Harshness to me is giving somebody false hopes and not following through. That’s harsh. Telling some guy or some girl who’ve got zero talent that they have zero talent actually is a kindness.
What I would argue in my defence is that shows like Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor have actually got people more interested in music again and are sending more people into record stores.
I like to know why a video has suddenly gone viral, why a song has broken, why a TV show is suddenly rating out of pattern… I’m pretty good at understanding why things are becoming popular.
Anything I shouldn’t laugh at makes me laugh. I mean, I’m bad at that, when somebody is singing something terribly and I’m thinking to myself, ‘If I laugh now, this is the absolute worst thing I could ever do,’ and then I start laughing and I can’t stop.
They understand what their market is and who they should be selling records to, and most importantly, they know the kind of artist that they want to be, but they have to do it themselves. You don’t want a 13-year-old singing some awful song from a musical.
