Simon Cowell’s newly assembled boyband may get the UK music mogul in legal hot water, due to their name being strikingly similar to a Scottish heavy metal band’s.
Cowell – best known as the sharp-tongued judge on talent shows Pop Idol, The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – has returned to the limelight with his Netflix series The Next Act, which sees him try to assemble the next big pop outfit despite how greatly the music landscape has changed since the days of One Direction and Little Mix.
The result of his endeavours is the brand-new seven-piece December 10, named after the date The Next Act premiered. However, their tenure has got off to a rocky start after attracting the attention of Glasgow bruisers December Tenth, who formed in 2020 and claim that they took their name from the day a pen pal of theirs was executed in prison.
In a now-deleted social media post obtained by The Mirror, the singer of the heavy quintet wrote: “It came to light over the last few days that Simon Cowell, Netflix and Universal Music, are involved in a new boy band that share, to some extent, our name December Tenth. Now if anyone in Simon’s team, Universal or Netflix, would like to get in touch with ourselves and our legal team they can do so.”
He added: “I would like to point out, the hundreds of new followers we have over the last few days are most welcome, but I’m not entirely sure they are all genuine.”
In another statement from the band as a whole obtained by The Mirror, December Tenth write that their social media accounts “have blown up” and that they “are now being inundated with well wishes from fans of the show thinking we are that band”.
Representatives for Cowell, Netflix and Universal are yet to comment on the matter.
The potential legal trouble adds to what has been a rough launch for The Next Act. As auditions for vocalists for the series were underway, Cowell received only 160 applicants. Now, although Netflix is yet to release any streaming figures for the six-episode programme, it’s been met with fiercely negative reviews. The Guardian gave it one star out of five and called it “the billionth take on [Cowell’s] one idea”.
December 10 – the pop one – released their debut single, a cover of NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye, on Monday (December 15) and it currently has more than 250,000 views on YouTube.
