Liked them both.

Trust you to be awkward 

Edit: changed it for you Bliz 

Biffa's vershum as mentioned elsewhere.

 

Same here. No comparison for me but it's all about opinions innit 

It's the only modern song I downloaded this year.

Is it a one-off? Any Biffy recommendations?

As you know I'm quite old and listen to R2. Ken Bruce plugged the so g to high heaven, and I really liked it. So I purchased it from iTunes. I know nothing else about the band tbh!

Ah, see I'd never heard of them, until Simon Cowell introduced me to their work, Joe! 

I'm not sure what you define as 'quite old' I'm no teenager either . I shall take it upon myself to research them and report back at a later stage with my all-important findings 

(I have been converting my previously purchased gramophone records onto my iPod and where I have been unable I have had to download. Today for example...... Steppenwolf Monster and various other odds and ends from the late 60s and early 70s.)

I like them both. Radio 5live did a comparison this morning, but, to be honest, I couldn't hear a real difference between Biffy Clyro and that Matt person.

I love both versions ... but Biffy's version is better 

I haven't heard the official Matt version, but when I sing it I go for a chorus which he avoided. Mrs Joe has a theory that Matt hasn't looked well for the last few weeks and maybe he will do the song justice when he is better.

He's definitely sounded a bit rough since he had his cold. The version I posted on this thread is apparently the version they're releasing though (i.e. it's official). I find it a bit strange that they wouldn't wait a week or two and give the bloke a chance to get his voice back before putting him in the studio (he still sounds hoarse on the 'official' version to me and backs off from the big notes).

I still much prefer Biffy's version. Matt still sounds like a busker to me even at his best.

I'm a bigot. I do like the X Factor as a spectacle, and I do think that this year's was particularly well done, but they all are buskers IMO. I would be very surprised if any of 'em made it, but at least they get a tour.

Lots of them have done. Manufactured bands/artists fresh off the conveyor belt with no songwriting talent whatsoever has been the new black for a long time. If the face fits and you don't sing wildly out of tune, you're in.

It's confusing, for me.
If someone spends years trying to break into the business, singing in pubs etc. and earning their keep by painting and decorating, and then enters a competition and wins a recording contract, are they manufactured, or did they help their own discovery, when others have been discovered by singing in the right place, at the right time, just not on telly?

Blizzie, that's a whole topic of conversion. He has been trying (apparantly) (sp two ps or two rs) for 17 year. His dad said this morning that he has about a 100 songs which could end up on CDs. I like him and I hope he does well.

It's a very tough question to answer. 'right place, right time' absolutely has a lot to do with it. More than any other creative endeavour the music profession is very harsh in that way. But Matt really does just sound like a busker to me. To be fair to him he has the odd quirky feature when he sings certain songs but the rest of the time he just sounds really dull. 

He didn't get lucky, luck came and found him and he probably can't believe his own luck. He owes Lady Luck a huge percentage of his earnings but I'd rather he won than the Sade terminally dull soundalike or another boy band with limited singing ability all more interested in trying to outpose each other on stage than singing.

Cher had more to offer than any of them. She is an amazing performer, horrible individual that she is nobody can deny that she sets the stage alight while the rest of them just stand there hoping the backing dancers will confuse people into thinking they are alive and moving slightly.

Sorry, went on a bit of a ramble there 

I'd like to hear something he's written himself. I didn't know he wrote his own stuff.

That's why I like him too. Cos to me he's a real musician. A girl who calls herself Emma's Imagination won the Sky1 talent show, she was a busker in Glasgow and same as Matt, plugged away at it for years (and talented too). But her win has credibility all over it even though her and Matt both won the same prize. (She's been signed with Universal, he with Sony).

What's the difference?

I'm backing Matt all the way cos I believe he has the talent and capability to hold a crowd completely on his own. He's not the sort of artist that can be moulded into what Sony might want cos he's already got his own identity and style and he never deferred from that in the week on week shows. (Whereas One Direction could be made into pretty much anything Sony want them to be). Matt's the real deal, nowt plastic or pretentious. He's not so unassuming that it becomes annoying (ie; Leona and Rebecca), but he's not overly obnoxious (Cher Lloyd). He just seems like a guy who loves what he does, saw an opportunity, went for it and is glad of his win but also feels he deserves it. Good luck to him.

As an afterthought, the X factor may seem like an easy ticket but there's a lot of hard work that goes into it being a contestant (if you really believe in what you want to achieve) and I would imagine you have to be pretty strong to be able to cope under that pressure.

No evidence yet of that at all. He has been awful the last few weeks and still won. He put in some very strong performances through the series but his serial awfulness of late was not enough to put people off because the alternatives were simply to terrible to even consider (Rebecca and One Direction).

I think you're being harsh on Cher she has dynamite stage presence. Not one single person in the entire series had any stage presence or charisma at all. She would have won if she wasn't such a despicable example of the human race and also had cut out the rap.

Exactly. I wish him well too! 

And I love his 'busker's voice'. 

He didn't get lucky, he went out and found his own luck, after years of playing music and singing.
That was my point.

And yet, he suddenly loses credibility, because he entered the X Factor, despite covering a 'credible' song, by a 'credible' band? 

Prom, Matt had been suffering from tonsillitis for the last few weeks and it was clear he wasn't at his best. I said on Sunday though, even for a classically trained woman to reach that falsetto with tonsillitis would have been difficult, so he did well under the circumstances. I also don't think he was the best of a bad bunch. Storm Lee had an amazing voice but they completely messed up his image when they should have just left that well alone and let the guy sing. You and I will never agree on the Matt argument but for me, I saw enough of his capabilities to have an informed opinion on why I think the way I do.

As for Cher, the rapping was the thing that got her noticed. Vocally, she was pretty shit tbh, and if you watch American Idol in January you'll see that there's people like her ten a penny (but more talented and still not making it through first audition). Her attitude and tantrums didn't help. She had no charisma whatsoever, seemed extremely difficult to interview (from what I saw of her VT's) and if she's gonna be big in the business she has to be personable. Her PR training came in way too late.

Or maybe those who heard him sing from the beginning and loved his voice, realised that he wasn't quite up to par, because he had tonsillitis, and couldn't just take a few weeks off! 

Karma, you deserve an intelligent, considered reply, but unfortunately I can't be arsed. He sounds like a dullard for most of his songs then hits a high note and people think omg. Bee Gees anyone?

He's not the best of a bad lot, that would be Cher. She can sing when she doesn't insist on rapping in songs that don't want it or need it (in her defence, she's thick, so is Cheryl Cole for letting her do it, nothing new there). She has astonishing stage presence, she can OWN a stage and project herself. I'm going to go out on a limb and say if she gets a record deal she'll be far more successful than our favourite busker/man trying to sound like a woman.

You guys  

Well there are people's opinions on here that I respect and so I tried very hard to see what the heck was so special about Matt,
And I still can't.

So I have come to the conclusion that it is me - I just do not like that style of singing . I just find it bland and boring.
I suppose if I am honest I quite liked the accoustic "hit me baby one more time" but that had been done before by someone else.

I do not think Matt does have staying power -  obviously I wish him well and if he writes his own stuff then I will see what that is like and reconsider,

The thing that I think is a real shame however is this. They will package him - they will want to sell him to the mass market as a sex symbol to the teens and lets face it he is hardly that.
BUT maybe he will do a Will Young or Kelly Clarkson and break away and do his own thing with his own style and image.
If that is the case I will be more than happy to come back and eat humble pie.

don't like either version, just don't like the song at all.

matt  performed pretty well for most of the series, as did rebecca,cher does have a stage presence,which is unfortunate in one so useless in all other respects.

the mud in a mud wrestling competition has a  stage presence, and is a vital requirement of the art, as it covers limbs and slides over  womens anatomy, can't say i'd want to sit and watch it for 10 weeks tho.

I like them both... why did they change the title for Matt's though?

In both versions, the song is boring and insipid... they would both make me turn the radio off

I think it's a really, really dire song, so voted that I couldn't stand either.  But I think that Matt's version is way better than the original.

Matt 'whiney' Cardle has absolutley nothing on the original. Its just another in a long line of songs ha has murdered.

You can't please all the people all of the time I suppose. Remember the furore when Cowell brought the appalling Halelujah out from under the settee where I hid it way back when. Last year's was rubbish too. It's up to the public and their hard earned cash, but I agree with Jingle Bells, IMO this was the stand out radio song of the year and Matt has murdered it.

I agree ...........I loved his first audition - love his style. I would say that he was spot on 95% of the time even though they had to adhere to various themes (quite unecessary IMO)- just let them sing what they're good at.

It was quite evident that he was unwell the last two weeks and a bit under par but still good enough IMO.

I never got all the Rebecca hype although I thought her 'Sweet Dreams' was fantastic - she does have a fantastic voice simply not the style of singing I particularly like. 

I think Matt will make it big TBH. He's spent years at his craft and with the 'right' help I think he'll go far.

Soozy