The XFactor Auditions Providence
Katie Friday, I headed up to Providence, RI to check out the XFactor auditions. My friend Shea and I were mainly going to see Britney, but figured it would be a fun time. We got there around 4:45, and the scheduled arrival time was 5:45. We were told as long as we showed up by 5:45, our tickets were guaranteed.
We found the line to get in and they were already giving out tickets and then letting us wait inside where it was air conditioned rather than outside (very nice of them!) We exchanged our voucher for tickets (except not really, they didn’t take the voucher) and the guy looked through the tickets to find 2 for us so we were hoping we had a good spot. We ended up one section over from the stage and about 10 rows up from the floor.
The warmup guy was Frank the host of Street Smarts. He went over how the judges would be coming in and we could take all the photos and videos we wanted, but once the show started we had to put our cameras away. (This was pretty neat too. I just wanted photos of the judges anyway!) They played some One Direction for us to get us up and dancing and they filmed some reaction shots of us excited, confused, bored, etc.
Then they played a video and that meant when the video ended the judges would be coming out. The video was a bit of a roller coaster ride – it had clips of One Direction (yay) but then it had then sending home Rachel Crow (boo!) and clips of the judges. LA Reid came out first, then Demi, then Simon (who really took his time getting to the table and slapped five with tons and tons of people on his way there) and then of course Britney! I’m pretty sure just about everyone (at least in our general area) was there to see her.
There were 3 sessions of auditions – each one was 5 contestants (I feel like the last session had more than 5 but I wasn’t exactly counting, it could have just been that it went on for far too long at that point). The first 2 that auditioned they let through, though I didn’t particularly like either of them. Demi voted no for both of them as well. There was a girl who loved Demi and was a big fan (but didn’t know she had tattoos that said Stay Strong…) and went on about how she was bullied and broke down during her song and Demi went and gave her a hug and was crying… Her whole family ran out on stage when she got through and I’d be surprised if they didn’t put some of that on the show. There was a rapping school nurse who was pretty good… and a 13 year old girl that was PHENOMENAL. Simon didn’t believe she was singing and made her sing acapella because he thought someone was back stage singing for her. Then once she did amazing acapella he said he didn’t think she was 13 and she said “but I have a birth certificate!” Demi said she thinks that the girl could win it all, so hopefully we will be seeing some of her again as well.
Xander Alexander from last season was back… and a guy that auditioned for Idol was there too. As well as a bunch of other bad singers as well. One girl said she never really sang in front of anyone before and did I Gotta Feeling. She spent about 5 minutes trying to get us to clap and then sucked so bad….
Demi had a lot of really bitchy comments too. Some of them were hilarious but some of them ended up coming across as a bit much. She and Simon would chit-chat a lot during the auditions too and at one point they were talking and LA actually had to repeat what a girl said so that Simon would hear it. (Her mother picked the song – Simon doesn’t like that)
When we left, we walked by where the trailers were parked for the stage and while waiting on the corner to cross, Simon drove by and had the window down and was waving and saying hello to everyone so we got to wave to him. He seems like he is really nice!
I’m looking forward to seeing who ends up making it in to the show when it airs and maybe I’ll actually watch this season in its entirety if one of the contestants from our session makes it through!
(And Shea had no idea who One Direction was – on the way there I had to fill her in but by the time we were on the way home she was singing along to What Makes You Beautiful in the car with me! haha)