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Simon Cowell on Paula and who's going to the finals | 143919__scowell02_l
SAFETY FIRST Cowell says Idol votes remind him America's tastes don't quite mesh with N.Y./L.A.-based biz pros
AMERICAN IDOL: Fox

I couldn't predict [the Idol winner] out of those two, and I think that's a good thing. The only time out of the three seasons we've had a genuinely close competition was Clay and Ruben. The other two it was a question of how much they were going to win by. If you put Carrie and Bo in the finals, it will be the closest competition we've ever had.

It will also be quite the red-state finale.
I think American Idol has always been a red-state competition. I think mainly it's a Southern competition. Every finalist, with the exception of Justin, has been a Southerner.

Has the audience been more intolerant this year? It seems like all they want to do is scream over your criticism.
You have to separate the audience in the studio and at home. The audience in the studio are like a WWE audience. They're so hyped up to boo or cheer, it's more theater than anything else. The audience at home is listening a lot more carefully and is taking their role as critics more seriously.

Do you feel muzzled?
No, but what you must never do on a show like this is be gratuitous for the sake of being gratuitous. Otherwise you just turn into a caricature of yourself.

Personally, I'm shocked Constantine didn't last longer. What happened there?
It was 100 percent the song. I found Constantine very amusing and we do miss him. When I hear these people described as ''rockers'' it makes me laugh because rock & roll, by definition, is antiestablishment and you can't get more establishment than American Idol. I mean, the irony of it is hilarious.

Still, he should have lasted longer than Scott and Anthony.
I learn more from the irregularities of the vote than I do from anything else because it tells me, as someone in the music industry, that this business is not what you think it is. There are a lot of people out there who are not into things we think they should be into. They like safe singers. In the music industry we work in New York and L.A., and we have a slightly tainted view.

Fantasia's album sold a relatively disappointing 1.4 million copies. What went wrong?
I don't think she's the problem. In a situation like that, the public preferred her more on the show than they did her music. Maybe the album should have been closer to what she sang on the show.

I remember hearing ''Baby Mama'' and thinking ''She just lost her audience.''
That's the problem. If she had sung that song on the show, she'd have been kicked off. Same with Ruben. A lot of songs [on his album], had he sung on the show, he would have been voted off. Clay puts out ''Solitaire,'' which he sang on the show, and it was huge. There's a lesson to be learned here. You don't just want to make an album containing all covers because you'll get criticized. You want to find the balance.

Are Bo and Carrie destined to run into those same issues?


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