Wagner Fiuza-Carrilho has blamed his ‘X Factor’ exit on the poor quality of songs he was given to sing each week.

The controversial Brazilian singer – who was voted off from the ITV1 show on Sunday after losing out in the sing-off to Mary Byrne – admitted he had “tremendous difficulty” learning the lyrics to some of the up-tempo tracks mentor Louis Walsh gave him to sing.

He explained: “The trouble was Louis gave me fast songs in English so I had tremendous difficulty learning the lyrics. My main language is Portuguese so because of that and the schedule of the show I didn¹t have enough time to rehearse and practise. English isn’t my first language, I struggled.

“The songs that can really show my voice like ‘La Fortuna’ and ‘The Wonder Of You’ and ‘Creep’, I sang them well because I can connect with the emotion. Songs like ‘She Bangs’, I can¹t feel that.”

Wagner admitted he the song he had most difficulty with was Elvis Presley’s ‘Viva Las Vegas’, and describes the performance as one of the “low points” in the competition.

He added to X Magazine: “I think ‘Viva Las Vegas’ was fast and meaningless. I didn’t want to sing some of the lyrics either “I am the devil with love to spare”. I don’t like the devil. I don’t like evil. I don¹t like what the devil stands for.

“When I got ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ out of time was a low point. And when I got ‘Viva Las Vegas’ in the wrong key. Yeah, there were some bad times. I didn’t know these songs.”