X Factor 2012: Tribute acts Omar Rajpute (Prince), Alex McLeish (Rod Stewart) & Ashley Whitelaw (Tulisa) fail to shine!
This year has not been a good one for tribute acts on The X Factor.
On this evening’s show, a variety of lookalikes and impersonators performed but unlike Kitty Brucknell, none of them made it past the initial judges’ audition.
First up was Omar Rajpute, 29, a Prince tribute artist from California. However, after singing for the panel they seemed distinctly underwhelmed and Gary Barlow said:
“It would be great for prince week but what are you going to do for the other nine weeks?”
Taking to the stage next was Alex McLeish a 56 year old construction site manager from Glasgow.
He laughed:
“People always say I look like Rod Stewart, my answer is- Rod looks like me.”
Louis Walsh responded:
“The show is called The X Factor, it’s not stars in your eyes!”
Lastly we had Tulisa lookalike Ashley Whitelaw. An 18 year old chip shop Worker from South Lanarkshire who said she works as a Tulisa impersonator but hasn’t had any bookings yet!
She got to have her photo taken with her idol, after belting out her song ‘Young’ but unfortunately her X Factor journey ended there.
Do you think the tribute acts were talented enough this evening, or did they get a raw deal? Leave your comments below….
Subscribe by RSS
The opening line of the article says, “This year has not been a good one for tribute acts on The X Factor.”
The truth is, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. As Louis pointed out, it’s not Stars In Their Eyes, but no-one seems to grasp this whole industry-wide problem of inappropriate matching of acts to venues and gigs. You also find that the better tribute acts would never give up 13 weeks of work from their diary to appear on a TV show for a week… and when a winner from one of these shows asks an agent to find them work, imagine the disbelief to find out the act only sings FIVE songs.
The advice I give to acts starting out is LEARN enough good songs for a minimum two hour show, THEN apply for these TV shows… if you win, you will need those 30 songs or so that you learned… if you LOSE you will need them even more.