Zoom-in Online

Every new season of The X Factor is a big event in Britain.

Like American Idol, mere mention of the British singing competition inspires over-the-top eye-rolling from the cool kids and high-pitched, squealing enthusiasm from pretty much everyone else. Everybody, from the Prime Minister on down, is expected to have an opinion on the show and its contestants.

And this season, some star musicians are giving their opinions of the global hit show, and Simon Cowell probably isn't too happy about it. 

Earlier this week, the rising indie-dance producer Calvin Harris was banned from the show after an odd stunt in which he ran on stage with a pineapple on his head while a contestant was performing.

Harris explained that he only did it to highlight the ridiculousness of the show. "For the greater good of the nation I wanted to go out there and make an idiot of myself and bring the whole show into another area in which it's treated as a joke."

He later added, "As a music competition it is a joke and I think it should be treated as such."

It's a bit surprising that Harris would choose to be so blunt. As one of the UK's most recognizable young producers, and one who's not above the occasional corporate cash-in, a good deal of Harris's audience probably watches X Factor. Plus, his antics probably cost him some future production opportunities for the show's future winners.

But luckily for Harris, he's not the only mega-star musician willing to speak out against X-Factor. Just yesterday, during a taping of Live From Studio Five, Moby called the show "awful."

"I think it debases music and cheapens everything that I care about," he said.

And he has valid reasons for feeling this way. As he put it: "The musicians I love are the ones who write their own songs.

"If you look at someone like Joe Strummer or John Lennon, when you heard their music you knew that they wrote it and they cared about it, they're the ones who decided how they were going to sound and what they were going to look like."

Moby also had some choice words for Simon Cowell (which you can read here), but we're just wondering why nobody's had the stones to say anything about American Idol over here. It's just as annoying here as it is there.

Of course, we've never had to deal with anything quite as monstrously annoying as Jedward, either: