Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

Simon on Britney: ‘I couldn’t care less’

Simon Cowell has no sympathy for Britney Spears. The “American Idol” judge says that the singer’s recent meltdown and rehab stint are “fashionable” and an “indulgence.”

“It’s very fashionable to be in rehab,” Cowell told the London Mirror, directing his comments at British pop star Robbie Williams as well as Spears. “This whole thing is a total indulgence. Britney and Robbie need to get a grip. We’ve allowed these people to feel sorry for themselves. I don’t know what’s going on in Britney’s head but my attitude is I couldn’t care less. She should go back and live with her mum for six months.”

The caustic TV judge says Spears should be forced to spend time with people who have real problems. “I went to a deprived part of the world recently and saw a set of conditions that people live in that are beyond belief,” noted Cowell. “So when I hear about the Robbies and the Britneys going into rehab I think, ‘I’ll tell you what rehab is. Go to where I just went, where people really are suffering and then you’ll see just how good your life is.’”

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

I think that he says things like that to play into his on camera persona....

I just read this commentary on Britney on EW.com and thought it was interesting.

Running with Scissors
EW's movie critic asks, Is Britney's public meltdown more than just a cry for help?

Brit's transformation from pop star queen to paparazzi bait
X-17(right)By Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for EW

I have no idea whether Britney Spears, as of this writing, is in or out of rehab, or in a blonde or brunette wig, but I wanted to let her story fade just a few degrees away from the white-hot center of the tabloid limelight before I set down a thought or two about her. Her meltdown, while still a supernova of a story, seems for the moment to have peaked, and I find that there's one image I simply can't get out of my head: It's when she's kicking the paparazzo's car outside Kevin Federline's house, wearing that amazing expression of sullen, pouty, demon-seed punk-rock anger. In a way, her shaved head wasn't complete until she topped it off with that very public display of scary skinhead rage.

The image got me to thinking: What was it that made Britney Spears so angry? Okay, she fought a losing battle with K-Fed over the custody of her two young children — admittedly, no small matter. It may well have inspired that tantrum, yet I'm not sure that it entirely explains the look on her face. Here's one theory, freewheeling and speculative as hell, about What Happened To Britney — or, at least, about how her fall into scalp-shearing, car-kicking, screw-my-pop-tart-image rage expresses something new about our digital-fishbowl fame culture. If you're going to come with me, though, you have to accept one premise. And that is...

...in her moment, Britney Spears was a musically vital star.

That's easy to forget, or maybe easy to argue with. As a hip-wriggling baby doll, she led with her sexuality more than any female pop star since Madonna, and since Britney's sexual image, in recent years, seems to have been leading her, it's tempting to see her as a packaged cherry bomb who (inevitably) exploded. Yet just listen to her singing — the hot-and-bothered insistence with which she slammed out ''...Baby one More Time'' or ''Oops!... I Did It Again,'' or (since those songs are so overfamiliar they're almost impossible to hear freshly) her last terrific track, the vastly underappreciated ''Overprotected,'' off of Britney. That album's airplay was dominated by the awful ''I'm a Slave 4 You,'' with its fascist club-thump joylessness, but on ''Overprotected,'' Britney is fiercely in command, and cathartically catchy, as she sings out the paradoxical plaint of a 21st-century corporate rebel: What she longs for is to break out, to be on her own, to be ''no one else but'' — as she throttles the word ''me'' — Myyyyy-eee!'' Her delivery has a coiled thrust reminiscent of Joan Jett, yet Spears, ruled by her slut-bunny image, has rarely been given the credit she deserves for her chops. I'll probably get hate postings simply for suggesting it.

Yet here's the thing: If you accept that she was more than cheesecake wrapped in tinsel, more than just a pop tart — if you accept that she was, in her pouty and bejeweled-midriff way, a true rock star — then you begin to acknowledge what, exactly, she had to fall from: not just flavor-of-the-year fame but the deeper glory of being adored by her fans because she expressed something that was real.

This is where her tragedy, perhaps, begins. Britney lost what she had, and what she had — let's not be cheeky about it — was immense. For a while there, she ruled the world of pop feminine bravado; in her jailbait-on-fire way, she was one of those performers, like Madonna in the '80s or, say, the Gwen Stefani of 2002, who own the moment, and proudly, by fusing sex and talent until the two can't be separated. To be worshipped by an audience in that way, and then to have it fade... well, Britney Spears wouldn't be the first performer who got sucked under by the demon of having to see herself become a has-been (and while barely into her mid-20s!).

Yet this is where it all gets twisted. The myth of the substance-abusing, self-destructive, wackadoo has-been is as old, and familiar, as the plot of A Star is Born. Remember James Mason, in the splendid 1954 version, drunkenly smacking Judy Garland as he marches up onto the Academy Awards podium? That's every bit as shocking a moment as Britney reaching for the electric shears.

Here's what's changed. As Britney, having lived past her pop moment, hit the nightclub circuit, acting flaky and dissipated and leaving her kids behind, forever tailed by paparazzi as part of the Trash Pack of bimbo goddesses (Lindsay, Paris, etc.), her fall became her new rise. She had lost any vestige of respectability, yet with that loss she was a bigger star than ever. She was on top as a media darling precisely because she was speeding toward the bottom. That had to be more than a little bit... confusing. And so she busted out of the deranged paradox of her situation by grabbing hold of her destiny and hitting bottom, doing it on purpose, giving her finger to the machinery of stardom by asserting, in that very act of how-do-you-like-me-now? buzz-cut rebellion, her absolute desire for the pop status she'd once had and had now lost.

This was an act of breakdown, all right, maybe a cry for help. But it also expressed the dreams of a tarnished celebrity in a tabloid world. It was Britney's comeback single, delivered in perhaps the only form we would now agree to listen to.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

He's got a point.

But if they honestly need help with drugs or alcohol they do need rehab.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

I think if he knew her personally & was making these claims then it is in poor taste, however to assume that you know what another person is going through just makes you look like an azz (and I am usually a fan of his). Not his place to say either way IMO.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

I don't know if I necessarily agree with Simon, mostly because well, he's Simon.

But I have thought about these celebs who go into rehab to fix their reputations. Think Lohan, Miss USA (or America..whichever), the guy from Grey's, or Kramer. It's almost as if they are trivializing rehabilitation treatment.

I'm not saying these celebs don't have problems or addictions, because I think they do. But the purpose of rehab isn't to fix your image, it's to make you healthy on the inside.

And sometime's these prima donnas need a reality check and should take a trip to an underprivileged area and learn what it's like to really NOT have things handed to them.

Regardless of the real reasons why Britney is in rehab, I do wish her well. Something's going on there, and she needs help. I don't think it includes shopping on the internet for new clothes though.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

I agree with him 100%!!

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

Completely agree.

Most high paying careers have stress. It comes with the territory, weather you are a celebrity or a stock broker. These celebs need to appreciate what they have, and if worse comes to worse, they have so much f***in money they can just stop working and get out of the lime light. Not a lot of people can do that.

Work your azz off for a few years, then retire. But you're gonna have the stress of 40 years of work in a short amount of time.

But seriosly, they need to get a grip.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

I agree that rehab is quite fashionable among celebs right now... but this is more about Simon being Simon than his true feelings on Britney.

Together with that article nixy posted though this is very interesting because...

Britney has never been talented, IMO. Yeah, she can shake her azz for the camera, she has a nice body and a pretty face, and her voice can be engineered enough in a studio to make it suitable for airplay. A talent Britney is not.

What Britney is, is a marketing genius and an ingeniously marketed product.

This whole very public downward spiral to "rock bottom"... just reeks of PR spin sometimes. I don't doubt or deny that the girl has problems or needs help, but as the writer said, what if, at the moment that she herself realized that...still being the marketing genius that she is, she decided to take the reins and make this breakdown HER show.

Like I've said before... I can already see her crocodile-tear filled eyes sitting across from Barbara Walters.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

Message edited 3/6/2007 4:36:45 PM.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

Posted by Shelly

Posted by nixy
Her delivery has a coiled thrust reminiscent of Joan Jett, yet Spears, ruled by her slut-bunny image, has rarely been given the credit she deserves for her chops. I'll probably get hate postings simply for suggesting it.

I think this guy is giving her WAYYY too much credit. She was never *that* talented. Her voice isn't great and she never had the range of a Christina Aguleira. She was bubble gum pop and as the author put it "jail bait on fire". Her songs were catchy- but none of it was based on her vocal abilities.

It reminds me of the episode of Cosby Show when Vanessa and her friends make a CD at the mall and think they sound great- but when they sing live they sound like frogs. Its amazing what one can do with a recording studio.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

Sorry about that! I fixed it.

Message edited 3/6/2007 4:37:08 PM.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

I always agree with Simon.

Seriously if I had all of Britney's money. I'd be travelling and seeing the world with my family. I wouldn't have gotten to the point where she is now.

Re: Simon Cowell on Britney- agree or disagree?

I cannot stand that man, but I couldn't agree with him MORE!

most people have REAL problems