Simon Cowell has slammed organizers of the Brit Awards for snubbing Leona – accusing them of snobbery over her reality TV show background.

Leona was nominated in four categories at the London awards ceremony in February, but sensationally lost out on all gongs including British Female Solo Artist and British Single for her smash hit “Bleeding Love,” despite being the favorite to win.

Initially, Cowell admitted he was secretly pleased the star had missed out on the awards, because the snub would stop his pop protege from developing an ego. But now Cowell has hit out at the Brit Awards, claiming the U.K.’s top music ceremony does nothing to recognize homegrown talent.

He fumes, “I don’t like The Brits, they’re too sarcastic. They don’t represent what’s right in Britain at the moment.
“Leona at The Brits tells you everything about the record business. I believe you should recognise and celebrate success. You don’t sneer at it and it doesn’t matter where that artist came from.

“This is the problem. People say, ‘Leona can’t be serious because she entered X Factor.’ They sneer. But shows like X Factor are there because doors have been closed. You have to start changing your attitude – give her one award for God’s sake!”

Source: ContactMusic

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One Response to “Simon blasts The Brit Awards”

1. Renny Undasan says:

   April 10, 2008 at 7:32 pm

   The argument from radio stations and some record labels about Leona being on a reality show is spurious. It is all about revenues for the stations and expenditure for record labels. To launch an unknown artist a record label has to pay substantial amount of money to the radio stations – like buying ads in a news paper. Reality shows are a new method of marketing these artists. And in the process they make money, via phone voting, for the record label. Other record labels without access to such medium felt cheated because they didn’t have a neuron shared amongst themselves to come up with this new marketing ploy, while their expense continues to soar. The argument about reality show can also be applied to music on radio – before radio songs were marketed through theatres and the sales of music sheets. Radio changed all of that and up to recently it was seen as the gateway for musical artists. The internet and reality shows have broken the monopoly held by the radio stations. The snubbing of Leona Lewis on the Brits award is the radio stations attempt at flexing its diminishing muscles, which is backed by the impoverished record labels. If it can convince others that reality shows is the wrong way to enter the musical arena then good talents might avoid the path set by these reality shows.