With all due respect to Ellen DeGeneres, the oft-pitchy contestants and our E! compadre Ryan Seacrest, the real reason we've all been tuning into American Idol for the past nine years is leaving tonight.
And in this finger-pointing society of ours, we need someone to blame for Simon Cowell's exit.
So, come on down...Miley Cyrus?!
Not so fast, haters. We'll let Simon explain:
"I actually remember we were on a plane one afternoon and I knew I was going to be sitting with you for six hours and at one point, I'm not exaggerating, you were listening to Miley Cyrus," he said on Seacrest's radio show this morning.
"So I'm listening to you listening to Miley Cyrus' 'Party in the U.S.A.' You know when someone's got headphones on and they sort of sing out of tune and really loud? And you played it five times in a row, and I thought then, I actually can't do this anymore."
"So really we blame Miley Cyrus?" Ryan asked.
"No, we blame you for singing Miley Cyrus...that was the turning point."
What can we say...it is a catchy tune.
Meanwhile, Cowell also took a stroll as far down memory lane as he could manage, revealing which contestants he would miss the most. Well, kind of.
" 'Miss' is probably the wrong word. I never phone them afterwards for, like, a chat," he explained, adding that Fantasia's version of "Summertime" still ranks as his all-time favorite performance. As for the worst...
"Clay Aiken murdering 'Grease' in the red jacket. It was abysmal."
That's exactly the sort of reminiscing we can expect on tonight's season finale, which will feature two different goodbye montages dedicated to the head judge's departure. And while Cowell has yet to see the packages, that didn't stop him from suggesting a little musical accompaniment to better underscore his place in the show.
His ever-humble suggestion? " 'Hero' by Enrique Iglesias or 'Hero' by Mariah Carey." Hmmm...we sense a theme.
Of course, he did take time out to pay tribute to who will, after tonight, be the only original judge remaining on the show.
"The fact that I never ever understood a single thing he's said in nine years," he said when asked what about Randy Jackson he'd miss the most. "I don't know if he's complimenting someone or not. All this, 'Yo, dawg, whatever, whatever'...I haven't got a clue."
Aw…how, um, sweet?
"If it wasn't for him, we would have gone nuts three or four years ago," he went on. "He was the glue."
There now. It took nearly a decade, but Simon finally had something nice to say. We knew he had it in him.
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We know where Simon's headed, but catch up with some ghosts of Idol past in our American Idol: Where Are They Now? gallery!