“X-Factor” judges continued their search for America’s next pop megastar on Long Island last week as the Fox reality series filmed segments of its early-season audition shows at Nassau Coliseum, returning after producers and music executives sifted through roughly 16,000 hopefuls who showcased their skills back in April.
The show filmed during early afternoon and evening sessions June 19-21 as judges Simon Cowell, Kelly Rowland, Demi Lovato and Paulina Rubio made their third stop of the audition tour.
During a press conference in the Coliseum’s basement on June 20, Cowell lamented that the judges had seen two really good auditions thus far and 48 bad ones, but predicted this year would yield a girl group similar to last year’s third-place finisher, Fifth Harmony, which recently released their first single, “Miss Movin’ On.”
“I just made the point that I think this year you are going to see more girls,” Cowell said. “It all goes around in a circle but we actually haven’t seen [a successful girl group] since Destiny’s Child, and I’m surprised there haven’t been many more.”
Cowell called the Long Island auditions “insane,” but said the results were no different from the show’s previous stops in New Orleans, Louisiana and Charlotte, North Carolina.
“You get good people here and you get nutty people, as you do everywhere,” Cowell said.
The judges were still awestruck by a 54-year-old contestant from Atlanta, Georgia the previous day, who said she made a career in music as a back-up singer but had never seemed to find her “big break” and had been repeatedly told by producers and record executives that she wouldn’t sell as a lead singer.
Rubio said the contestant’s performance, a powerful and soulful rendition of a gospel tune, moved her to tears of “happiness and joy,” while Rowland said she and Lovato were sobbing at its conclusion.
“We saw a woman who was a fighter, who overcame all that and graced us with this big beautiful freeing voice and you could hear a pin drop in the room, it was so beautiful,” Rowland said.
Lovato added, “It was like Niagra Falls.”
Even Cowell, known for his brutally honest criticism of contestants, had been rendered speechless by the performance, Rowland said.
“This big mean guy couldn’t find anything to say,” she said.
Cowell said he is still getting used to the new panel, comprised of Rowland, who was once part of the girl group Destiny’s Child, and Rubio, a Latin American pop chart-topper from Mexico, to join him and Lovato following the departures of Britney Spears and Antonio “L.A.” Reid after last season ended.
“I think that once you get into a bit of a formula, two guys and two girls, it all starts to feel like Groundhog Day,” Cowell said. “And it was, for me, to be honest with you. I thought, to make it more interesting, for me and the show, I thought about having three girls and they have to be opinionated and that’s what I got.”
Cowell called the experiences with the new panel, “different,” saying “I can’t get my own way” with three so-called “divas” sharing the spotlight, but his counterparts quickly offered rebuttal.
“We look like divas but you act like the biggest diva,” Lovato said of Cowell.
Lovato, who has released four studio albums as a solo artist after a breakout role on the Disney channel film “Camp Rock,” said she’s enjoyed the banter she and Cowell regularly engage in on the show and will not change her style of judging now that Rowland and Rubio have entered the fray.
“The great thing about this show is that I was hired to be myself and that’s exactly what I did last season and it’ll be the same this season,” Lovato said.
The true test of the new group of judges, Cowell said, will be whether the panel can find a solo artist or group that can be as successful as One Direction, the pop group that finished third on the 2010 U.K. version of the show and has since gone on to sell more than 3 million albums worldwide amid what is widely considered to be a declining record industry.
“When you’re on these panels, you’ve actually got to know what you’re talking about,” Cowell said. “It’s not just about whether you can or can’t sing, it’s about spotting a potential star, and if they’re not actually there [as a solo artist], then perhaps in a group. It was a great idea for One Direction, Fifth Harmony is going to work out. Or when you see a solo artist who’s singing the wrong kind of song, you’ve instantly got to know what it is they should or shouldn’t be doing, but that’s what you do when you believe in an artist or run a record label. So hopefully the contestants on the show have the confidence that they’re going to be steered in the right direction.”
Rowland, who helped judge Season 8 of the U.K. version of the “X-Factor,” said the panel isn’t simply looking for the next One Direction, but a group that will be even better than those who came before it.
“I think it’s important as a judge when we’re up here with the opportunities that we’ve been given in our careers to be able to put forward those things that we’ve learned,” Rowland said. “As wonderful as it was to be part of Destiny’s Child, we’ve got to find somebody better than Destiny’s Child or better than ourselves. Each generation is supposed to be better than the last and that’s what we’re here to do. Find the best, whoever they are.”
