Is Simon Cowell killing music?

You don't have to watch it? Just try and live your life without knowing a thing about the X-Factor. It's impossible.

Oh how many times have I heard it: "Why do you moan about the X-Factor? Who's forcing you to watch it". Really? So how is it that someone who lives abroad still knows, without watching a single minute of the whole show, that someone called Alexandra won it? But this is the thing: the "you-don't-have-to-watch-it" brigade have obviously never heard of the word marketing. They're like pawns on a chessboard and they're not even aware of it.

Like Big Brother, the astronomic money behind the X-Factor ensure that it's everywhere. You read a paper, any paper, and there are at least a couple of pages and big photos dedicated to it. And let's not get started on the magazines. The day Alexandra won, BBC News online gave it more prominence on the home page than the death of two British soldiers in Afghanistan or the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe. It's like those saying "no need to whinge, just avoid McDonalds" except that if you plant one at every corner it's quite obvious that you'll walk into one sooner or later, if anything for a jimmy riddle.

And how about the other cliche, "Oh come on, the X-Factor or Pop Idol are just harmelss entertainment". We already spoke about the disturbing political message of the ode-to-our-boys Heroes. On another level, former winner Steve Brookstein was spot on when he recently accused the X Factor of "turning music into the WWF". "It’s about killing music to make light entertainment", he said. Bite the hand that feeds you and all that, but how can you disagree?

Let's have a look at it while we try and keep snobbishness at bay. Cheesy, manufactured charts pop has always existed. Back in the 70s The Supremes and Bay City Rollers were driving teenagers mad. And for all their posturing, the Sex Pistols themselves were a band assembled and manufactured by Malcolm McLaren. In the 80s you had Bros, Bananarama, the GoGos and dozens of others. But all of them put together were nowhere near as cumbersome as the whole X-Factor phenomenon. What we have now, courtesy of Simon Cowell and friends steamrolling their "product" into every living room in the country, is a whole new generation brainwashed into thinking that the X-Factor is the be all and end all of music. Anything outside of the pop or R & B styles is not even worth a look.

Here is a massive TV circus that is to music what Greggs is to haute cuisine. Aside from the contestants not even singing their own songs, they are treated like blank canvases whose sole aim is to impress Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and the two plastic dolls on their side (of which, for unfathomable reason, one is on course for the Bless-Her Award of the Year). It's like, forget your personality or individuality, the whole thing is about having a load of desperate young people begging the Emperor of Trash Music for a chance. "I'd do anything. Whatever it is you're looking for, I can give it to you. Please, I can do it. Just listen to this vibrato. Didn't the last X-Factor winner also sing like this?".

And they've got a point. What Simon Cowell is looking for is more of the same to feed the humongous beast of a mass market he's created. The X-Factor is where music ceases to be a form of art. It's where you should forget about pushing the boundaries, searching for something new or re-inventing genres, those 'talents' are only there to be given a song, churn out a no.1 single and fatten Simon Cowell's fund to purchase more of his beloved nipple-tickling trousers.

Just imagine if giving the public more of what they already have had been the dominant trend in the past few decades. Think of all those bands who ended up giving the public what they didn't even know they needed. Pink Floyd, Velvet Underground, Nirvana, The Clash. Would they ever have stood a chance?

I mean, when you look at the quick money the X-Factor or Pop Idol can generate, why should record companies invest money in obscure 'indie' bands finding their own route along the pub circuit when there's a freshly baked manufactured no.1 at hand? Of course no-one's saying that there won't be another Franz Ferdinand or Kaiser Chiefs. But, for sure, the X-Factor's bulky presence will halve their already meagre chances and push real musicians and bands further into obscurity.

And if that was enough to make you shake in revulsion, just remember the rumours that make Simon Cowell the winner of the Outstanding Contribution to Music at the next Brit Awards.