Simon Cowell Shocks Fans After Stopping Contestant Ashley Marina's Audition TWICE

From Good Housekeeping

• Tuesday's new America's Got Talent episode featured 12-year-old singer Ashley Marina.

• After hearing Ashley sing, Simon stopped the young contestant and asked her to perform something else. He then interrupted her again and requested that she come back after preparing a third song.

• In reaction to Simon's notes, fans at home were not happy.

• Thankfully, Ashley's audition ended up going much better the third time around.

America's Got Talent contestant Ashley Marina had to sing not once ... not twice ... but three times to earn the approval of head judge Simon Cowell during Tuesday night's audition episode — and folks aren't happy about it.

Fans took to Twitter to vent their frustrations after seeing Simon raise his hand and stop the music while the talented 12-year-old vocalist was singing Martina McBride's "Anyway." As dedicated AGT viewers can remember, he pulled a similar move on season 14 contestant Ansley Burns last summer.

"That backing track was very overbearing, so can we try the second song a cappella so we get to hear your voice a little bit more clearly?" Simon requested. "Because I think you have a good voice. It's a good song, but not right for you, the first one."

Complying with Simon's wishes, Ashley started to perform Sia's "Opportunity" from the 2014 Annie soundtrack with no background music. But Simon didn't like that either.

"Ashley, you want my honest opinion?" Simon told the young artist before the audience started boo-ing. "I think you brought the wrong songs with you today. It's very difficult for me, I don't know about the others, to actually judge you on that."

But in the opinion of many watching at home, Simon had more than enough to go off of to make a decision.

Luckily, fellow judge Sofía Vergara swooped in and suggested giving the young artist a chance to prepare another song and perform later on. And so, Ashley did just that and returned to the stage in the afternoon with an original song about her dad. By the end of her afternoon performance, Simon was finally happy and he, Sofía, and Howie Mandel finally sent the singer through to the next round.

Even though some found Simon's interruptions to be unnecessary, the former American Idol judge did acknowledge all the hard work the singer put into her three-song audition.

"You now have three well-deserved 'yeses.'" Simon told Ashley at the end.

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