Beetle-browed, frumpy, dumpy, but what a voice. Susan Boyle is the talk of the town, after her appearance on the show Britain’s Got Talent, an opportunity for the ordinary Brit to show what they can do.
Boyle came to international attention in April when she earned the judges’ consternation as she first appeared, and then completely turned their heads when she opened her mouth to sing. Her powerful and moving rendition of I Dreamed a Dream, the dénouement of the tragic Fantine from the musical Les Misérables had the audience on their feet, and the judges raising their eyebrows.
Since then, the YouTube recording of her performance has had more than 60 million views. She has appeared on chat shows in Britain and the US, has a Wikipedia entry and her own fan pages.
I don’t watch Britain’s Got Talent, or American Idol. I tend to be too busy to watch TV regularly. But I did YouTube Susan Boyle after I heard her mentioned on the radio, and listened to a short segment of her singing. I must admit, my first thought was – too much vibrato!
When I listened to her performance in full on the ubiquitous YouTube, I realised that she does have an enviable voice. I would give my eye teeth for such a voice. It’s powerful, it’s rich, and she uses it reasonably well. Presumably, however, she hasn’t had any training, or else she would be using it better. I’ve now listened to her semi-final performance, this time of the Lloyd-Webber/Streisand classic Memories, from the musical Cats. She had a terrible beginning, but brought it back well and finished in style.
I have to say, just as an aside, that I find Britain’s Got Talent (what little I’ve seen of it) decidedly annoying. But I’m one of these people who likes to listen to music, not make my own voice (or hands) heard. I really don’t appreciate people who feel the need to shout and whoop and holler during a performance. Maybe some performers enjoy this sort of feedback. It’s not so bad during a performance of popular music, occasionally to acknowledge a favourite song or an extremely clever guitar riff. But I find shouting and clapping as a song reaches its crescendo just really irritating. I’d like to hear the quality of the singing, not the rest of the audience.
So anyway, that’s why I don’t watch these shows. And I don’t really need to, it seems. The best of them ends up on the news and YouTube anyway.
I hope Susan Boyle does really well. She’s shown that you can’t judge someone’s talent just by their outward appearance. I have no idea whether there are any other strong contenders – the bookmakers are setting Boyle as odds-on favourite to win the final next week. It would probably mean a lot to her, so I hope she does. But no matter what the result, I hope she gets some training for that wonderful voice of hers. I would love to see her launch a professional career tackling some really high quality music.