The case against
An alien sitting down to play the gold disc on the Voyager probe would likely feel much as I do when watching an episode of Simon Cowell’s The X Factor. I don’t understand the wailing, the tedious life-affirming stories straight out of Take a Break, the artificial tension, the purpose of Rita Ora. Despite all that, I don’t believe that one genre has more intrinsic worth than any other. I would rather be strapped to a chair and made to listen to The X Factor Songbook than Now That’s What I Call Landfill Indie Volume One, or even four bars of a Bob Dylan vocal. We all need pop music in our lives (I’ve spent the last month with Erasure on constant rotation), but we don’t need it served up by a man who looks like he’d force his own child to sing Michael Jackson’s Earth Song to the Babadook if it’d get him a percentage point more market share in Q4. Talent show dross and novelty records have always been a part of the British musical milieu and Cowell is no new monster, just a botox-enhanced version of what has come before. Yet he is who has been “feted” at the Music Industry Trust award gala in London this week, with Kevin Spacey, Oprah Winfrey and Harvey Weinstein paying tribute to him, just as Sony extended its deal with his Syco imprint for another six years.
While putting Simon Cowell in charge of the nation’s musical tastes is like making the late Bernard Matthews responsible for primary school meals, his berth in the seventh circle of hell is guaranteed for more than that. His programme turns what ought to be cosy, family-fun Saturday night teatime entertainment into screeching bullying designed purely to increase the wallet bulge in his awful trousers. Cowell feeds on a hunger for fame to create false expectations and humiliate the weak in the name of mass entertainment. No wonder the Tories love him. The X Factor is cruel, cold and manipulative, continuing a British tradition that stretches back to Victorian times, when special trains were laid on from London to Norwich for public hangings.
The joy of the internet age, however, is that Cowell is easy to ignore. This is one of the most fertile periods in modern British music in my lifetime, with pop being warped and twisted into wonderful new forms as it dances in and out of the mainstream. Who needs The X Factor when grime – a genuinely original, entirely grassroots and very English music – is having a huge influence way beyond these shores? Take Skepta’s Shutdown, a pop banger that I’ve heard all summer, everywhere from low-slung cars at traffic lights to TK Maxx to steamy nightclubs. Skepta is now working with Kanye West, who makes Simon Cowell look like a dodgy dealer in secondhand white goods. Then there’s the commercial powerhouse of Adele, who, as an artist signed to the independent label XL, is earning millions that are being ploughed back into releasing unusual pop from FKA twigs and East India Youth alongside funding art-concept ad campaigns for tough 12in singles by Powell.
All of which makes Simon Cowell seem like a superannuated relic – Opportunity Knocks and Hughie Green are his ancestors, not George Martin or Seymour Stein. Syco Entertainment is, after all, more Skynet than Muscle Shoals. And that, I think, is perhaps where we can feel a small piece (a very small piece, mind) of sympathy in our hearts for Simon Cowell. Just look at the paparazzi shot of him at the Music Industry Trusts awards on Monday night, bottle of weak Mexican lager in hand and cigarette clenched in the grimace of a man who in the bottom of his blackened heart knows that all the prizes and swollen bank accounts in the world won’t buy back your soul. Luke Turner
The case for
Such is Cowell’s cartoon-like malevolence that he is the default scapegoat for all of the entertainment industry’s evils. He ruined Christmas No 1s! He ruined Saturday night TV! He ruined the concept of 100%! You would think, from the apocalyptic way people talk about Cowell, that mainstream TV and radio stations before he conquered the world were filled entirely with Chris Morris satires and Throbbing Gristle B-sides. The week before The X Factor launched in 2004, Natasha Bedingfield, Busted and 3 of a Kind were in the top 10.
Pop svengalis have existed as long as pop itself, and their desire has always to be make music for the masses, not the critics – music to appeal to kids and OAPs alike. It is a tactic that Stock Aitken Waterman had mastered when Cowell was still in his music industry infancy, with his Fanfare label. Cowell, though, has a public persona that ensures he is just a little less private about his part in the machine. He is accountable. Seemingly, for everything.
Cowell didn’t kill pop. Instead he has helped create a sustainable model that helps other, less immediate and potentially profitable artists exist. As he announces six more years of Syco, he in turn declares six more years of success, not just for the mainstream, major league acts signed to his label – Olly Murs and Ella Henderson –but for the artists signed to Sony who will never get near a Christmas No 1. In 2013’s financial year, Syco’s turnover was £71m, from which a £51m dividend went to Sony Music, which owns half of Syco. That money allows the likes of PC Music, Julio Bashmore, MØ, First Aid Kit and Everything Everything to make new albums. Most things on majors lose money; they need the cash cows to support them. Not only that, but as was previously reported following the news of Cowell proteges One Direction’s hiatus, record company employees aren’t the only ones reliant on the pop mega-group’s sales spikes – so are all the staff at CD manufacturers, distributors and retailers.
Because of the X Factor’s dominance at the peak of the show’s success 2009, there is also a false sense that Cowell’s presence looms over the entirety of the UK charts. However, in 2014 only a handful of Syco artists occupied the bestselling album list: One Direction, who entered the list twice, Olly Murs, Ella Henderson and Collabro took up five of the 40 biggest selling albums of the year. The talent show’s finalists now find that scoring immediate No 1s is less easy than it once was, yet the artists Cowell has given full backing to still contribute a considerable amount to the industry without completely whitewashing the charts.
As well as the fiscal benefits of the Cowell empire, The X Factor’s open audition process is also an chance for anyone to stand in front of the industry, regardless of age, class or appearance. Given the constant handwringing about the diminishing opportunities for working-class musicians, and complaints that it is impossible for anyone to survive as a new artist without the financial reassurance and support of family money, The X Factor is an opportunity for everyone to attempt to break into the business, even if it’s only one style of music that is welcomed.
You can even argue that Cowell’s brutal manner– the style of criticism that landed him his reputation as “the Grinch” – is actually just what so many young musicians need. His eviscerating and often constructive put downs have defined him as the music industry’s Bond baddy, but Cowell prepares young hopefuls for the cruel dynamics of the industry. Instead of fabricating his fondness for an artist before they are dropped, they know where they stand with him: they either have the potential to make money, or they hold no interest. Most of the music industry is the same; it just chooses not to be so upfront about it and lies to its artists. Cowell might be the curator of homogeny, but at least he is honest. I’ll leave it to Noel Gallagher to close the debate: “He’s not pretending he’s going home every night listening to the White Stripes. I know people in the music business who are pretending to do that, and it’s like, ‘You’re into fucking Hall & Oates. Fuck off.’” Harriet Gibsone
