The creator of X Factor: “I would have discarded Bob Dylan from the program”

“I would have discarded Bob Dylan from the programme”: this is what Simon Cowell, long-standing British record producer and creator of X Factor, one of the longest-running talent shows in the world, says. Simon Cowell is the man behind the success of One Direction, Little Mix and more. After launching X Factor, he was a judge on various talent shows, from Pop Idol to Britain’s Got Talent, via American Idol. His latest creation is the Netflix series “Simon Cowell: The Next Act”, which will debut on December 10 on the streaming platform and “will follow him everywhere, as he promises to hit the mark again to try to create the next globally successful boyband”. In an interview with Rolling Stone granted on the occasion of the promotion of the docu-series, Cowell, 66 years old, spoke about himself in full, also talking about his musical tastes.

Cowell revealed that he is not a fan of Bob Dylan:

When I heard Bob Dylan’s version of that Adele song, ‘Make You Feel My Love,’ I didn’t know he wrote it.

Then the “X Factor dad” added:

I think if he had gone in and sung that version, I’m not going to lie, I would have said, ‘Forget it.’ Really. Look, I’m not a Bob Dylan fan, but if people like it, then they like it, and if you don’t like it, that’s fine too.

Speaking of his new creation, Cowell explained:

The world has changed a lot. The music has changed. But deep down, strangely, nothing has really changed, because the fundamental principle is still the same: finding the stars.

One Direction, the most successful artists launched by X Factor, disbanded in 2016 and the only one of the five members of the band to have had concrete success as a soloist was Harry Styles. Liam Payne, one of the five members, died last year, falling from the balcony of his hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina: toxicological tests revealed the presence of narcotic substances in his blood, including pink cocaine. Former winners of the British edition of the talent show such as Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke, Sam Bailey and Rak-Su have disappeared. The talent show itself closed its doors, across the Channel, in 2018. Bob Dylan has sold over 125 million copies worldwide and is considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time. In 2016 the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great tradition of American song”.