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A contestant on FOX show The X Factor who was cut from the show says he arranged a deal with the producers to leave. Correct us if we’re wrong, but that’s not the way it’s supposed to work, right?
Dexter Haygood is a 49-year-old singer from Memphis who until recently was also a contestant on the singing talent show The X Factor, otherwise known as that other Simon Cowell show that’s like American Idol but not. Haygood, whose funky audition consisted of a James Brown song, was cut from the show several episodes later after seemingly failing to impress the judges.
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But there may be more than meets the eye (or ear?) here. Haygood is now saying that he wasn’t kicked off the show, but that he asked to leave. “I wanted to leave the show because I was unhappy that I was unable to be a rock artist. I grew up on rock,” Haygood told the Associated Press. He said he wasn’t pleased that the show’s producers had arranged for him to perform pop songs from the likes of Katy Perry and Beyonce. “Can you imagine Steven Tyler, Mick Jagger, James Brown, doing (the ‘Crazy in Love’ chorus) ‘uh oh uh oh uh’?”
So Haygood said he approached one of the show’s judges, Nicole Scherzinger, and vented his feelings. Scherzinger then relayed the issue to producers. Haygood said that after that, she returned with an offer to cut him out of the show so that he could go and do his own thing. The only stipulation was that he would have to return for the finale show, which Haygood readily agreed to.
He’s reportedly happy to be gone. Saying he has no hard feelings towards the judges (“They understood me even though they couldn’t give me what I wanted”), Haygood says that now he can concentrate on singing the rock songs he loves while also benefiting from the exposure he got from the show. It sounds like a win-win for everyone. Well, except for maybe the producers, who surely can’t be happy that Haygood is spreading word of the backstage deal. Unsurprisingly, neither the show’s producers nor Scherzinger have commented.
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