I’ve been hooked on American Idol since Season 4. I missed the first 3 seasons, so Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, Ruben Studdard, Clay Aiken, Fantasia, Josh Gracin and all the other early contestants are familar to me only through news reports, or their records. Kelly, Clay and Josh in particular have become multi-platinum record sellers and are familar to most anyone that listens to the radio
For anyone that has watched the show with any degree of regularity, the first 8 seasons with judges Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell presented a somewhat stable sense of predictability. Randy would come across with judgements that no one could understand, but thought were cool (Yo! Dog!), while Paula would espouse some sort of LSD driven nonsense that made no sense, and Simon Cowell would just be rude. Accurate, but rude.
Over the years, I grew to trust Simon as honest and forthright. He knew great talent when he saw it, and was not afraid to tell singers on the American Idol stage that they had screwed up, either through a bad choice of song, a terrible sense of style, or just plain out bad singing. We knew that no matter how rude he seemed, Simon always told the truth.
He got quite a reputation here in the USA, primarily through his American Idol presence, of being a very rude English person, who enjoyed driving young hopeful singers to tears.
Here in the states, we can’t see Simon’s other show, Britan’s Got Talent. The only way we can see portions of it are through the snippets that people post to YouTube!.
I suppose that Britains Got Talent! is the precursor to American Idol. Since we Americans seem to have lost the ability to invent cutting edge televison on our own, we’ve taken to copying great British TV. Showtime has been very good at this, with series such as Queer as Folk, and Shameless.
Anyway, Simon Cowell is featured as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent, and one of the most startling things about this to me is that he comes across as a completely different person. He comes across as a really warm, feeling, human being. This is in stark contrast to his American Idol personality where he comes across as a cold, unfeeling Darth Vader sort of person who finds great joy in making someone else feel like a neon yellow turd glowing on a field of dark brown.
You can see this by watching a few clips from YouTube! of Britain’s Got Talent, where the camera pans to Simons face, and he shows actual, real emotion. I was actually driven to tears by a performance of Only Boys Aloud on Britiain’s Got Talent, and was flabberasted to see that Simon Cowell actually exhibited some human emotion during and after their performance.
Susan Boyle made the world wide news when she appeared on Britain’s Got Talent, and you can see during her audition that Simon wanted with all his heart to send her back to her hovel in some small British Village.
Despite the fact that she was to all appearances a dowdy British maiden Aunt, you can see that Simon was completley enthralled with her performance, once she opened her mouth and started to sing.
When he was a judge on American Idol, he was known for his mostly negative comments on many contestants.
After watching his judging on Britain’s Got Talent and American Idol, I’m beginning to wonder if he is just prejudiced against American talent. On Britain’s Got Talent he comes across as a jovial, engaging, warm-hearted person who has the ability to become emotionally involved in a great performance.
On American Idol, he came across as a cold-hearted, emotionally absent person who was completely incabable of saying anything nice about even the most astounding performance.
He’s made millons by being a snob on one continent and a much beloved warm-hearted personality on another.
So, Simon ..who are you really?