29. Matt Cardle – When We Collide

3 weeks at #1 (entered 19th December): 01-01-01-02-05-20-25-37-44-57-61-68-95

Kept off #1: none

EOY #2

Scottish rock band Biffy Clyro, a band that I always enjoy hearing from, were having their most successful commercial era around 2008-2010. The Only Revolutions album produced six singles that got great radio play and reached the top 40, including my favourite song of theirs: ‘The Captain’. Unfortunately their songs would never have the wide appeal to get to a singles #1, and as such this is essentially the only opportunity to talk about the brilliant Biff in a number one singles thread. Particularly this concerns the fourth: ‘Many Of Horror’, which following steadily diminishing returns after three previous singles, reached a peak of #20 in early 2010. This era saw Biffy Clyro trend into making their sound more radio-friendly for rock radio stations at least, and as such ‘Many Of Horror’ is a rousing rock ballad with uplifting lines such as ‘It’s you and me ‘til the end of time’, and ‘when we collide we come together’.

All of that unfortunately made it perfect prey for the praying mantis of UK popular music, and I really hope this is the last time I’ll have to prominently mention his name in this thread, Simon Cowell, just as he was eying up how to potentially market a new type of singer for a X-Factor success. Winners of the previous X-Factors had all been firmly in the pop mould, and of the artists that looked likely to win the 2010 series, one of them, Matt Cardle, presented something a bit different. He was a slightly scruffy but still attractive (?) soft-rock guitar strummer that offered potential untapped financial success for the casual music market who enjoyed such things. Alas, poor Matt might have just been a tad too early, too attached to the Cowell brand, and not ginger enough. To have a long career at least. You can also just win lawsuits later if that’s your thing.

Actually an interesting thing that Cowell did this year was ensure the last four contestants left in the X-Factor would have recorded different winner's singles, in a change to previous series, to ensure they got a song that suited them (perhaps because of how ill-suited Olly Murs was to 'The Climb'). Cher Lloyd would have taken Shontelle's 'Impossible', One Direction Alphaville's 'Forever Young', Rebecca Ferguson Duffy's 'Distant Dreamer', and Cardle 'Many Of Horror'. Ferguson and Cardle performed their versions in the final, and Cardle won. A quick title change to not confuse the, ahem, easily distracted X-Factor audience, from the beautiful 'many of horror' in the song's middle 8 to the far more obvious 'when we collide' in the chorus, and it was away to the charts.

So let’s dispense with the final one from the far too long ‘winners single/charity single’ list in 2010, I wondered if I was holding onto this one too long but this is how much I enjoy them and while my enjoyment of ‘When We Collide’ is mostly down to my enjoyment of the original song it’s covering, and it is strictly an inferior version of that song, it’s still good enough to listen to ahead of the previous lot. Cardle's vocal handling of the song is nowhere near as interesting, his falsetto is annoying enough that I immediately know it's not the better version I'm listening to and it lacks a lot of the energy and emotion that Simon Neil puts into it (understandably, as it's about Neil's family). It's a good effort for X-Factor to at least try to touch on some different genres, but it also betrays how cynical this was, because Matt doesn't have any connection to this song, and while covers are a valid musical choice, the best put something of themselves in it. Outside of seeing him on TV up to now, we didn't have any sense of who Matt was, and this didn't do anything to change that.

'When We Collide' was hugely commercially successful, reversing the relative chart underperformance of 'The Climb', getting the Christmas #1 and 2 weeks after that into the beginning of 2011. It sold so fast that it almost denied 'Love The Way You Lie' that record-breaking End Of Year #1 and its Christmas #1 sales week was only just below that of Helping Haiti's first week. While not the biggest number in X-Factor's history, and actually even slightly below 'The Climb' on first-week sales, I think that's more a sign of the declining singles record market than diminishing interest in X-Factor. After a year off from the Christmas #1, Simon Cowell came back with a vengeance.

Outraged by a talent show taking and diminishing one of their band's songs for the masses, Biffy Clyro fans and by extension a large number of rock fans launched a campaign to get the original 'Many Of Horror' to #1 and stop the X-Factor for a second year in a row. This unfortunately was nowhere near as successful as Rage Against The Machine's effort the year before, but it did have the happy consequence of getting 'Many Of Horror' to a new peak of #8, something far more in keeping with its quality, and allowed at least those listening to the Christmas chart in 2010 to know the origins of the song now at #1.

Please allow me to never have to type X-Factor again.

Obviously Matt had better stuff to come. He really is much better than the likes of Ed Sheeran. A shame he could never shake the X Factor tag and yet wasn’t loved by X Factor fans.

I agree When We Collide was a vastly inferior version to the original, as you say at least it gave Biffy Clyro some much deserved publicity. The thing I found most annoying was the change of the name of the song, X Factor not only butchering another great song but also ignoring the writers choice of title. Did they think the GP couldn’t cope with ‘Many of Horror’, was Horror not considered an appropriate word at Christmas?!

However I think Matt was/is a great vocalist, and in common with many from the show, he just needed some decent (new) material to work with. His subsequent solo career, often self written, was/is good. I once saw him doing an intimate acoustic set a few years ago and he was absolutely fantastic and quite compelling in his performance.

One of the better X Factor winners songs this was from Matt Cardle rather this than that awful Surfin' Bird.

Oh aye, I think Matt in his career after this did perfectly fine, I enjoyed his first album and what scattered songs I heard after that well enough, once he got some original material there's nothing too much wrong with it - 'Run For Your Life' in particular is a very good song in that mould.

'Surfin' Bird' - hah, of course I didn't mention that as it only got to #3 but that was a real random campaign attempt.

As X-Factor winners singles go, I don't mind this one as much as a lot of the others. But it's definitely inferior to the original.

Actually yeah, before we really leave X-Factor behind (thank god), some of the rest of the list were performed on it/are by acts from it, but nothing that's as tied to the show in part because we've already gotten rid of every song in the last five/six weeks of the year(!), I should say that my favourite act that year was actually (Platinum) Paije! Idk, he seemed like a nice guy with a soulful voice and I always liked that sort of underdog at the time. With kudos to Wagner for... what he did.

Matt was a decent winner but I was full on getting into the underdog narrative as a teenager and it was very obvious after about halfway through that he'd win I seem to remember.

anyway talent show brainrot hate it how was I ever this into it