11 January,2009 07:38 AM IST | | Fashutana Patel
An exclusive interview with American Idol's Mr Nasty, Simon Cowell
All genres are welcome.
How would you describe your co-judges Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson?
About Paula, I look after her. We do fancy each other. But I would never cross the boundaries of our professional relationship because then I wouldn't want to talk to Paula the next day.
Well, Randy has just got so much great energy and when he speaks to the contestants he's coming from a very knowledgeable place.u00a0 He's been a great and still is a great musician. He's been out on the road, so he knows what it takes to be a huge superstar and I just think he has a way of being honest, but at the same time helpful and I just think he's great, and has great energy.
There have been a number of musicians like David Cook, Constantine and Chris Daughtry with rock music backgrounds on American Idol. Doesn't that go against the principles of rock music to conform to the popular? Are niche genres finding wider audience?
With the rock music, particularly Chris Daughtry, he did make a huge difference because a lot of the guys who came on the show were kind of fake. He brought a different type of edge to the show and was incredibly successful.
I did this show in the first place, because I have always been a big fan of American singing talents. You have to hope and assume with a show as big as ours that we are going to find stars. I'm not really that surprised. What I do like is the fact that we're open minded enough to now encourage all different types of artists.u00a0
You've made people cry (and, consequently, viewers laugh from comfort of their homes). Were you always forthright?
I've thought long and hard about this. I think the answer to the question is that we will continue in the way that we've always done, which is in the main, we've tried to have a sense of humor over the whole process.
The show is not an inherently mean show. It is an American dream show. The whole purpose of the show is to find somebody it could be a cocktail waitress like Kelly Clarkson who through the process becomes a star. I've always thought it was important to show people at home that when bad singers come in and they're not very good, that it's time to give up that type of dream and take a normal job. I think that for the people at home, it's been helpful, showing people the process. If you're not very good, don't waste your time years trying to do something that you're not very good at doing.
You know, as I said, when something like this happens, it does make you take a step back. As I said to somebody earlier on, you assume that everyone who enters American Idol kind of knows the score, that if you're not great, you're going to get some criticism. A lot of people have had criticism in the past, but they come back year after year after year and always seem quite happy to meet us afterwards. We've known some of these contestants for seven or eight years now.
Season 8 of American Idol premieres on Thursday, January 15, at 11 pm on Star World
