Simon Cowell has had a go at Lily Allen after she said that getting Fleur East to sing an unreleased song on The X Factor was an example of 'music industry corruption'.
Fleur sang Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk on Saturday, before Mark’s album had even been released.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Wq7B_VV_U&feature=oembed
This angered Lily, who wrote on Twitter: “Is this even out yet? #XFactor … Well done to @sony for managing to get a not-yet-released song of theirs sung on prime time weekend telly.
“It is an amazing song and Fleur did it justice but it’s still a great example of music industry corruption.”
Lily Allen (PA)
The Daily Mirror reported that Lily had since removed the tweets – which referred to the fact that Mark’s record label, Columbia UK, is part of Sony Music along with Simon Cowell’s label Syco – from her timeline.
But Simon hit back, saying that he had turned down Lily for a judging role on the ITV show.
Simon Cowell hit back (PA)
He told the Daily Mirror: “Lily should stop bleating on about all this. Fleur needed this break, got a chance, she totally killed it.
“Why not be happy for another artist and say congratulations instead of thinking of some conspiracy theory.”
He added: “The irony is I spoke to Lily about being a judge and from what I took from the meeting, she was seriously considering it. Thank God I said no. She’d be a barrel of laughs.”
Simon also spoke to The Sun, saying: “The idea that I am choosing songs for our contestants to help our other artists… If you really believe that, go and see a doctor.”
Fleur East sang the Mark Ronson tune (PA
Fleur’s rendition of Uptown Funk in Saturday night’s semi-final went down so well that within hours she was at the top of the iTunes chart.
The success of the tune – before the original had even gone on sale – prompted Ronson’s label to rush release the track, featuring Bruno Mars, five weeks early.
Mark Ronson had to release the track early (PA)
Fleur, 26, told Radio 1′s Newsbeat: “I don’t think anyone expected my performance to be as popular as it was. We didn’t expect it to go to number one on iTunes. That’s crazy like.”
Meanwhile, it was reported that Take That will join forces with Fleur and the other two X Factor finalists Ben Haenow and Andrea Faustini to perform Rule The World together at the finale.
Madonna turned down a request to sing on the show (PA)
TV mogul Simon also suggested that Madonna turned down the chance to appear on the X Factor final because she doesn’t have new music to promote, telling The Sun: “If she had a record to promote, she would want to go on The X Factor.”
