Simon Cowell has a new girl band on his label! Meet Real Like You, six girls who auditioned as solo artists and together have just won X Factor: The Band. They beat newly formed boy band Unwritten Rule in the final with 55% of the vote. The show was really fast – 4 episodes airing in one week. Contestants auditioned as solo artists on Monday, auditioned in arenas and were put together into groups on Wednesday and Friday, and on Sunday both groups competed head-to-head for the prize. The permanent judges for this show were Simon Cowell and Nicole Scherzinger, and Season 3 champion Leona Lewis was a guest judge for the arena auditions and the final. The judges were joined by various producers and writers, the only one of whom I’ve heard of is Naughty Boy.
Real Like You was, in my opinion, the far superior group. There are a couple of strong voices among them, including The Voice Kids UK winner Jess Foley, who is only 16 years old. In my view, she’s the standout member. Their winning song, “Be Like Them,” was written by another girl in the group, Kellimarie Willis. She was also on another singing competition previously. It’s not terribly surprising that there were plants in the mix, because of the limited time this show had to be put together.
You can watch Real Like You perform their original song “Be Like Them” below:
You can watch the girls’ first performance of the final, “Independent Women” below:
If you’re curious about Unwritten Rule, which you probably shouldn’t be, here’s the least awful performance they gave – “Before You Go” by Lewis Capaldi:
You may be asking yourself, did Eric like this format? It honestly wasn’t long enough for me to say one way or the other. I didn’t hate it, and it was clearly miles better than Celebrity X Factor, but I wouldn’t be mad if we never did this again either. And it looks like next year, we’ll be back to normal X Factor, as during the show, Dermot announced that auditions are open online right now.
Speaking of normal X Factor, the highlight of the four episode run for me, by far, was seeing last year’s champion Dalton Harris return to the stage and perform his new single Cry. In fact, this was the best performance I’ve seen on X Factor this year, across both spin off shows. If you watch nothing else, watch this performance.
