Review:

on 2011-04-24 CharlesMartel Said:

New take on the record producers' "let's give the people what we want" line. Poor. Very Poor. In fact, this is Westlife for grandmothers, and that's really really poor.

And why is that? Well, the answer is simple. This lot emerged from the awful X-Factor. Now there is nothing worse in my book than plastic manufactured pop acts. It used to be that they kept it hushed up. The only way you would recognise these outfits in the past would be if you found they were produced by Mickie Most or Stock Aitken and Waterman. You always had an inkling, but it was kept very quiet. For the record buying public to discover that a band was actually a bunch of nobodies who had picked out of a beauty parade, given and image, given a name, given songs and then wheeled out to get teenage girls to throw pocket money at them was rightly seen as a mark of shame.

Unfortunately, with all the talentless wannabes who flock to pantomimes like the X-Factor, the shame has gone. Indeed, there seems be no longer any shame in subjecting yourself to being moulded into something marketable, like some sort of chocolate bar or new type of super-absorbent sanitary towel when you see a succession of idiots willingly humiliate themselves on TV. In the end, the X-Factor is not about the music, it is about money. Cowell and his cronies will use you until you fail to make money. Then you will be spat out into obscurity. What these shows look for is something safe, malleable and transient. Making some money producing a TV series which finds such a creature offsets any losses involved in getting it wrong.

G4 were slightly different in that they added a classical twist to what is allegedly a pop music search. In fact, their appeal is so broad that it is difficult to understand why anyone would dislike them. But that is just it. They are all things to all people, and ultimately therefore nothing of any consequence to anybody. To hear the way Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" is degraded. To listen to the ultimate seven minute rock anthem, "Bohemian Rhapsody" reduced to a pantomime farce. This album has one situation where it can be played - at post Christmas lunch when everyone is slumped around the telly and no-one is allowed to be anti-social and leave. "It's Christmas for God's sake. It's a time for the family to be together (whether they want to be or not)". The only album which can be put on which will not annoy granny is this. And for that piece of shoddy marketing we are exposed to this garbage as if it were of any value.

G4 demonstrates the ultimate shallowness of the X-Factor concept. They've had their fifteen minutes. Simon Cowell has got another ?15 million in the bank. Now let's go and find some other wannabe ready to be exploited and who is too stupid or too blinded by celebrity to spot that this is all JUST A HUGE CON TRICK.
Rating: 1/10