The first song performed during Saturday night’s episode of Strictly Come Dancing was met with fierce criticism from viewers, who blasted the in-house band’s cover of Phil Collins and Phil Bailey’s 1984 song “Easy Lover”.
The Only Way is Essex star Pete Wicks danced a Tango to the song alongside his pro partner Jowita Przystał, and was awarded a not-so-impressive score of 29, receiving a score of six from Craig Revel Horwood.
One viewer concluded the dance was “really quite dull” and claimed it was Wicks’ “time to go” in tomorrow night’s results show.
However, others blamed the lacklustre performance on the song choice – and how it was performed by Dave Arch’s live band.
“That’s terrible tango music for Pete and Jowita and sounds awful,” said one viewer on X/Twitter.
Another asked: “Who’s murdering one of my all time favourite songs?!” as one person chimed, “Very weird choice of music for a tango?!”
One person criticised the vocalists for “out of tune” singing, while another who had seen Phil Colins perform the song live previously, and claimed it was “being totally murdered on Strictly”.
“‘Easy Lover’ is such a great song… but not this version,” concluded one viewer.
As for the dancing itself, Wicks was praised by judges for “improving dramatically” from last week’s Cha Cha to “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred, which saw him at the bottom of the leaderboard with a score of 27.
Motsi Mabuse said: “I’m so glad to see you back in the ballroom, this really suits you. I loved your top line, it was very controlled and gave a good stance to the dance,” though she did observe “a touch of hesitation” from Wicks.
Shirley Ballas told him: “What I love is, you come out and you’re absolutely focussed on the job at hand. I thought you did very well this week.”
Anton Du Beke added: “You’ve improved so dramatically, this is really great.”
