THE EMINENTLY QUOTABLE SIMON COWELL
FOR THOSE FANS OF AMERICAN IDOL, YOU KNOW THAT BRITISH RECORD EXECUTIVE, SIMON COWELL IS THE MOST HATED, YET MOST HONESTLY FRANK JUDGE.
CONTESTANTS DREAD HIS REMARK, YET WHEN THEY GET HIS APPROVAL:, THEY KNOW THEY'VE DONE A GOOD JOB.
HE IS CONSISTENTLY BOOed BY THE AUDIENCE YET, SEEMS TO REVEL IN THEIR HATE.
Someone sent me a compilation of his most interesting quotes and insults....
Here they are for all it is worth ( can't vouch for accuracy)...
If you would be singing like this two thousand years ago, people would have stoned you.
- Simon Cowell
***
If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning.
- Simon Cowell
***
Your singing is as empty as a hermit's address book.
- Simon Cowell
***
You're looking exceptionally ugly tonight; is it because we have company?
-- Simon Cowell
***
"There was one thing great about that performance, and that was when it ended"
-- Simon Cowell
***
[to David Letterman] "Who picks your clothes - Stevie Wonder ?"
- Simon Cowell
***
"Who was your vocal teacher ? You should demand a refund"
- Simon Cowell
***
"If you hear a scream from a hotel room in Las Vegas, that’s where Barry Manilow is watching this show."
--- To Bobby Bennett, after he sang Manilow's "Copacabana
***
"You have as much Latin Flair as a Polar Bear doing the Salsa"
-- To Anthony Federov after he sings a Latino song
***
"Your performance is like Barbie meets the Stepford Wives. It's just too old fashioned"
-- To Carrie Underwood (winner of American Idol, Season 4)
***
"That performance gives me the ulcers. Now even my ulcers have ulcers"
-- Simon Cowell
***
"You look like a hobbit with a great voice, I would vote you Idol of Middle Earth"
TO Kurt Neilsen, winner of Norwegian Idol
***
"Getting Paula Abdul to judge American Idol is like getting Christopher Reeves to judge a dance contest"
-- Simon Cowell
***
"When I hear you sing, I imagine myself in a cruise ship performance with the ship sinking."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"Hearing you sing is like watching a battle between two armies -- the good notes and the bad notes.
Unfortunately, the bad notes won."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"From now on when you sing this song, it should simply be entitled -- BEWILDERED"
-- To Kellie Picker after she sang BEWITCHED,BOTHERED and BEWILDERED
***
"You could single-handedly kill the video industry"
-- To Taylor Hicks ( Season 5 finalist) after his song and dance performance
***
"You remind me of a drunk dad who get's up to dance in a wedding. The difference is ... you can sing"
-- To Taylor Hicks ( Season 5 finalist) after another song and dance performance
***
"Now I know who you remind me of ... Stan Laurel"
-- To John Stevens ( Season 3 finalist )
***
"I'm curious, how do you water that flower in your hair ?"
-- To Jasmine Trias ( Season 3 finalist)
***
"If I said to most of the people who auditioned, 'Good job, awesome, well done,'
it would have made me actually look and feel ridiculous. It's quite obvious most of the
people who turned up for this audition were hopeless."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"I think you have to judge everything based on your personal taste. And if that
means being critical, so be it. I hate political correctness. I absolutely loathe it."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"All I'm doing is telling people who don't have a chance in hell that they don't
have a chance in hell."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"The music business is a melting pot, the people at the bottom get burned while all
the scum floats to the top."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"In Hollywood, they don't throw their garbage away - they make it into TV shows.
--- Simon Cowell
***
"I say, Never criticize American TV Producers. They have the best taste that money can buy.
-- Simon Cowell
***
"That hat you wear to this audition is a creation that will never go out of style. It will look
ridiculous year after year."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"You have a great singing voice, but you sound like Minnie Mouse when you speak."
--- To Paris Bennet, Season 5 finalist.
***
"You look beautiful, I bet your father is a plastic surgeon"
-- Simon Cowell
***
"She has a lovely figure, and she's added so much to it."
-- about a fat contestant
***
"You don't look well dressed at all, you look upholstered."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"You are so extravagantly dressed tonight, I feel sorry for the clothes."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"Most performers on this audition are like elephants to me: they're interesting to look at, but I wouldn't own one"
-- Simon Cowell
***
"You'd make a great leading man. Do you know that the best leading men on TV have been dogs and horses ?"
--- Simon Cowell
***
"Good Lord, You have Van Gogh's ear for music !"
-- Simon Cowell to Paula Abdul
***
"You know a lot about music, except how to enjoy it."
--- Simon Cowell to Paula Abdul
***
"You know so little about music and know it so fluently."
--- Simon Cowell to Paula Abdul
***
"He may sing like an idiot and dance like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"You can't sing, you can't dance, what else do you want me to say ?"
--- To William Hung, Season 3 auditioner
***
"You have the sound of an opera singer, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it"
--- Simon Cowell
***
"If there's anything disgusting about the music business, it's the whoredom of my peers.
--- Simon Cowell
***
"I had someone send me his CD and I wrote back ...Thank you for sending me a copy of your CD - I'll
waste no time listening to it."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"Being attacked by him is like being savaged by a dead sheep."
--- Simon Cowell ( about a rejected auditioner)
***
"I wholeheartedly apologize for having to inflict you on the public"
--- To an auditioner who asked for an apology
***
"You have delusions of adequacy."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"You want to be my friend ? OK, if you want to stab me, stab me in the front"
-- Simon Cowell
***
"As a group singer, you're not only dull, You are the cause of dullness in others."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"In this business, I make enemies as naturally as soap makes suds."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"I'm really a nice man, I never bear a grudge against anyone I wronged."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"I know you're a happily married man, but is your wife happy ?"
--- To David Letterman
***
"This sound of yours is the greatest thing since they reinvented unsliced bread."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"OK, all of you who want to boo me, stand in line."
-- Simon Cowell ( after Ryan Seacrest's introduction)
***
"You have a nice voice. It just doesn't match the rest of you.
-- Simon Cowell
***
"That was as entertaining as watching a potato bake."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
--- Simon Cowell
***
"What a day ! I guess, Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"We could listen to you until the cows come home. On second thought I'd rather listen to the cows when they you come home"
--- Simon Cowell
***
"Yes I feel so miserable without that singer, it's almost like having him here."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"I've had a perfectly wonderful day listening to music. But this wasn't it."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"There's nothing wrong with your performance that reincarnation won't cure."
--- To someone doing a Buddhist chant in the auditions
***
"Paula and me have been through so much together, and most of it was her fault."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"What they wrote about me in the papers hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"OK Stop, You have delighted us long enough."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"You're a parasite for sore eyes"
--- Simon Cowell
***
"If you've got a big mouth and you're controversial, you're going to get attention."
-- Simon Cowell
"Why shouldn't you honestly show what it's like to go through the audition process? It can be brutal.
If they have the talent, we'll help them. But if you don't like criticism, then don't even think about trying this business."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"I remember somebody saying to me once, a boss, 'You'll make a great promotions man but you'll never
be any good at signing talent' and I think that kind of stuck in my mind. That's why when I give
these kids criticism, always in the back of my mind is, 'If you're any good you're going to bounce back.'"
-- Simon Cowell
***
"As the show has progressed, I think they've understood that I'm very passionate about the right person
winning this competition."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"I'm trying to show what show business is really like - illogical. Sexist. No matter how big you are,
you're going to be criticized. Consider this a dress rehearsal to the real thing."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"I'm not going to lie to these people just to make them feel good because that's patronizing. And it's
patronizing to the people watching this show."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"My attitude is, if someone's going to criticize me, tell me to my face. I find Paula patronizing. It's as
simple as that. Paula is more damaging than I am to these contestants because a lot of people just shouldn't
be singing for a living."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"I met someone the other night who's 28 years old, and he hasn't worked a day since he left college because
he's pursuing a dream he'll never, ever realize. He thinks he's a great singer. Actually, he's crap.
But nobody has said to him, 'Why have you been wasting your time for eight years?' I have to do him the favor
so that he'll be back on track."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"My general advice to kids would be if you want to pursue a career in the music business, don't."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"Did you really believe you could become the American Idol? Well, then, you're deaf."
-- Simon Cowell
***
"The object of this competition is not to be mean to the losers but to find a winner. The process makes
you mean because you get frustrated. Kids turn up unrehearsed, wearing the wrong clothes, singing out
of tune and you can either say, 'Good job,' and patronize them or tell them the truth, and sometimes the
truth is perceived as mean."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"It's ironic, when you work in this section of the music industry, before the show, people say, 'Oh,
anyone could be a pop star. You've got the machines in the studio, it doesn't take talent.' Yes it does.
And then when you show the reality of it, people say, 'Oh, you're mean.' Whatever you do, you can't win."
--- Simon Cowell
***
"I am poor, misunderstood Simon. I'm really the nice one, and no one gets it yet, but they will."
--- Simon Cowell