It" [Girls / Mentor: Simon]
Her voice was shaky or something during the first half. Fortunately, her voice was powerful and on by the end. And I think it was the song that caused those problems overall. So in that regard, maybe it wasn't the best song choice. I think it's about time that Rachel take charge again.

Marcus Canty - "Pretty Young Thing (P.Y.T)" [Boys / Mentor: L.A.]
In a way, this theme is right up Marcus' alley, depending on the song. Michael Jackson knew how to put on a show, and so does Marcus. Simon is right on that the vocals weren't the best at times. But regardless, I enjoyed watching it as a performance.

Click HERE to read the entire recap/review.