'Boring' X Factor is strangling real musical talent, says star of Suede

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Suede frontman Brett Anderson, Madness singer Suggs, and Bernard Sumner of New Order believe the show is stifling opportunities for new artists.

The musicians are the latest to criticise the X Factor. Earlier this month Elton John blasted the talent contest as "boring, arse-paralysingly brain crippling."

The attack comes as several ex-contestants of the ITV show have criticised their mentors and a number of Facebook campaigns are being set up to scupper Simon Cowell's plans to have a Christmas No 1 with the winner.

Anderson, 43, who is credited with kick-starting the Britpop movement with Suede, claimed the show was "strangling" the music industry. He said: "I think on the plus side when you have a kind of awful mainstream thing like the X Factor and all that talent show rubbish, it means that there is always a kind of reaction to that."

His bandmate Mat Osman said: "The thing I find incredible about the whole X Factor thing is they get paid to put it on. It's basically an advert for Simon Cowell for his acts.

"He should surely be paying a fortune for prime-time TV for these crappy acts rather than someone coming along and then paying him."

Sumner, 54, a founding member of seminal bands Joy Division and New Order, said: "I think people are interested in image and the kind of bullshit you get on TV in shows like the X Factor. I think it stinks because it's more about the people who are making the programme than the people they are purporting to promote.

"I like real music. I'm not interested in how well you can sing. It's not how you sing, it's what you sing that interests me. What they're singing is other people's music and it's not creative.

"I think Simon Cowell is supplying a market and that market is completely uninteresting and boring."

Suggs, 49, who has collected two Ivor Novello awards during his time in Camden ska band Madness, said the X Factor had left less room for others who were attempting to succeed in a more organic fashion.

"I don't think there is a lot of room for young bands in the charts and they have been filled up with people who don't really have any real interest in music," he added.