I don't want this to sound like an "I told you so" kind of post, because, well, to be honest I felt that this song could at the very least have come 20th on the night and not been a total wash out like it was.
But, the truth of the matter is that this song and its placement ended up summoning a perfect storm of "Eh". The song itself is fine, fine in the way that hearing an X-Factor Winners song on the radio driving home from work is; its inoffensive and it isn't overly long so you know it will fade away before too long and something more interesting will be along soon.
However, hearing his performance in the jury show and live on the night, Rice just sounded rather 'off' to me. It sounded way better earlier in the week and in his winner's performance during National Selection and as "Eh" as the song itself is, had he been giving it the kind of performance he was and is capable of he could have done better. Not win, not get left side of the board, but still done better.
True, his placing in the running order was tough too, being put between two songs that were two of the favourites to win wasn't ideal. But when you are in that kind of situation you need to ensure that you bring your A-Game and stand out as best as you can.
But at the end of the day, it was just a bland song that was sung adequately with flat and uninteresting staging and it really does not matter where it stands in the running order when you bare that in mind.
I hope this acts as a wake up call for the BBC to get their act together and that the UK fans will put pressure on them to spice things up going forwards. I don't believe that ITV would do better as they are the source of the bland X-Factor sound to begin with, plus they did the UK's Junior Eurovision and gave up on that when the viewing figures weren't so hot and I cam kind of bitter about that.I don't know how much credit I can give them for the results we got from that but I worry that it will all just end up sounding the same as it is now if ITV does it.
Channel 4 might be interesting, but I don't see this as something they'd do.