John and Edward Grimes.
No, really.
You may think that I’ve finally lost my mind and turned to hallucinogenic drugs to get myself through life but, really, I haven’t. I’m being 100% serious. Or as serious as you can be when talking about these identical quiffed Irish invaders of the UK Charts.
I’ll put it concisely: I adore Jedward, and this is my case as to why.
After much moaning, raised eyebrows, sighs, and restrained cynicism, I agreed to take my little sister and cousin to see X Factor Live. It was, in my eyes, nothing more than a poor reason to miss Manchester United winning the Carling Cup Final and a blemish to my rock ’n’ roll credentials. I was prepared to listen to nothing but The Skids for a week as penance to reclaim my kudos.
If anyone had told me that the endearingly tuneless twins John and Edward would steal the show I’d have dismissed them as someone who needed to quickly see the inside of a padded cell. But, putting aside my hatred of X Factor and its stranglehold on the music industry as we know it, they did.
John and Edward, I realised, represent more of a two-fingered salute to X Factor than Rage Against The Machine’s Christmas Number One did. They are the contraband box of ecstasy pills in The Priory, the sly injection of chaos that turns a peaceful protest into a full-on riot. They sing passably, by no means well, but became bigger than the show that made them with nothing more than reckless optimism and a euphoric hyperactivity both onstage and off. Through a combination of national pride and public frustration with the generic manure that reality TV propels into our consciousness year after year, they have become stars. Not just pop stars doomed to live forever with the smoking brand of X Factor across their foreheads, but actual stars.
To see them onstage is to have a seven-inch psychotic smile on your face and aching ribs for hours afterwards, because what you’re seeing isn’t a shopwork mannequin, it is two eighteen-year-old boys doing whatever the hell they want. From Under Pressure to Rock DJ to Ghostbusters, cavorting with water pistols and inflatable ghosts, one twin dancing slightly out of time with the other, talking in faux American accents, and dressed like the love-children of James Bond and Nicky Wire, they are undeniably joyous to witness.
”Have fun - that’s our plan at all times,” John recently said to Q Magazine. “When you look at some artists you can see there’s something missing when you look into their eye. They’re trudging through a performance. We’re thinking, Who’s let us on this stage? It’s just amaaaaazing. We’ll never lose the feeling that we’re the luckiest guys ever for being allowed near a stage.”
Also, in a true rock ‘n’ roll initiation, they have Noel Gallagher’s mobile number and implied endorsement. “He’s been really supportive so we got his number and we’ve been texting him,” said Edward in the same interview. Now that is an exchange I would have paid money to see.
They are rock ‘n’ roll. Those who complain that they can’t sing are missing the point. A non-believer friend remarked on their cover of Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure (that has shot to Number One in Ireland and Number Two in the UK) with a cold, “I bet Freddie Mercury is turning in his grave.”
I’m not so sure. They may not have enough power between them to match even one of Freddie’s magnificent vocal chords, however they must represent everything positive that he once sang about. They are, in every sense, the champions. Hell, they are the Bohemian fucking Rhapsody.
Freddie Mercury would not be turning in his grave to see these fellas doing what they so obviously love to do. He’d be dancing.
