The X Factor had to put a lot of work in to get ready for Season 2. New female judges Britney Spears and Demi Lovato were hired just in the nick of time, allowing the first round of auditions to go down in Austin yesterday. Someone posted a bit of leaked audio from the auditions onto their tumblr, which gives us an earful of Lovato and Spears' critiquing style. From the very start, it seemed like Spears and Lovato are looking for very different things from contestants.
After the judges got settled and the first contestant hit the stage, Twitter reports state both Spears and Lovato jumped in to critique the young man. Lovato went first, and you could tell by the way she stumbled through her critique with a lot of “umms” and “likes” that she is not yet totally comfortable with tossing her opinions out on The X Factor stage.
“Umm you know I think that you have a great voice and your tone was great, umm but I don’t know where, like I don’t really know where you fit and I don’t know what’s gonna set you apart from other musicians that are poised, umm, so I think you just gotta find out what, umm, what makes you special and what separates you from all of the other teenage boys in today’s industry.”
Spears, on the other hand, took a more positive note with the young man, using her sultry, confident voice to tell him he could be bigger than the next Justin Bieber. It’s good that a dichotomy between the two women has come out early on, because if they both chose to sit back and say kind things all the time, the programming would be boring. Let’s hope the two keep the differing opinion thing up.
Although it is difficult to tell from one snippet if overall the two women will be effective judges, it’s pretty clear Simon Cowell has found the more-famous formula needed to bump up the ratings on the singing competition in Season 2. You can check out a snippet of the exchange over at Tumblr. Or you can just wait until Fox's The X Factor airs on Wednesdays and Thursdays in the fall.
