Clay Aiken Disses Current ‘American Idol’ Judges, Praises Simon Cowell

Clay Aiken, who was the runner-up in season two of American Idol, took the show’s current judges to task while live-tweeting the premiere episode of its final season.

Clay Aiken On ‘American Idol’

On Wednesday, Aiken revealed that he had tuned into American Idol for the first time in roughly a decade. Before long, the former contestant was griping about the lack of entertainment value the current panel of judges – Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick Jr. – bring to the table, and blaming them for American Idol’s decline in the ratings.

Aiken even went so far as to say that original judge Simon Cowell was a large part of why American Idol was so successful in the first place when it premiered on Fox back in 2002.

After a couple of shoutouts to the contestants from Raleigh, N.C., Aiken’s hometown, the singer explained why he had been so critical of the American Idol premiere. According to Aiken, his derisive tweets were born out of his affection for the show.

On Thursday, the second night of Idol auditions, Aiken only had one tweet, which positively commented on an emotional segment on the show in which a contestant got a surprise visit from her military mother who’d been away serving in the Middle East.

American Idol returns to Fox next Wednesday, Jan. 13 at 8/7c.