Britney Spears and Demi Lovato have made their judging debut on the X Factor 's panel on Wednesday night, where Britney proved to be a hard to please but fair judge and Demi got burned by one of the contestants.
Britney was blunt and got straight to the point if she didn't like the sound of a contestant. "I thought it was just kind of bad," she told one. "The singing came in, and it wasn't very nice," she told another. "I felt like I was listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks," was followed by "I think you're like Vanilla Ice meets Lauryn Hill meets West Side Story."
One contestant who works as a luggage handler at an airline came on and didn't impress the judges. Britney said to him: "I wanna know who let you onstage. I feel uncomfortable with you even staring at me." Simon Cowell went on to say he sounded "like a mouse trying to be an elephant". The man was visibly upset and said: "I worked way too freakin' hard for this."
Lovato responded and said, "a lot of people work really, really hard for their dreams, but it's not meant for everybody," to which he quickly shot back "that's why you use auto-tune and I don't."
The former Disney star is said to have nabbed a paycheck just north of $1 million to join the show as a season two judge, compared to Spears' massive $15 million deal. Lovato's paycheck is still incredibly impressive considering she's only 18-years-old and hasn't been in the business that long.
Cowell enjoyed Spears' dismissals of contestant: "You're good at this," he told her. Reid said nothing controversial, but, as he did last season, he compared singers to artists who have "walked though my door." In this round he found singers who resembled Rihanna and Justin Bieber, in his opinion.
The premiere week continues with an hourlong show Thursday (8 ET/PT, Fox).
