Simon Cowell says son Eric helped save his life

Simon Cowell says becoming a father changed his life and helped him overcome an all-encompassing obsession with work that left him “depressed, miserable” and unable to sleep.

Cowell’s candid reviews as the chief judge of The X Factor helped him build a reputation as Mr. Nasty from TV, but behind the scenes admits to working around the clock in a frantic attempt to keep the show one step ahead of the competition.

And the 63-year-old music mogul, says he became a father in later life, helped him get away from his dark, desperate and ultimately doomed attempt to save the former ITV flagship from a rapid decline in popularity by playing with his once successful format.

He told The sun: “Before Eric, 99 percent of my life was work—I was obsessed with it. I got to the point where it was all about, “If you don’t fight this, then you’re a failure” and I stopped enjoying what I was doing and felt miserable all the time.

“I was obsessed with beating the competition. I took it to a ridiculous level and it would really bring me down to the point where I got depressed.”

Cowell welcomed son Eric — named after his late father — in New York City on Valentine’s Day 2014. To date, he is the mogul’s only child with fiancé Lauren Silverman.

But while his birth led fans to see a softer side to Cowell’s character, he admits to “pulling his hair out” while trying to come up with new concepts for The X Factor, often staying up all night.

He said, I’m not a wall puncher, but I’d pull my hair out and then sit at 4 and say, “What am I going to do?” — come up with ridiculous ideas, like the six-seat challenge.

‘I was really unhappy. But now that Eric’s here, I don’t work at night anymore. If he hadn’t gone, God knows what would have happened.

“It’s sad now to think of me at my age, still working until 4 am, obsessed with the ratings. The thought of it—I can’t stand it.’

The X Factor was an instant hit upon its launch in 2004 and would run for fourteen straight years before finally going off the air amid faltering ratings in 2018, and Cowell claims he’s now a “different man” than the one he used to be. years ago.

He now focuses on the trend of the social media platform TikTok and takes his talent search to the popular app with a new feature called StemDrop, which he is launching with producer and songwriter Max Martin.

Max, the mastermind behind big hits like Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time and Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, will be writing new songs for the singers to perform.

Recalling his earlier attempt to obtain pop song Baby One More Time for British boy band 5ive before it was famously recorded by a then-unknown Britney Spears, he said: “I think that song would have been a hit for anyone.

“I knew it would be a hit for 5ive, it would be a hit for TLC, it was a hit for Britney Spears.

“There have been country versions, alternative versions. It was just a hit, no doubt about it, and having that first hit is the most important part of an artist’s career, and also the hardest part of breaking one’s career.

“So this is really the gist of the StemDrop idea – imagine someone who’s on TikTok, trying to get some traction, who now has the ability to make their own version of a song written by our most successful songwriter.” time . It’s very compelling.’