Also commenting on the state of the pop business is Master Calvin Harris, interviewed on the Chris Moyles breakfast show on Radio 1 yesterday following his brief stage invasion on 'X-Factor' on Saturday night.
As previously reported, Harris - booked to guest on ITV2 spin off show 'Xtra Factor' - was frog marched out of the TV show's studios after he ran on stage during the latest musical routine from those Jedward twins with a pineapple on his head. Yesterday it was announced that the chart-topping hugely-in-demand critically-acclaimed pop-producer-come-superstar-DJ had been banned from the ITV talent show for life. Cos that's gonna hurt.
Despite insisting he was a fan of the show and the Jedward phenomenon, Harris told Moyles: "I'm a fan of music, I'm a fan of pop music. If you look at the chart, it's a frightening stranglehold that Simon Cowell has got over the entire music chart in the UK at the moment. It's really impressive but it's really frightening at the same time".
He continued: "It would be nice to see him use that power a little bit more creatively and maybe use - I don't know - interesting producers of music to make songs, because pretty much whatever he puts out by Leona or whoever is going to do incredibly well, so why not try and make the most amazing music that anyone has ever heard in their life? I think it just shows that he's not really a music fan".
When Moyles countered that Cowell isn't and has never claimed to be in the business of musical innovation, Calvin added: "Why can't he make groundbreaking music popular? The position he's put himself in he could change the whole country musically and make it amazing and it's annoying that he's not doing that. He's pretty much just releasing the same records again and again and again".
All very interesting, though as Moyles then asked: "You have a fairly serious point that you have obviously thought through long and hard, so, explain to me where the pineapple came in".
Harris: "The pineapple was to mimic the hair and it was the only available tool at the time in order to mimic J&E hair, and I think, to be honest, it did an incredible job. I was doing a gig in Birmingham with JLS a pineapple, but with no instrument with which to open the pineapple or anything like that. There was just a pineapple sat there in amongst the fruit. So I just took it with me".
Asked about the moment before his mini stage invasion, Harris said: "I was backstage. I was waiting to go on and I was listening to everyone taking it incredibly seriously. I was just inspired to make a mockery of the show. Because it is a music competition, it is a joke and I think it should be treated as such. So when people were saying 'John and Edward, maybe they deserve to stay in this week', I was like 'Are you watching what I'm watching? It's terrible, it's terrible'. I need to get out there and basically, for the greater good of the nation, I wanted to go out there and make an idiot of myself and sort of just bring the whole show into another kind of area in which it's treated as kind of a joke".
Asked if the mini stage invasion - which was, in reality, a blink and you'll miss it incident - had been a success, Harris concluded: "It did everything I wanted to achieve, which was nothing".