Famed record company executive and generally one of the biggest names in the music industry, L.A. Reid, recently shared his thoughts on the popular X Factor music talent show. On the show, Reid was a member of the judging panel, and he has anything but sweet memories. More like bitter-sweet. Or just bitter.

The famed record company veteran revealed that agreeing to do the show was one of the worst things he’d ever done. Although his first season was pretty good, the second one almost destroyed his taste in music and became a nightmare.

Reid agreed to be a judge for the talent show so he could do something that will relax him – “like a little bit of vacation.” However, the second season started to interfere with his career and it just wasn’t fun anymore.

The famed businessman also said that he had to adjust his taste for television: “It really affected my taste – it almost destroyed it. It completely threw me off. What works for television isn’t necessarily the thing that works in the traditional journey of music, so I adjusted my taste for television.”

Reid also noted that he lowered his bar and started to take on Simon Cowell’s taste in music, which didn’t end in great results: “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.”

According to Reid, his contestants weren’t as successful as the ones who were mentored by other members of the jury because of those things.

L.A. Reid also commented on the fact that the show was called a failure, due to it not having the targeted 20 million viewers (it had “only” 14 million), and said that The Voice was to blame: “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.”