Sound Shore

Mamaroneck ‘dragon caterpillar’ talks about Britney’s home

The morning after will.i.am dubbed her a “dragon caterpillar” who starts out soft and then scorches the village, Carly Rose Sonenclar called this morning to talk about the experience of being at Britney Spears’ Malibu home for last night’s episode of “The X Factor.”

“It was like the nicest house I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said from L.A., taking a break from breakfast to talk.
The 13-year-old Mamaroneck phenom said she didn’t get a full tour of Britney’s home “a lot of the time we were rehearsing,” but “the first day we got there, we got to look around and she has a trampoline built into the ground on the hill. It was crazy.”
Last night’s episode, pitting the six teens against each other, put the kids in an uncomfortable situation: sitting in the same room, looking out onto the patio where the other competitors were trying their best to be one of the four acts moving on, and not one of the two acts going home.
“It was really hard,” Carly said. “They try to give us the hardest situations, like watching everyone else go and being able to see exactly what’s happening. We were so close we could hear everything.”
Carly couldn’t recall what order the singers went in, but said “it was nice of them” to show her performance last last night.
As shown last night, each contestant got to sit down with Spears and will.i.am for a little interview. That was when Spears asked Carly if she was competitive and Carly responded that she was, but that she preferred to be soft-spoken, until she performed.
“I’m sure that Britney had something to do with my song choices. They gave us a list of five songs to choose from and we met with producers to pick the best song. I think she chose the songs on the list for each person.”
The song choices were different for each singer, Carly said.
Her take on “Brokenhearted,” she says, was the same one producers had.
“We both wanted to strip it down and make it different from the original. When people hear that song, they don’t expect someone to do it that way. I wanted to bring a soulfulness to it. I wanted to bring my own style to it.”
As for will.i.am’s dragon caterpillar comment, she says she didn’t know the Black Eyed Peas star said that until she heard it last night.
“They didn’t show it, but will.i.am said the greatest thing. He said, ‘You’re a superhero. When you’re not singing, you’re all quiet and soft-spoken. But when you get on stage, you let it all out, like a superhero. And I thought that was so cool. I’ve never thought of it that way before.”
The results will be announced—who will move on to the live shows—next week.
Here’s the video from last night’s episode—and the birth of the “dragon caterpillar.”