Simon Cowell: Britney Spears Should Go Home... and Melinda Doolittle Should've Won American Idol

If you celebrity gossip readers thought Brittany Murphy and Simon Monjack had a monopoly on Brittany-Simon news this week, well, you were wrong.

Never has Simon Cowell been one to shy away from speaking his mind, even when it comes to pressing pop cultural matters beyond American Idol.

The sometimes-surly, always dead-on Brit is offering up some career advice for Britney Spears, telling the pop star to "go home to your family."

In an interview with Good Morning America Thursday, Cowell said that Britney Spears is capable of saving her free-falling career because she's "still one of the most talked about pop stars on the planet."

"She has the X-factor because people want to write about her," Simon Cowell said. "She's not conventional, she's not normal."

No kidding.

At the same time, Cowell says Britney clearly "can't handle the tension and the pressure" that comes from being in the spotlight so she needs to take some time refocus herself at home.

"Lock the door, don't go out with your stupid friends, have some home-cooked food, get back your sense of reality," he says.

"Go lie in the garden, okay? And then say to yourself, 'There's more good in my life than bad. I'm still a rich, talented girl - now I want to get my career on track.' End of story."

Amen to that.

But the interview wasn't all about Jayden James' crazy mama. Simon Cowell also revealed why he believes Jordin Sparks is the new American Idol.

"Jordin Sparks was the most improved over the whole season," he says. "She didn't start the best but midway through, this was the girl who suddenly got momentum."

Still, Cowell feels that Sparks wasn't necessarily the one who deserved the title. "Melinda Doolittle should have won," Cowell said. "She tried the hardest, was consistently the best and had the best voice."

But Cowell's praise doesn't always have the intended effect and he knows it.

"I think about it now... whether I should have endorsed her as much as [I did]," he says. "I think it was the right thing to do."