‘The X Factor’ USA: Do Lyric 145, Jennel Garcia blame Simon Cowell, Demi Lovato?

Following their eliminations on “The X Factor” USA Thursday night, we suggested the both of the eliminations for Jennel Garcia and Lyric 145 were completely and totally the fault of their respective mentors and producers for not really letting either of the artists do what exactly they had originally wanted to. There were some legal issues involved with the song choices, but it was also just as much the mentors deciding that the contestants were better off singing something else … even if it was not something they really wanted to sing.

So what do the two acts have to say about it now? Both Lyric Da Queen (of Lyric 145) and Jennel spoke out in a conference call on Friday, and they each said that both of their mentors did apologize for mistakes that they felt were squarely on them.

Lyric – “Simon actually did come up to me … He was very apologetic about the situation because he did … we did change it from original lyrics and hip hop and a very very strong performance and we went along with his idea and it kinda backfired on us. He was really apologetic about it. He just gave us some advice that we will probably take with us for the rest of our life. He’s not really worried about us, though. He knows our potential and he knows our drive.”

Jennel – “It was her choice to do ‘Proud Mary’ and I was fighting against it. I was completely against it. I had another song prepared and I was really fighting for that one. Unfortunately, she chose ‘Proud Mary.’ She thought that could get me to the top of the voting chart. It went the complete opposite direction. I’m not mad at her for it. She’s human and she’s going to make mistakes. At the end of the day, she chose me, she chose me out of the bottom 2. That’s all I could ask of her. She didn’t know that that would have been a mistake. If she had known that, she would have let me do the song that I wanted to do.”

The irony here is Jennel in particular is that the judges all seemed to like her performance pretty well, but it was still not strong enough for whatever reason to get her carried through to the next phase of the competition.

Do you think that we are seeing a situation now where the judges should listen more to their contestants? If you’re looking for our official “X Factor” USA rankings, we’ll have them up by Sunday night.