Crushable » simon cowell

Beyoncé Offered Insane Amounts Of Money To Be On The X Factor

Jenni Maier — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:56:25 +0000

You know who doesn’t make enough money? Beyoncé. It’s like someone give this woman a raise already! Luckily, that (brave) someone is Simon Cowell who supposedly stepped forward and offered Bey $500 million dollars to join The X Factor as a judge for the next five years. Just to recap for everyone, that’s 500 followed by six more zeros. If she accepts the job, it puts her and Jay-Z’s net worth at a little over one billion dollars. To put things in perspective, that’s like one zillion more dollars than a blogger makes.

According to the rumors, Beyoncé’s considering taking the offer. Because, why not? Why not make a few hundred million dollars judging a talent show. Plus, she would get to hang out with Simon Cowell. And no one pulls off a fitted black t-shirt quite like him. Oh, also she might need the extra income if the stories about her hiring six nannies for Blue Ivy are true. Extra, but necessary, help does not pay for itself.

But there is a downside to the whole affair. Not only does Simon get bored with his judges easily (goodbye Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger), but he’s also apparently courting Mariah Carey for the position. Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Cowell clearly has a thing for divas with new babies. If Whitney Houston popped one out now, she’d be on the short list too.

Now the not-so-obvious question. If both Mariah and Beyoncé said yes to the position, would he hire both of them? Is there room for two huge divas on one reality show? Has that ever even been attempted before? Are there even spotlights big enough to shine on both of them at once?

So many questions, so few answers. All I want to know is who you would prefer to see as the judge.

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Why Was Paula Abdul Fired From The X Factor?

Jamie Peck — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:42:57 +0000

It’s a bloodbath at The X Factor! In addition to host Steve Jones and judge Nicole Scherzinger, today news got out that beloved good cop Paula Abdul has been given the axe as well. This leaves only LA Reid to fire. After that, if show creator/producer/bad cop Simon Cowell wants to fire anyone, he’ll have to fire himself.

Why did Paula get the boot? Many are saying it’s because her nicey-nice judging style didn’t mesh as well with The X Factor as it had with American Idol. “Because ‘X Factor’ requires judges to be mentors and to compete against each other, Paula couldn’t simply sit back and be the eternally understanding big sister,” writes David Hinckley of The New York Daily News. “She couldn’t just send all the contestants on their way by telling them never to give up their dream.”

There’s also the issue of ratings. While this past season of The X Factor did quite well, pulling in 12 to 13 million viewers per show, it fell short of the whopping 20 million viewers Simon’s old show, American Idol, pulled in.

To add insult to injury, TMZ reports that Paula got the news from lawyers connected with the show, not from Simon himself. He’s a busy guy, okay? I’m sure he’ll send her a fruit basket or something.

Ms. Abdul has yet to comment on her departure.

(Via TMZ)

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Simon Cowell Doesn’t Even Know When He’s Rolling His Eyes At People Anymore

Jamie Peck — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:40:25 +0000

You know how your mom used to tell you not to make your face into horrible expressions lest it should freeze like that? I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to Simon Cowell around his hundredth smirk. Now he’s stuck giving everyone the perpetual stink eye whether he means to or not; friends, pets, even his beloved Kelly Clarkson. It is his cross to bear.

Singer Michael Bublé apparently didn’t know that when he performed on American Idol back in 2007, and thought it was personally directed at him. In a recent interview with The Radio Times, he described the effect Cowell-face had on him:

I had to sing Call Me Irresponsible in front of 20 million people. And the first thing I saw when I got on stage was Simon. I sang about four lines and he looked at me and did this [he rolls his eyes] and that was it, I was done. It killed me. My confidence dropped.

‘Maybe Cheryl Cole gets a little quiet and more demure when she loses her confidence. But I become aloof. I get the attitude of, “Oh really? Well, f*** you. You don’t like me? Then go **** yourself. I’m just gonna do whatever.”‘

Naturally, Bublé was upset, so he did what any mature person would do: he tattled to his friend Dannii Minogue, who then confronted Cowell about it, only to find Cowell had no clue what she was talking about. And Michael Bublé learned a lesson that day:

‘He was just probably sitting on his fifth hour of the show going, “Kill me now… and I’ve got to go to the bathroom”.

‘But I’m so sensitive I took it as a rejection. Anyway, every time I’ve ever talked to him since then he’s been incredibly nice.’

Stars! They’re just as pissy and insecure as us.

(Via The Daily Mail)

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Crushable Exclusive: Lucy Hale’s Most Awkward On-Screen Kiss Was With Her Pretty Little Liars Co-Star Ian Harding

Natalie Zutter — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:33:08 +0000

Last month, we got to ask Lucy Hale a couple of questions about her various on-screen personas at the A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song press junket. She follows Hilary Duff and Selena Gomez‘s footsteps in the movie, about an orphan girl whose evil stepmother forces her to give her voice to her stepsister’s (Megan Park) music career.

But you all probably know Lucy better as Aria on ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars, the guilty pleasure of teens and my friends alike. PLL returned with new episodes last night, and it just so happens that Lucy gave us a pretty funny anecdote about shooting a big kiss scene with Ian Harding (teacher Ezra) earlier this season.

The kiss anecdote starts at about 28 seconds in, but really the whole video is worth watching because Lucy’s pretty funny! She gets that Once Upon a Song is up against stiff competition from the previous two movies and might be seen as just another bid for money. Plus, she doesn’t pretend like it was easy to sing and dance in the movie’s big musical numbers (a step up from both of the original movies).

And of course, for our question we ask everyone — what’s your weird celebrity crush — Lucy came through with not one, but two weird crushes.

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Did ‘The X-Factor’ Intentionally Obscure Stacy Francis’ Past Success As A Singer?

Jamie Peck — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:37:02 +0000

Everyone is talking today about Stacy Francis, the 42-year-old single mother who wowed the judges on The X-Factor last night with her passionate rendition of Aretha Franklin‘s Natural Woman. And rightfully so! She did a great job (even if she was flat at times). However, after doing a bit of research on her, I found out the show was somewhat misleading in presenting her as a struggling single mother who sings only after her kids go to sleep at night. Stacy Francis has already had quite a bit of success in the music business, getting signed to a major label in the nineties and starring in several Broadway and West End (as in, London’s Broadway) musical theater productions. She has yet to attain mega-fame, it’s true, but she’s hardly in danger of dying, as she said last night, “with this music in me.”

In the early nineties, Francis was part of an R&B group called Ex-Girlfriend that was signed to Reprise Records. They put out two albums before disbanding in 1994; their biggest hit was “X Marks The Spot,” which performed well on both the R&B and Billboard Hot 100 singles charts. Since then, Stacy has worked frequently as a singer and actress, appearing in Broadway, West End, and regional theater productions, as well as various movies and TV shows. She booked her first Broadway show in 1997. As recently as a few years ago, she could be seen performing the Jennifer Hudson role in San Diego Musical Theatre‘s production of Dreamgirls.

Additionally, Francis is involved with the Church of Scientology and seems to have made some connections through that. Here’s a video of her performing at Tom Cruise‘s birthday party three years ago:

Tom and David’s big night out from Tom and David on Vimeo.

Discussing Stacy’s recent divorce and current appearance on The X-Factor, members of a messageboard for ex-Scientologists speculated that Scientology played a role in her divorce. (We know it’s recent because she and her husband were still married when their first son was born.) “Looks like her marriage ended, and I cant help but wonder if that is due to the church. I dont think her husband the dentist was all that into Scientology,” writes one person. It wouldn’t be the first marriage Scientology has broken up. Another person admits that Scientology may have helped Stacy gain confidence: “When you think you are an immortal spiritual being with super powers who can bend time and space with your postulates it does give you confidence. And that delusion is probably most helpful for a performer.”

None of this should discredit Stacy’s performance in the competition. If anything, the fact that someone could find steady work as a performer for so many years and still never break through to major label success shows just how hard it is to chase that dream. It also shows that she’s a person who takes initiative and goes after the things she wants, rather than some cowering abused woman held hostage for a decade by her baby daddy, a woman who just happened to miraculously find the strength to enter a singing competition at age 42, at which point an enormous voice came out of her as if by magic. But I guess it pulls on people’s heartstrings more to stick to the imaginary narrative?

On that token, I find it somewhat irresponsible how the show played on stereotypes about black unwed mothers; she refers to her ex-husband as “someone she met” and makes it sound like she’s raising her kids completely on her own. In reality, the man she was married to until recently runs a thriving dental practice and appears to be engaged with his children, at least in this Youtube video of him I found:

Again, he may very well have been a shitty husband who told her she’d never succeed in the music business, but why make it sound worse than it is? I think it does a disservice to Stacy Francis to distort and manipulate her life story in this way when the real story is plenty compelling on its own.

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Video: The New X-Factor Promo Will Make You Cry

Jamie Peck — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:56:18 +0000

As you may know by now, Simon Cowell is bringing his singing contest “The X-Factor” to America. As far as I can tell, it’s a lot like American Idol, only with no age limits and more menacing action movie music. A new eight-minute promo goes over what each judge is risking to be there (well, what Simon and former Def Jam chair L.A. Reid are risking), before showing us some of the contestants. It’s way gripping!

First there’s “Xander Alexander,” who is unnecessarily bitchy to Simon. He responds to a totally reasonable question with an insult. He is crazy! We don’t get to hear him sing, but he sure is sassy (odds on him making it into the competition?) Then there are a lot of people who try to sing, but can’t, which is funny. Then there’s an adorable 13-year-old girl who can sing, and it’s amazing! And a 42-year-old single mother who can really sing, and also cries a lot, which makes you, the viewer, feel like crying also. I laughed, I cried, and then I laughed again. Basically, this commercial will make you feel totally bipolar. It’s almost enough to make me want to watch it when it premieres on September 1st, even though I know they’re not going to sing any songs I like, because they pretty much never do. Good job, promo-making people. Good job, ovaries.

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The Idol Effect: Other Movies and TV Shows Inspired By ‘American Idol’

Lilit Marcus — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 19:31:56 +0000

Although American Idol has made some huge changes during its ten seasons on the air, there’s no denying that its popularity has made a huge shift in pop culture. While talent-based competition shows are certainly nothing new (remember Star Search?), the massive success of Idol bled over into other TV shows and even movies. Call it the Idol effect.

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Boyfriend of the Week: Simon Cowell

Andrea Seigel — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:40:30 +0000

Don’t worry, you didn’t miss a sneak preview episode of The X Factor or a stealthy appearance on American Idol. Simon Cowell is my Boyfriend Of The Week because I miss him. Because his absence on the TV has left a hole in my heart that’s as black and as true as his sense of humor.
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People were so quick to say that this season of Idol was better than ever, what with J. Lo playing the cool aunt you go to when your mom’s being a total bitch and you need to borrow doorknocker hoops or get fitted for a NuvaRing®, Randy playing your uncle who used to tour with Journey and won’t let you forget it, and Steven Tyler playing the mystic old lady you met out during that Joshua Tree weekend who ceremonially kills her own chickens and wears their tail feathers in her hair to absorb their life energy.

But as the season dragged on, it became more and more apparent that we were just watching a bunch of helicopter parents. We were watching the completely bullshit message of Bieber’s Never Say Never in action, that message being that everyone has a Bieber within him, and you just have to want to be a Bieber bad enough to make that a reality. Even when Randy suddenly decided to use the wonderfully boozy Haley Reinhart as his landing pad, he descended upon her without any logical reason. The randomness of his criticisms (she chose a song that wasn’t on the radio yet; she sang songs from different genres; she sang a song that wasn’t for her; she should growl more; she should growl less) just illuminated the probability that even he doesn’t understand why he doesn’t like her. All I can make out is that she’s kind of like his Tracy Flick— that she has come to stand in for something he finds upsetting, and maybe it’s a message about himself.

But Simon, Simon always knew why he didn’t like you. Maybe it was your tragic personality or your even more tragic blind spot about your likability. Maybe it was an inbred cheesiness that you couldn’t escape, no matter how profound the song you chose. Maybe it was that he didn’t believe he could make money off of you. Maybe it was because your parents had raised you to be a horrible pageant child with a soulless flipper of a smile and the cheap, cold metal of trophies running through your veins. Maybe it was because you kept talking about how god was looking out for you during a televised singing contest. And maybe it was for as something as simple as the way you dressed, or your hippie hookah lamp mic stand.

The bottom line is, he knew. People made fun of Simon’s hard nipples poking against his v-neck shirts, but you know what those pencil erasers spoke of to me? They spoke of conviction. And conviction is the result of knowing yourself; knowing something about the value of others is merely a byproduct.

I’m not the only one in my house that misses Simon. First of all, I believe my dog Christmas misses him because she saw how much he loves dogs in the episode where he adoringly took an auditioning contestant’s Shih Tzu into his lap, and also because he regularly gives money and vocal support to dog foundations. Second of all, not a week goes by that I don’t hear Brent yelling about how if Simon were there this season he would tell Scotty McCreery to stop holding his microphone like he’s playing a skin flute or that he would tell James Durbin to stop acting like he invented hair metal light or he would tell Pia Toscano that the phonebook would be more exciting to watch singing the phonebook. Brent will usually get worked up into such a state that he can’t even watch the judges deliver their anti-criticisms, instead choosing to distract himself with one of the many super fucking dry books on ancient Greece that he’s been checking out from the library. (I prefer this phase to the one where he was trying to learn how to speak ancient Greek by repeating back dead vowel sounds from the computer for hours at a time).

So my actual boyfriend has the same hole in his heart— if not quite as big, then surely as black, as black as Simon Cowell’s late 1980’s flattop. And together we will await Simon’s return to TV in the fall, when I can’t believe I’m going to get involved (and accordingly get Brent involved) in another reality TV singing snow. These things are real commitments, you know? Maybe I’ll lay off Jewel’s in the meantime.

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‘X Factor’ Contestants Watch Out: Your Identity Might Get Stolen

Lilit Marcus — Mon, 02 May 2011 19:02:31 +0000

Today, the Fox network sent out an email notifying people that Simon Cowell‘s X Factor database had been hacked. All together, information about 250,000 applicants for the show – including full names, hometowns, and birth dates – was stolen. It’s not clear whether the entrants were from the UK edition, the US edition, or both, but either way, contestants from the show should be careful about potential identity theft. In their email, Fox wrote:

We are taking this matter very seriously and are working with federal law enforcement authorities to investigate this illegal action.

The X Factor will never ask you to email personal information such as financial data, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers or the user name or passwords you use to access other websites.

If you receive an email that appears to be from Fox.com or The X Factor asking for personal information, please delete it, as it did not come from us.

And this is why your mom told you not to try out for a reality show, kids.

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Gallery: Celebrities Who Don’t Have Royal Wedding Fever

Lilit Marcus — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:02:41 +0000

There were plenty of famous faces in the crowd at the royal wedding, including Victoria and David Beckham, Elton John, and even Mr. Bean himself, Rowan Atkinson. But some celebs didn’t take part in the festivities, and others lashed out about not getting invited.

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