On Saturday she served Japanese geisha realness in her over-the-top rendition of Girls Aloud’s “Sound of the Underground”.
And while her arresting performance certainly turned heads, Finnish singer Saara Aalto once again found herself in the bottom two sing-off against girl group Four of Diamonds.
Saara, who faced sing-offs during the first two weeks of the live shows, used her experience to her advantage, delivering an emotionally wrought performance of Jessie J’s “Who You Are”.
It helped that Four of Diamonds struggled with their rendition of “When You Believe”, which was pitchy, even if full of passion.
Louis Walsh voted to save his group, while Nicole Sherzinger, Sharon Osbourne and Simon Cowell all voted for the Finnish starlet.
Following the result Saara could be heard saying “I’m sorry” repeatedly to the fallen girl group.
On Saturday’s show Saara revealed that appearing on The X Factor had led to her being taking more seriously back home in Finland, with a Finnish TV crew coming out to visit her. Her quirky style was becoming more accepted. As Saara explained, “Finnish people see it’s okay to be different.”
On stage, Saara delivered a bold, extravagant performance of “Sound of the Underground”, with staging inspired by Japanese style.
Following on from last week’s hair transformation, Saara wore a giant, towering black wig. Her wardrobe included a pink kimono, which Saara later removed to reveal a corset top.
Ahead of Sunday’s reveal show, a lot of our readers were concerned about Saara’s chances of advancing direct to next week’s show.
“The outfit was horrendous,” Gav wrote. “Everything masked the great vocal. Lots of mentioning she was from Finland this week again. All stacking up to not a promising Sunday night. Vote to save the real Saara.”
Plenty of our readers found the performance underwhelming — not because of Saara, but because of the song itself.
“Very hard to succeed with a song like this, it’s not a song for live performances,” Nitzan said. “Still it was fun and good thanks to the staging and Sarah’s steady vocals.”
Briekimchi put blame squarely on producers and mentor Sharon: “They do not pick good songs for her at all. This was pretty bad. I have no idea what the staging had to do with the song.”
Please god please let her have an afro next week.
I will die laughing.
Honestly, that show is trash. They don’t let the artists express any artistry, they’d rather make them look like clowns like they did with Saara in this performance to attract the audience.
Her “sound of the underground” performance was a bit over the top but I feel the vocal performance was one of her greatest saturday performances. But her sing off was everything.
Great vocally, great emotionally and such great control. Also, I heard them chanting her name during the judges decision on Sunday and I was so thrilled for her,
Who You Are was really strong and emotional song/performance.
I hope she gets stripped-down version this week. Still she can make a good show, with dancing etc. No costumes next time. PLEASE! 🙂
Yet another amazing performance from Saara which is why it’s so annoying that she is going next week if she hits the bottom 3 again. Thoroughly deserved to stay and I still wish she can make it to the final (though it’s looking really unrealistic now). It would be interesting to know who your favorites aside from Saara are Team Wiwi – I’m loving your X Factor reviews 🙂
esc1234…
So next week its DISCO week… any suggestions of songs? Id love a technically different and difficult song but I’m stuck when I think of disco. More wigs and outfits? I think next week is tricky to tackle…
have you ever thought that they keep voting her down so that they can hear her in the sing off? 😛
I really loved Saara’s performance of “Who You Are”, she really got out the emotion in the song and you could see the fight in her eyes.
What annoys me is the lack of warmth from the other contestants, when she finished her performance and even worse, when she was called as safe. The other acts looked pretty annoyed with her staying and that’s not good to see. Don’t think I want to see any of those people winning a record contract.
I do visit Wiwibloggs also for Saara updates. Please keep on posting about her.
There’s been plenty of other Eurovision related things happening other than this which I haven’t seen you report on. Anouk dropped another album, Harel Skaat has had a couple singles for example but all we see is Saara Aalto. Which when there isn’t as much to report on seems to be an overwhelming amount on her.
Which lets face facts she shouldn’t have made it as far as she did but then again look at half the other acts. Not exactly a strong vocal year for Xfactor U.K.
Ummm, for me, this sing off, was the best performance of Saara not just from the Xfactor, but from all her performances ever… I really don’t understand her cliche of trying to be a Lady Gaga wanna be, with all the extravaganza and flamboyant performances.
wrong song choice, TRAGIC stage perfomance and a wig that there are no words to describe… lets hope that next week she will not do anything the creative director asks….
Don’t really like these 2 performances…. -The “sound of the underground” performance was like Svetlana Loboda on acid….
The second performance was too boring and kinda flat emotionally.
Better luck next week Saara, hope you manage to stay to the finals.
Sound of the Underground was a terrible song choice and they could’ve picked something better if they really wanted to pick a Girls Aloud song. The bottom 2 seemed obvious with the mentioning of Finland twenty times in her VT. She killed that final performance though. Her vocal is out of this world every single time. Hopefully she bounces back next week, but she’s the only bottom 2 performer left in the competition so they might give her the chop 🙁
OMG You mentioned me! Xxx
Wow. What a sing off. Real connection in the song and for the result I was literally on the edge of my sofa and did an air punch.
Her diversity is amazing! Saara for president!
Playing back the two sing-off performances, Saara literally wiped the floor with 4 of Diamonds, the song she performed seemed in my opinion to tell the story of her fight in this competition. And it was nice to see that Simon believes in her, I hope she can turn it around in Disco Week next week
Alright Saara fan girl. Yup Zena is more important then a girl who can’t even win her national eurovision selection and can bearly survive each week on the xfator. Saara is old news. JESC is approaching and should be more important then a xfactor contestant.
The X Factor UK this year sucks so bad. I can’t find any contestant qualified for being the winner.
there hasn’t been a lot of Eurovision news so we need to keep ourselves entertained atm. I for one really like the Saara Aalto articles, I love the fact that she’s on this show coz she’s a great artist, I get that it’s not Eurovision but maybe (more theorising here) that after the show ends she’ll enter UMK since got all this UK/Worldwide exposure (a bit on exaggeration but a lot of overseas people watch this show)
@EsCfan We’re technically still in down season until Albania kicks off their NF, and Saara’s pretty popular in the Twitter ESC fandom
@EsCfan totally agree. Saara gets top much hype. Zena Donelly has just won the JESC national final and it’s way more important then this.
Why is every second post about Saara Aalto? I mean I like her, but do we have to know all details about that show and what she sings? I mean what relation has it to Eurovision, except her?