TIME Magazine: TIME 100: Simon Cowell


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Simon Cowell

Artists & Entertainers
	Mark Burnett Frank Gehry John Galliano Peter Jackson Nicholas Hytner Simon Cowell OutKast Norah Jones Jerry Bruckheimer J.K. Rowling Ken Kutaragi Bruce Nauman Katie Couric Charlie Kaufman Hideo Nakata Aishwarya Rai Ferran Adrià Nicole Kidman Sean Penn Guy Laliberté
	Leaders & Revolutionaries Builders & Titans Scientists & Thinkers Heroes & Icons Introduction Essay FROM THE ARCHIVE: Artists & Entertainers from 1900-1999

Picking Our Winners

By JAMES PONIEWOZIK

KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES

FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE

	Building a Better Pop Star The record industry needs a savior. American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken could be it. Now will he play along, or is his style too far off-key? [10/13/2003]

Simon Cowell is the Barry Goldwater of reality TV: in your heart, you know he's right. After a weak rendition of You Keep Me Hangin' On last month on an episode of American Idol, sweet-faced Leah LaBelle was told by Cowell to "pack your suitcase." The crowd booed him lustily. The next night Idol's army of home voters sent LaBelle packing. This is the Cowell paradox. Fans of Fox's megahit talent show—not to mention its contestants—have few kind words for the adder-tongued English judge. He's been jeered, doused with a glass of water on camera and even menaced by an Idol reject with a baseball bat. Yet week after week, the audiences that hiss at him end up doing pretty much exactly what he tells them to.

At a time when the record industry is floundering, Idol has discovered unlikely stars such as Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken. What the show understands and the music biz often doesn't, says Cowell, is that "it's personalities, it's conflict, it's all of those things that actually make [performers] interesting." Cowell has led a rebellion against the tyranny of self-esteem that is promoted on talk shows and in self-help books—the notion that everyone who tries deserves to win. At bottom, people are booing Cowell for gleefully confronting us with a fundamental truth: some are more deserving than others. That may not make him America's idol. But somehow we don't think he minds.

July 26, 2000	July 8, 1998	Oct. 13, 1967

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