"American Idol" kicked off its ninth season -- Simon Cowell's last -- in Boston with mobs of good, bad and flat-out bizarre singers trying to score a golden ticket to Hollywood.

Simon, Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi and special celeb judge Victoria Beckham critiqued the fresh crop of crooners, some who sang off-key and some who were just … "off"!

Oddball entrants included a self-styled "anime-freak" who maimed a Janis Joplin classic; a livewire teen who mistakenly thought he could sing and dance to Britney Spears' "Womanizer"; and one man whose bad attitude inspired Kara to repeatedly roar, “You need a spanking!”