‘The X Factor’ USA: First look at Demi Lovato, Kelly Rowland, Paulina Rubio together

Only a mere day after the new “X Factor” USA judging panel was confirmed, the team of Kelly Rowland, Paulina Rubio, Demi Lovato, and Simon Cowell all came together on Tuesday to kick off their first auditions together in Charleston, South Carolina. Like the new layout of the panel together? We think that it’s somewhat of a missed opportunity to have Demi and Simon separated from each other considering their crazy banter, but they clearly wanted to mix the veterans around.

The first thing that we want to point out here is the lack of Pepsi cups. Is that endorsement deal over? It’s possible, given that the show is surely not the success that the soda company was hoping for when they first premiered.  We’ll probably find out more about that in the weeks ahead (though we certainly would not object to less in-show product placement). There were cups at the auditions last year. We checked.

As for how the judges performed, there were no negative reports … so that’s something. Simon Cowell was running a little late, though, thanks to massive storms keeping him stuck in traffic. We have a lot of confidence in Rowland given that she’s done this before, but Rubio is a wild card. We know that she has coached on “The Voice Mexico,” but we’ve never seen that show before. For those of you who have never heard her speak English before, she has an accent, and while you can tell it’s her second language, don’t start to worry about that being an issue on the show. This is really going to be all about chemistry.

While we are reporting about this panel, there is some news coming in when it comes to the British version of the show. If you want to see who is for sure returning, all you have to do is click here.

Photo: Fox