Ann Powers on Simon Cowell’s legacy: The good, the bad and the snobby

In the course of a long goodbye, emotions simultaneously sharpen and blur. We toast the soon-departed, gobble cake at the office party, talk about the good times until those memories grow color-saturated and bright. The other kind, we put aside. The irritations and worse that may have led to this parting become fuzzy, temporarily forgotten. Everyone wants to feel good while we're singing that we had the time of our lives.

Simon Cowell's announcement Monday that he'll leave "American Idol' at the end of this season to executive-produce and judge an American version of his hit English program "The X Factor" was designed to commence one of those extended, heartwarming farewells. What an instant ratings booster! Now, even viewers skeptical about the ascent of self-described fan's representative Ellen DeGeneres to the judges' table will have to tune in — if only to savor the twilight of Simon's patented nastiness.

Instead of waxing poetic about how Simon introduced a new generation to the stereotype of the fussy Brit, or listing the five most ridiculous metaphors he used to describe bad singing, or basking in the glow of his whitened teeth, let's talk about something serious. The fact is, Cowell helped change the way Americans think about popular music. Embodying the role of the music snob while voicing opinions distinctly different from what that character usually expresses, he helped make room for a wider vision of what great American music can be.

Or a degraded one. For many serious music fans, "Idol" has long represented the triumph of puffery and schmaltz over sincerity and real skill. The show's run has coincided with the collapse of the conventional music industry, the retreat of "meaningful" mainstream rock and the rise of the multi-platform pop star — an era in which the musicians making the greatest splash are neither dazzling virtuosos nor rough-hewn poets carrying forth three chords and the truth, but the thinking showgirls of dance pop and the self-made androids of the Auto-Tune revolution. It's also been a good decade for divas, the soaring sentimentalists long scorned (and even feared) by rock purists.

Onto this shifting stage came Cowell, who walked and talked — or rather, sat and furrowed his brow and snarkily quipped — like a rock snob while expressing exactly the opposite worldview. Here was the very cliche of the arts critic: a stuffy, middle-aged man, somewhat humorless and very sure of himself, who wore his superior opinions like gilt secret society pins affixed to his chest.

Simon knows better than you: That's one key premise of "American Idol." The part Simon plays complements those inhabited by his two original fellows. Paula Abdul, now replaced by DeGeneres, was the flighty, effusive classic-pop female, part mother tearing up at the school pageant and part teenybopper reaching to tear off contestants' clothes. Randy Jackson, the "real" musician whose background in hair metal and Hollywood studio work exempt him from the snob position, speaks in the colorful slang of a musician (and, fitting into another designated role, of a black entertainer), and loses authority in proportion to his hipness.

 The addition of judge Kara DioGuardi last season messed with this formula and may have proven more threatening to Cowell than he expected. Her similarities to Abdul and Jackson were obvious — she's female, as her bikini-baring stunt on the finale painfully reminded us, and she moves in a younger version of the studio-session scene that earned Jackson his fortune and his peculiar form of street cred. But she also proved able to judge, in musicianly detail, what makes a pop performance great. Being both commercially savvy and aesthetically motivated is Cowell's shtick, and he seemed to wilt a bit when DioGuardi showed she could do it too.

Cowell needn't have worried. DioGuardi can't fill his Cuban-heeled shoes, because she is a woman, and even though female singers and dancers dominate American pop right now, certain old attitudes persist, including the one that values men’s thoughts and women’s emotions. (That's why there are still so few prominent female producers, lead guitarists or rappers — all jobs that call for "masculine" brain power and technical skill.) As last season wore on, DioGuardi scaled back her musical analysis, maybe in response to the backlash that characterized her assertiveness as annoying.

On “X Factor,” a show he largely controls as executive producer, Cowell may choose to reunite with his old foil Abdul at the judges’ table. He could regain his balance playing the smart, stern Daddy to her Mama-Baby. But he’ll never have the cultural influence he had as the authoritative voice on “Idol” — not only because “X Factor” is campier and more crass than “Idol,” but because the shift in attitude that he embodies has already taken place.

Or has it? Besides negotiating the deal that’s led to his upcoming migration, Cowell did something else of note last season: He guided Susan Boyle from the “X Factor” soundstage to worldwide fame. Boyle, the somehow simultaneously pious and earthy new Kate Smith, is that old-fashioned phenomenon, a massive star whom critics and serious music fans hate. For all of the success he’s had mixing up highbrow attitude with middle-to-lowbrow taste, Cowell still has some work to do. Pop history may still feel the effect of that withering grin.

– Ann Powers

Top photo: Simon Cowell at "Idol" auditions in Denver; credit: Charles Pulliam / Associated Press. Bottom photo: Randy Jackson, left, Kara DioGuardi, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell; credit: Michael Becker / Fox

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