Will Katie Waissel judge X Factor 2015?

Long-time Popsiculture favourite Katie Waissel made her return to The X Factor this weekend to perform in what was dubbed The X Factor Medley - basically a cover of The Time (Dirty Bit) by the Black Eyed Peas.

You can watch the full performance below - Katie arrives near the end and frankly does an impressive job of rescuing what is otherwise several minutes of absolute car-crash television.


As usual it seems set out to humiliate the performers, rather than to bring them back as heroes of series gone by, and Katie once again brings an undeserved amount of grace and elegance to the X Factor stage which pretty much sums up how she's always been treated by the show.

But none of that matters - what matters is her tweet just before 11pm on December 13th (just a few minutes ago, as I write this) which has really set the Katie-cat among the pigeons for her Twitter followers.

Katie's tweet said:

Bye Bye London!! See y'all on the other side.... #seeyounextyear #confirmed #chair

— katie waissel (@katiewaissel24) December 13, 2014

And just in case she deletes it or it won't load for any reason, that is "Bye bye London!! See y'all on the other side.... #seeyounextyear #confirmed #chair".

Does this mean we can expect to see Katie Waissel judge X Factor 2015? Is the 'chair' she refers to one of the coveted X Factor mentors' chairs?

This IS Katie after all, so nothing is impossible... watch this space for official confirmation, if that really is what La Waissel was hinting at.

Either way it was a cathartic return to the show for Katie, who also posted on her Instagram account, where a picture paints a thousand words (or 65 words, in Katie's case...) and allowed her to send a message too long to tweet.

#amen #thexfactor @thexfactoruk #closure #farewells #newchapter Be Inspired.....

A photo posted by Red Velvet (@redvelvetband) on Dec 12, 2014 at 10:34pm PST

Again, will this 'new chapter' see Katie Waissel mentor for X Factor 2015? Or are the ever-hopeful Waissel Warriors jumping to conclusions?

It's too early to be certain, but you can bet her fans will have their fingers crossed - Katie has written X Factor columns for magazines and websites over the past couple of years, so her association with the show has never faded (and frankly, never will).

With strong opinions and no fear of expressing them, personally I think Katie would be a fantastic X Factor mentor for 2015; she might even be enough to convince me to watch it again.

If she is confirmed for one of the mentors' chairs in 2015, I'll just be hoping the media are a little kinder in their coverage of her than they were when she was a contestant on the show.

UPDATE: What if she meant The Voice?

Just a quick addition to this - what if when Katie said 'see you on the other side', she meant it more literally than anyone has realised?

People don't tend to talk about The X Factor judges/mentors in terms of the chairs they sit in, but there is of course a similar show where the mentors' chairs are a much more significant part of the production - The Voice.

It's on 'the other side' in the sense that it's on the BBC rather than ITV, and the mentors change much more regularly than they do on The X Factor.

What if... maybe, just maybe... Katie's 'confirmed chair' for next year is over at the Beeb? Personally I think she'd be a great fit for the show.

Red Velvet Band - I'm Fine

As you may have noticed over the past couple of years, we're pretty big Katie Waissel fans at Popsiculture, and like many Waissel Warriors, we're hanging on every snatched glimpse of what to expect from Red Velvet Band, when they finally get around to releasing an album.

I'm Fine probably isn't typical of what to expect - a heartfelt ballad written and recorded by Katie herself, it's a moving demo recording* free from gimmicks, and free to download via the Red Velvet Band SoundCloud page.



There's a sense of real emotion - and of real pain - underpinning I'm Fine, which anyone who's followed Katie's life in recent months won't find surprising.

Her voice, though, is as distinctive as ever, and her natural delivery of her own heart-rending vocals comes almost as a whisper, a shared secret, a burden not unburdened, but perhaps at least eased through music.

I've always adored Katie's ballads, and allowing for the fact that this is, after all, a one-woman demo track, I think it stands up there with her best efforts from the past.

Truth be told, some fans are likely to be happy with any song that carries Katie's voice - and although I count myself among them, I feel truly blessed for that to be the case.

As always, more from Red Velvet as it becomes available.

*UPDATE: Katie uploaded an updated version of the track for download via the SoundCloud page after we published this review, which brings the track up to studio quality and offers a much richer sound in general.

Red Velvet - First Listen

There were more than a few disappointed Waissel Warriors last week, when it emerged that Katie's first proper public outing with her new band Red Velvet was over-18s only. But if there's one thing I've learned about Katie Waissel, it's that she genuinely really cares about her fans, so there was always bound to be a consolation for those who weren't old enough to attend the debut performance of Red Velvet at the Monto Water Rats Theatre on Tuesday, April 24th.

And they didn't have long to wait - in fact, most of Red Velvet's tracks currently on SoundCloud have been there since April 11th, just waiting to be discovered. This week, Waissel added NRG to the Red Velvet set on April 28th, and finally let her fans in on the secret via Twitter.

You can imagine the response - many of these supporters have been waiting for the first proper Waissel music to be released since The X Factor (and remember, the self-titled album 'Katie Waissel' had been recorded before she ever appeared on the show) so the twit-clamour has been raucous and the five-track Red Velvet set on SoundCloud has seen plenty of plays in the short time it's been available.

So, what's all the noise about? Are the Waissel Warriors just fangirling all over Twitter, or is there some real quality to these tracks? Let's take a look...

Cher Lloyd - Swagger Jagger

Whether you blame it on hype or raw talent, the nation awoke this morning to its first week of having Cher Lloyd's Swagger Jagger at number one in the official singles chart. It's a curious event, as she never seemed to get to the top spot on iTunes over the course of last week, suggesting physical CD sales might yet play a part in deciding how the finished chart evolves.

Either way, it's a result that's likely to fuel the fire in fans' hearts, while annoying Cher's haters to fever pitch. I was (and still am) a Katie Waissel fan, rather than a 'brat', but many of the Warriors on Twitter seem to support both - and there's nothing really wrong with that, is there?

It would be fairly pointless to review a song that's been everywhere for the past few weeks in the usual way, so the below takes a bit of a departure from our normal format.

Katie Waissel - Katie Waissel

Confusion set in among the Waissel Warriors last week with the news that a Katie Waissel album - entitled, simply, Katie Waissel - would be released in a matter of days. Katie has said a number of times that she's in no hurry to rush out an album post-X Factor, and is in the middle of touring with the live version of the show. So where had the album come from?

The answer is simple enough - this is the recording she had made for Chamberlain Records in the US, before ever auditioning for The X Factor. All of those stories in the press about being bought out of her record contract by Simon Cowell were not quite accurate. Rather than being bought out fully, it seems Cowell was only able to buy some time, so that the album would not be released while the series was still being filmed.

It's now three months since the final of The X Factor and we have the first album to bear Waissel's name - joining the EP Songs From Under the Covers, attributed to 'Katie V', on the list of Katie Waissel releases, but still not music that takes into account her time on The X Factor or the emotional journey that she went on, or that the Waissel Warriors became a part of.

Katie Waissel Christmas Singalong - Selfridges Manchester, Dec 15th

While Katie Waissel's Christmas Singalong on the top floor of Exchange Square's Selfridges in Manchester was far from perfect, it was a festive affair and a chance to glimpse just how good the starlet could be at full health.

To be fair, the fates were conspiring against Katie from the beginning on this one. Being 15 minutes late taking to the stage is no surprise from any performer, although a few people weren't prepared to stick it out for a few minutes and decided to leave instead. The only real criticism that could be levelled at this event is a lack of preparation - the sound levels weren't right, leading to feedback and overly loud vocals throughout, and Katie hadn't had chance to practise with the backing tracks, which left her lost at times.

Katie Waissel - Ray of Light

Long, long ago (well, four years), The X Factor finalist Katie Waissel had dark hair and a different surname. The moniker Katie Vogel was an homage to her grandfather, one of Katie's inspirations from an early age but who passed away when she was still very young. Perhaps it's fitting that her childhood inspiration provided the name under which she released 2006's Ray of Light, which was adopted by BullyingUK as its anthem for the year.

It's a strange thing, too, that four years later Katie is a perfect example of the undeserved hatred directed at people. Twitter (or, at least, fans of The X Factor who are on there) is genuinely divided into Waissel Warriors and Vogel Villifiers. It's real hatred, too - there have been death threats. To paraphrase one tweet, "We're not bullying you - we'll stop as soon as you quit the show." Anyway, that's a different matter...