James Arthur’s track ‘Follow The Leader’ off his new mixtape ‘All The Worlds A Stage‘ is apparently the last straw as far as Simon Cowell is concerned following reports that Syco have terminated the former X Factor winners contract.
Simon Cowell has been quoted recently as saying “I think James, unfortunately, has had so many issues with what he has done publicly – which is a real issue with me” and “Somebody should have told him to shut up and just put the records out.”
But what has James done publicly? Lets have a look of some of his entanglements…:
- Matt Cardle
James had this to say about previous male X Factor winners;
“The blokes that have won before have had a niche, they haven’t sold records because they haven’t made great albums. That’s the bottom line.”
Whilst partially true, it did boil the blood of 2010 winner, Matt Cardle. This then escalated into a massive twitter row which brought nothing but bad press to both artists.
- Mickey Worthless (Don’t Flop MC)
After recording a session for BBC Radio 1’s ‘Fire In The Booth’, James created yet more controversy as the session was heavily expletive and slammed Rita Ora. It caused backlash from many UK MC’s including Don’t Flop’s own Micky Worthless. Arthur reacted to this in a very mature manner, getting his fans to spam Worthless’ account with abusive tweets. Both parties came out with diss tracks, but overall, Mickey came out on top in this spat with James resorting to tactics such as comparing Micky to a Taliban member and using derogatory terms such as queer
- Lucy Spraggan
This is where peoples’ problems with James Arthur really started to build. The bigoted way he went about addressing Micky Worthless with homophobic slurs was struck out against by celebrities such as Matt Lucas, who went on an explicit twitter assault against James. Lucy Spraggan also got involved. Now we already know that Mr. Arthur doesn’t always get along with fellow X Factor contestants. This was no exception. When James used “F*****g Queer” as an insult, Lucy replied with #DontHate which led to him describing her as an attention seeker. We’re still trying to figure that statement out, James!
- Teddy Edwards
Earlier in the year, several tweets popped up on Teddy Edwards twitter account with photos attached of screenshots showing a conversation with James Arthur. This wasn’t just any conversation, but yet another derogatory, sexist and straight up pathetic spat. Afterwards James tried to blame it on his PR people but then eventually admitted it was him.
Now with new track ‘Follow The Leader’, James has been accused of glamourising terrorism through the lyrics “Look at what you do to me, I’m crying over stupid s**t/ You’re such a f**king homophobe, wish I’d never let you in/ To think that I was thinking maybe I should let you live/ I’m gonna blow up your family like I’m a terrorist.” Since these accusations James has responded through saying “The song ‘follow the leader’ from the mixtape is not promoting terrorism, it’s a story, a reciting of a Stan Esc letter from a demented fan, Just for the record.”
True? Who knows. One thing is for sure though, there is a massive weight lifted off of his damage control team!