Divisive AGT live performance leaves Simon Cowell speechless: “I don’t understand how you made it here. How?”
The NBC show kicked off live!
America’s Got Talent is now ramping up season 17 as the first live show for the year premiered on 9 August, and it got off to a rather interesting start.
Ben Lapidus, a singer who was controversially accepted to the live events following a controversial audition, was one of the performers that night.
He was sent through because the audience liked the catchy song he sang after being X’d by all the judges (and Heidi Klum’s admiration) after singing a hard rock song about parmesan cheese.
He claimed in his confessional that he wanted to approach his reappearance in a serious manner, and while it initially started out that way, it quickly took a turn.
He then put down his guitar and pulled off his shirt to reveal a leather suit, choosing for a song about parmesan that was even more rock-inspired after appearing to forget what he had just said.
He received X’es from all of the judges immediately, but Heidi complained that it had been done for her when she rose up to sing along with him.
Once more, the audience erupted in a round of applause and cheers that drowned out the judges’ comments as they were being chanted.
However, it was clear that the panel was not convinced when Howie Mandel claimed that Ben had made him “lactose intolerant” since the audience booed behind him.
Heidi even tried shushing the audience to tell him: “I think you wrote the greatest earworm of all time,” while Sofia Vergara added: “Ben, you seem like a super nice guy. I don’t understand how you made it here. How?”
On the opposite end of the spectrum was Simon Cowell, who was described as “speechless” by the host Terry Crews after being shocked and generally irritated.
When the host asked Ben to pitch his case to voters, he started talking about “big parma” and how they’d infiltrated the media, and Terry quickly took the mic away, saying: “Okay, no big parma.”