L.A. Reid Calls 'X Factor' the 'Worst Thing I've Ever Done'

L.A. Reid has some harsh words for his stint as a judge on the first two seasons of The X Factor.

The 59-year-old music exec says that it was “the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“The first season, yes, I had a great time,” L.A. told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a little bit of a vacation. I’d been making music, working at running labels for a long time, and it was a little bit of, ‘Let me just have some fun.’ But the second season I was fully engaged trying run a label, and it wasn’t fun anymore.”

“And more importantly, it really affected my taste – it almost destroyed it,” he continued. “It completely threw me off – by the way, I have a book coming out soon, and it’ll all be on my book,” he interjected with a laugh. “But yeah, what works for television isn’t necessarily the thing that works in the traditional journey of music, so I adjusted my taste for television. But the truth is, I lowered my bar – my bar was quite high, if I’m being honest, and as a result I didn’t have the same level of success. The bar is quite high again now, but it was damaging. I worked with Simon Cowell, who I love and have great respect for and he has great taste, but being around him for that long, I started to take on his taste, and I’m an amateur at having his taste – I’m good at my kind of taste.”

Click inside to read more of what L.A. Reid had to say…

“We definitely had the audience,” L.A. said. “And I can’t criticize Simon because it was his show, and we did well. But I think he made the statement that if we didn’t do 20 million viewers, it was a failure. We did 14 million, which is actually a runaway success, but because we didn’t do 20, it was a failure. To be honest? The truth is: The Voice cleaned our clock.”