Apparently Alicia Keys, Tinie Tempah, Gwen Stefani, Rod Stewart and Robbie Williams have been booked to guest judge The X Factor‘s upcoming auditions; while Geri Haliwell, Mel B, Alesha Dixon and The Saturdays’ Frankie Sandford and Rochelle Wiseman are being considered for the permanent position.
No replacement for Kelly Rowland has been found, with the delay being blamed on the assumption that Dannii Minogue would accept a £1 million offer to make a comeback. Funnily enough, after being shat on by Simon Cowell’s biographer, she’s reluctant to uproot her family to the other side of the world.
The Sun claims that the quintet of guest judges will work at the first round of filmed auditions, which begin as early as this Wednesday (May 23) in Liverpool before making their way around the country.
The Daily Star Sunday has also given the chaos considerable coverage, saying that Rihanna, Nicole Scherzinger (no shit) and Katy Perry have all said no.
A source says:
“At this rate the fourth judge may not be signed until much later in the series. Dannii turning them down was a massive blow because as far as ITV1 and The X Factor were concerned it was a done deal. The back-up plan is to have a host of guest performers take part in the regional auditions and possible Boot Camp before revealing a permanent name at the Judges’ Houses in August. Everyone involved knows how important the judges are to the success of the show… Numerous high-profile singers have come forward wanting the job. But bosses fear they aren’t big enough names to wow viewers. So it’s now panic stations to make sure they can sign up a big enough name in time.”
It happened with ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’, ‘Missing You’ and ‘All Fired Up’, and it looks likely to happen with ’30 Days’ as well – The Saturdays are embroiled in a tight race for Number 1, with the midweek numbers, on the face of it, being “too close to call”.
Rita Ora’s ‘R.I.P.’ is at No. 1 still, but there are just 5,000 copies separating her from both The Sats at No. 2 and Carly Rae Jepsen at No. 3.
’30 Days’ shot to the top of the iTunes charts on Sunday as an E.P., but has only peaked at (and since drifted from) No. 6 on the single-track rankings. Their dedicated fanbase have, as ever, rushed to buy it on its first few days of sale, but sadly it looks like it will lose momentum as the week goes on rather than gain it.
It was Flo Rida who beat them to the top with both ‘JCGE’ in 2009 and ‘Missing You’ in 2010 (they made amends by having him guest-rap on ‘Higher’, which probably would have been No. 1 if it was the Headlines EP’s lead single), and Pixie Lott who overtook ‘All Fired Up’ last September with ‘All About Tonight’.
’30 Days’ is nowhere near as strong as the rest of the girls’ back catalogue, but regardless of how far it drifts down the chart as the week goes on, it’s encouraging that, at a time when they can’t get an album into the Top 20, they can still at least get off to a strong start with their singles.
This week in pop has been full of big chart news and girlband superiority.
While Girls Aloud have been plotting their return to the UK charts, The Saturdays have (allegedly) been planning their move to the US. Oh, and Kimberley Walsh’s Olympics single has been unveiled.
Tulisa’s set a 2012 chart record (but Rita Ora’s already looking likely to take it off her), Keane are on course for one hell of a comeback, and Will Young is behind the best-seller of the 21st Century.
Catch up on all that and more – including Rebecca Ferguson’s broken-legged performances – below.
Not saying it should have been The Single, but in many ways The Saturdays’ ’30 Days’ B-side ‘Turn Myself In’ is better than the A-side.
Its chorus is a bit of a nonevent and (as is now becoming increasingly common for a Sats song) the lyrics aren’t great, but the verses are quite nice and there’s a nice ‘Ooh hoo hoo’ bit in the middle.
Actually on second listen it just sounds like a half-finished demo, but there’s a good idea in there somewhere.
The resentment at ‘White Lies’ and ‘Faster’ remaining unreleased continues. #NotAngryJustDisappointed2K12
OK so the impossibly cute Sophia Grace and Rosie have made another appearance on Ellen in the US, got treated to their own massive Billboard, and performed Nicki Minaj’s ‘Starships’ (the clean version, of course).
Sophia-Grace Brownlee does, as usual, do all the singing, whilst Rosie, as usual, ups the cuteness by dancing faithfully by her side; holding a microphone but never at any point singing into it.
So what happens further down the line, when SG&E become more and more notorious and the trappings of girl-powered pop become more and more complicated?
History has taught us that any of five scenarios could become a reality.
1. ‘The Girls Aloud’ The girls will announce that they are “taking a break”, and both Sophia-Grace and Rosie will attempt solo careers. Rosie will perhaps be offered a judging role on some form of talent show before using it to launch her own music. Of course the music will either be auto-tuned using snippets of speech or totally instrumental, but it will sell by the bucketload and break all kinds of records, making her the new Nation’s Sweetheart. Sophia-Grace, as the stronger singer, will launch her album by way of an exclusivity deal with Tesco and absolutely bomb in the charts.
2. ‘The Atomic Kitten’ Sophia-Grace and Rosie will be on the brink of their most successful work yet when suddenly one of them will quit and be replaced by a new member. Let’s for arguments sake say it’ll be Rosie. Sophia-Grace and Newbie will go on to bigger and better things, whilst Rosie will earn her living through numerous reality shows, go through some kind of meltdown in her teenage years, and then kind-of-redeem-herself-ish to the point where nobody thinks she’s particularly mental anymore but at the same time nobody particularly wants to see her every move documented on camera.
3. ‘The Sugababes’
Sophia-Grace will quit and be replaced by a new member. Rosie will soldier on with a new singing partner until some kind of disagreement happens a few years down the line, resulting in her own removal from the line-up. Another newbie will join the previous newbie, and they will continue to record under the name ‘Sophia-Grace and Rosie’. As their star gradually begins to fade, Sophia-Grace and Rosie will re-unite, but unable to perform under the name ‘Sophia-Grace and Rosie’ because it’s still the legal property of Newbie 1 and Newbie 2, they will have to rebrand. Songs may be written for them by Emeli Sande.
4. ‘The Pussycat Dolls’
Things continue in much the same vein as they are now, with Sophia-Grace doing all the singing and Rosie smiling and doing her dancing thing in the background. But over time rumours of dispute will begin to surface in the press, and then suddenly one day they’ll release a song called ‘J’ai Ho’ which will be credited as ‘Sophia-Grace and Rosie featuring Sophia-Grace’, prompting speculation that Sophia-Grace has left the band. She will announce work on her own solo material and, eventually, that she is no longer a member of ‘Sophia-Grace and Rosie’. Rosie will then announce that she too has quit, but the duo’s management will insist that the ‘Sophia-Grace and Rosie’ will be back with a next generation line-up, fronted by that blonde girl from ‘Party Rock Anthem’. Sophia-Grace will land a judging role on X Factor USA but muck it all up and end the first season as Destroyer Of Rachel Crow’s Dreams. Rosie will enjoy tepid success elsewhere but nobody will really be paying any attention.
5. ‘The The Saturdays’
Things will continue as they are but just before they really, like REALLY, make it to true mega-mega-mega-superstar status, they’ll flatline and be named the World’s Favourite All-Girl Duo purely because there aren’t really any other all-girl duos to compete with.
Hard to predict at this point, everybody. Hard to predict.
The Saturdays have apparently finalised plans to shoot a reality series for US TV network E!, the home of the Kardashian clan, Giuliana Rancic and the Girls of the Playboy Mansion.
The New York Post’s showbiz column Page Six claims to have heard it from “a source” that the series, which was first rumoured last year, will follow their “personal and professional lives as they move to Los Angeles and work to climb the American pop charts”.
The key points of interest in the article seem to be Mollie King’s “relationship” with Prince Harry, and the question of exactly how much filming Una Healy can commit to, given that she’s only just given birth to her first sprog Aoife Belle.
Rochelle Wiseman had told Digital Spy last November:
“There has been so much press flying around for weeks. It was literally us five girls thinking, ‘We’ve done a reality show here – how fun would it be to do one Stateside?’ And that’s not necessarily us cracking America. Maybe it would be about us taking our material to a different environment. We literally had it down as an idea and then all of a sudden the press are saying we’ve got a channel that it’s on. It was an idea, but all the confirmed stuff is untrue.”
Nothing official has yet come from Team Sats or anyone at E!.
The Saturdays’ semi-brilliant/semi-terrible new single ’30 Days’ is out in exactly one month from today, and the ladies have unveiled the Atomic UK Garage Remix on Punchbowl Blog.
As garage remixes go, it’s not as good as the epic Pixie Lott ‘All About Tonight’ Mike Delinquent Project re-swizzle, but it’s pretty nifty nonetheless.
The Saturdays’ ’30 Days’ has had fans divided since its premiere a week ago, and today the music video has had its debut too. Will it boost the song’s popularity?
It’s a simple affair, it doesn’t look like it took too long to film and, interestingly, Una’s pregnancy is more or less completely masked. But the good thing about it is that it’s fun, and it’s probably the girls’ most innocent clip since 2010′s ‘Higher’.
But as five of the most gorgeous girls in pop, I don’t see why they have to be quite so ludicrously caked in make-up. And I know Widescreen is ‘the thing’ these days, but must it be SO comically narrow?!
Check it out, and read my review of the song here.
The Saturdays’ ’30 Days’ is not the single I thought it would be. Am I alone in that? I thought that, seeing as On Your Radar absolutely bombed, the girls would retrace their steps and return to the sound that made ‘Higher’ one of their best-received efforts to date.
But it’s just like an On Your Radar track. That’s not a bad thing, but it does beg the question as to why not just release one of the enormotunes from the album as a single. ‘Faster’? ‘White Lies’? ‘Get Ready Get Set’?
But, once you’ve given it a few spins and got over the laziness of the verse lyrics, ’30 Days’ is what you would call a Big Tune.
Maybe it’s the ‘awoaaaah-ooh’s in the chorus, or the feeling like it merges the sounds of ‘Up’ and ‘Notorious’ (the fact it’s written and produced by Steve Mac certainly backs that up). Maybe it’s the ridiculous fall-out-fall-back-in-again bit before the last chorus.
It’s a great warm-weather pop song. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s addictive. It’s just risky in that it may not provide the career-saving chart-invader the girls so desperately need following the unfortunate tanking of ‘My Heart Takes Over’. But hopefully I’m wrong.
Apparently Alicia Keys, Tinie Tempah, Gwen Stefani, Rod Stewart and Robbie Williams have been booked to guest judge The X Factor‘s upcoming auditions; while Geri Haliwell, Mel B, Alesha Dixon and The Saturdays’ Frankie Sandford and Rochelle Wiseman are being considered for the permanent position.
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