Entertainment For Lively Minds
Singing the Sucky Way - Chapter 3: Fear and Lothian
This latest foray into the wacky world of sucky singing is a bit different from its predecessors, because it's not so much about people singing in a certain way as how we're conditioned into believing they sing in a certain way - the certain way in question being not suckily but brilliantly.
Look up "susan boyle" on YouTube and you get 11 million hits for a clip that was first posted four days ago. The 47-year-old from West Lothian (or, as the press have dubbed her, "the dowdy Scots spinster with the voice of an angel") is the latest wow-the-world faux couture product to be unveiled by the House of Cowell. She's this year's Paul Potts.
One of the judges in that clip says that when Boyle opened her mouth and sang it came as a "reality check". Er, no. Here's the reality check: light contraltos as good as Boyle and tenors as good as Potts can be heard in their dozens in am-dram productions of Iolanthe in schools halls all over the land.
Potts is not the new Caruso. He's not even the new Harry Secombe. Herbert Breslin, 83, must have heard more versions of "Nessun Dorma" than can be healthy for any man - he was Luciano Pavarotti's manager - so I think it's safe to assume that he knows the tune. Here's his take on the Paul Potts phenomenon: "They want to have a totally inexperienced, untrained voice sing 'Nessun Dorma' and the audience is going to fall off its feet? It’s ridiculous. But that's the way things are in the modern age."
Susan Boyle is a similar story. Yes, she has pretty good pitch - as do thousands of choir singers up and down the country - but her vibrato is full on, she has no power outside the middle register and her timbre tends towards a rather unpleasant reediness up at the top end. In other words, rather than a sucky voice she has a sort-of-okay-I-suppose one.
So why the instant international phenomenon? Here comes the clincher. She sings sort-of-okay-I-suppose while looking like Mark Ellen in a Crimplene frock. That's it. That's her USP.
Boyle and Potts both do a bit more than what it says on the tin, but only a bit. They are not "extraordinarily talented" singers with "truly amazing" voices. We're conditioned to expect one thing and get something that's marginally better than that. Then we lose our minds along with our ears in a frenzy of collective Cowellisation, and start believing that the gods of genius have moved in mysterious, marvellous ways.
In Cruelworld - that is, in the real world - people with overpopulated eyebrows or aggressively anti-American teeth may or may not reach for the tweezers or the dental braces and may or may not sing well. But in Cowellworld, different laws of schlockular physics apply. There the most suitable contestants are frumped up for the cameras so that we expect them to sing like ducks. Then, when they don't, they're treated as prodigies and feted as maisonette messiahs.
That's the way things are in the modern age.
- More from Archie Valparaiso.
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The thing about TV Pt 198
I haven't seen this clip and I'm not in a hurry to but I can guarantee one thing - it will be all about what she looks like. Nobody's *listening* to music on TV. They're *looking* at it. That applies to Later With Jools Holland as much as it does to the X Factor. Whether it's dealing with sport or riots in Malaysia, the only thing TV is concerned about is this. Have we got striking pictures? Obviously this applies when they're engineering a Girls Aloud but it applies no less when they're presenting somebody outside their normal stereotypes. They create a new stereotype.
I have long felt it's perfectly possible to watch an evening's TV with the sound turned off and still get 90% of the meaning. You should try it with this programme. I bet you won't be wrong.
^ what he said
With both Potts and Boyle, they confounded expectations by being very ordinary-looking people with a talent for holding a tune. I imagine the thought process of those in the audience went something like this: "Hmmm. This person is ugly, maybe even a little freakish. I love it when the TV show sets these idiots up for a fall. But wait a minute, this is quite good... how can this possibly be happening? I watch a lot of TV, and talented people are always good-looking! This person must therefore be AMAZING!"
In other words, if Boyle had been a reasonably good-looking woman in her late twenties, she probably wouldn't have made it to the Britain's Got Talent stage in the first place.
Correct
In the you tube clip, there are a number of shots of the audience where you can see them gearing up for usual bloodbath of jeers and boos, plus clear distaste for Miss Boyle on the face of Piers Morgan.
Once she begins to sing there is rapid sea change in the mob opinion.
Not strictly on thread
I agree with you David.
One thing that has really annoyed about TV news for a number of years is that if there is no picture there is no story. I may have ranted about this before.
You can hear about a news story on Today or PM that to my mind is important. However if there is no footage immediately available, no library pictures or a building for a reporter to stand outside there is no story. It's ignored. If it runs it will not be a story until some footage is available.
The idea that the BBC could do what Richard Baker or Robert Dougall used to do and sometimes just read a news story straight to camera is now completely anathema to the corporate culture.
True
But if it buys her the 15 minutes of fame and a bit of folding stuff, and Lord knows, she looks as if she needs it, good luck to her. If we are foolish enough to live led by Cowell world existing, parallel and fleetingly, alongside Cruel world, then, presumably having put herself up there, let her live by that sword to a few degrees less than Jade. Paul Potts has slid back, presumably, into anonymity, with his new teeth and a bank blance a little, I hope, improved. So too may Susan Boyle. She was better than the equivalent caricatures who slouch on and can't even sing a song of sixpence.
It's the best of a bad bunch syndrome...
the talent shows present us with a whole slew of people who really cannot sing, some of whom could even be considered to be mentally ill in some way, peppered with some who can sing decently, with nothing in between, as that would be really dull TV. Comparatively, Cowell and co can get away with their claim that their chosen ones are in a 'different class', because they are when compared with the deluded. However, as Archie says, in the real world, most of the chosen ones are pretty average when compared to many amateur chorists, karaoke enthusiasts etc, who are happy doing what htey are doing without any thought of wanting to be on TV.
Audience manipulation
I haven't seen an awful lot of Britain's Got Talent, but the X-Factor is a terrible culprit at programming the viewer with preconceptions.
If ever you see the contestant before they go and audition, there will be a piece of music in the background to make them seem either brave/confident/cool/ridiculous/whatever.
The audition comes round, they open their mouth and those conceptions are either enforced to the point where they're rammed down your throat or proved to be wrong, in which case, it's a miracle and they're the best thing since... the last person who could sort of hold a tune.
World Famous Already
I was in a store today and the in-house radio station announcers spent 5 minutes talking about Susan Boyle's performance, which set off three conversations around me in the aisles about her. ('Ooh! 11 million YouTube hits! Can you bleevit?! She must be very good...') Thing is - not one of the people talking about her had seen her, and had only heard the 10 second sound bite of her singing which accompanied the on-air chat. The show has not, and will not, be shown in Australia, yet here we are 12,000 miles away talking about her in hushed tones of amazement (I use the royal 'we' here liberally, but exclude myself from the collective pronoun in this instance). Surely the world has gone mad??
End Of The Pier Variety
I grew up in that particular world, where Opportunity Knocks was a bit of a goal that could lead to ten minutes on TV on a Saturday or Sunday night. Where egos are that much larger than talent, and the talent is...well mostly arguable. Magicians, dancers, contortionists, animal performers, bad comedians.
Cowell is basically an end of the pier variety manager of the old school who has managed to become one of the most successful showbiz peeps around. But his ventures still have that stench of stale dressing rooms, alcoholic skin and fried food, a series of hopefuls who are doomed to failure or a life performing to flatulent grannies
A little 'real' talent goes a long long way in that world.
Flatulence
Surely that's not an age-specific issue, is it?
I don't know
My skills seem to improve with time.
And practice, to be fair.
'Flatulent' Grannies
That's merely to demarcate them from all the other Grannies these acts could be playing to. The ones with flick knives, for instance.
Trust me
The variety audience, especially those at the summer seasons in various seaside towns, was always blue rinse grannies who smelt of farts. Always.
Now, the ones with the flick knives, they were actually a less demanding audience.
I'd not thought of that
Simon Cowell is the new Hughie Greene.
Shows like this are all about surprises
People love being confounded and sitting at home going 'Oh my God, how amazing. She looks like that but sings like that! Wow!'.
But like the X Factor, once the show is over and singer embarks on a career, everyone loses interest more or less. I love The X Factor, but I'm never going to buy a Leona Lewis record and even my mum would baulk at Paul Potts.
Are these careers meant to last? Probably not. It's how much money Simon Cowell can milk out of them while they're hot and if they take off then that's a bonus (to him), if not he got what he needed.
Leona
To be fair to Leona Lewis, she's probably the worst example you could choose to illustrate your point. Like her or not, she's sold millions, been nominated for grammies, has developed a worldwide following, and shows every sign of being a 'career' artist.
You might well be right about every other winner, mind.
I agree, she's good
but she could quite easily not have taken off. She got lucky with the songwriters. Now she has a career. Of course that difficult second album has yet to materialise...
Will Young's good too, but he was the first Pop Idol winner and has half a brain.
There's more than you realise
Girls Aloud, Myleene Klass, Kym Marsh and Lemar have all done pretty well out of the TV talent shows.
Yes, but they'r eall at least seven years ago
There's so many since who've fallen by the wayside. People have stopped caring because another one will be along in a minute
To be fair....
....I think if you took a load of contestants in these programmes from a few years ago and compared them with bands who had been on some Radio One night time session at the same time, you would probably find about the same rate of falling by the wayside.
Everybody thinks that people nowadays have far shorter careers than they used to. I don't know that that's true. Teen sensations like Take That made their career last a good deal longer than David Cassidy ever did. Oasis have been around far longer than the Beatles were.
The difference being...
...that bands performing late-night Radio 1 sessions never had a prime-time audience of 10 million and blanket media coverage for three months.
A roll call of wayside residents
Previous winners of X-Factor/Fame Academy:
Michelle McManus
Alex Parks
David Sneddon
Steve Brookstein - alledgedly dropped for wanting to perform his own material
Leon Jackson
Shayne Ward
Runners-up that briefly flickered:
Chico
The MacDonald Brothers
Journey South
What am I missing?
I don't pretend to know much about these programmes but I thought that opening shows were genuinely open auditions, so while there might well be a discrepancy between apearance and ability, to whatever extent this has been manipulated, it's not by Cowell et al?
Sure, they're not going to fail to pick up on an opportunity, and I understand that it will be presented to TV to give a particular impression but it's not like they're able to pre-screen who pitches up.
Am I completely off the mark here? Happy to be told I'm hopelessly naive.
I don't know
But I can't see Simon Cowell sitting through 100,000 auditions or however many it is. I would have thought he had minions to weed through them.
I'm fairly sure
that the first X-Factor auditions aren't in front of the cameras and the vast majority of the people get turned away there and then. Then, they let the deluded ones through and get them on TV for fun.
The "funnel" goes something like...
100,000 turn up for auditions and are seen by the producers and researchers, who are looking for a) the very good, b) the very bad, and c) "compelling" human interest stories.
500 go in front of the panel, most being gonged off before the end of the first verse, and about 50 auditions will get shown on TV.
100 go through to "boot camp."
And then, depending on the format, 20 or so get to the "semi-finals" with 12-ish making it to the weekly face-offs.
My favourite of these programmes is actually American Idol (being shown here on ITV2), currently at the Top 8, and shaping up to be a fight to the finish between a bi-sexual theatrical glam rocker and a right-wing fundamentalist Christian whose wife died 4 weeks before the auditions...
Thanks
for clearing that up!
Top C for pub singers
These "tenors" transpose Nessun Dorma so they can hit the top note, the "ce" of the final vincero. Usually to an A. It's a top C, which for most of us to reach would require surgery. Then, thanks to studio wizardry, flick a switch and it's a top C again. Allegedly.
This is 'Saturday Night Entertainment'
I agree with Archie that history will not remember Susan Boyle and Paul Potts as great singers, but aren't we forgetting that Britain's Got Talent is Saturday night TV entertainment and in that respect hits all the right buttons? Inoffensive, family oriented and fun. What more can you want from early evening popular TV. Do we not, as a wise man once said, need to 'lighten up'?
It's not about early evening popular TV, though
It's about the creating of supernovas of non-news, such that the New York Times feels it's worth phoning Pavarotti's manager to get a quote about Paul Potts, or Demi Moore feels driven to mention on Twitter (as reported by The Times here) that Susan Boyle's performance had made her "all teary". Bless.
Anthea Redfern giving us a twirl never quite achieved that depth of coverage, did it?
I agree that it's non-news
But isn't Britain's Got Talent just reflecting our celebrity-obsessed times? It's essentially Opportunity Knocks for the Big Brother and Apprentice generation with Susan Boyle as the noughties answer to Lena Zavaroni.
I don't watch these programmes as a rule and I would rather websites like the BBC ignore the celebrity stuff and devote their column inches to serious news such as United's victory at Porto or the Pet Shop Boys imminent tour of Finland. But I did look at the Susan Boyle clip and it made me smile in a "look at what the world has come to" way.
Agree with everything you say...
... except the "inoffensive" bit - i find Cowell & chums and their manipulation of powerless cannon fodder utterly offensive
Archie
do you really expect Pavarotti's manager to say anything nice about Paul Potts? I wouldn't be surprised if he criticised him without even hearing him. He probably spent so many years massaging the ego of his fat friend that he has no compliments left for anyone else.
Barely a week goes by without you criticising singers. And surely, regardless of pitch and timbre, the whole point of singing is to make a connection with your audience? I just think you're being a bit harsh. Who honestly cares, other than you Archie, that she has no power outside the middle register? Good luck to her.
Seeing is Believing
I couldn’t agree more - inasmuch as regardless of white-knuckled passengers and pedestrians scurrying out of the way, the whole point of driving is to get to your destination. That said, you don’t seem to have read my post. Where do I say there’s anything wrong with being a just-about-okay-I-suppose singer? What I was criticising was the machine that presents the run-of-the-mill as if it were the pinnacle of human artistic achievement, resulting in a relentless blunting of the public’s ability to arrive unswayed at their own critical opinions. Millions now believe that Susan Boyle is extraordinarily talented. Why? Because they were programmed to believe that in the editing suite - by the close-ups of Simon Cowell’s getting-a-grade-A-blowjob face, by the cutaway to Ant and Dec saying oh-so-ad-libbedly, "Bet you weren’t expecting that, were you?!" and by the camera panning over the heads of the audience spontaneously rising from their seats, in a refried Mexican wave.
Brainwashed by Cowell?
Not sure about this 'machine' that's 'programmed' millions. Is that really true? Isn't it giving too much credit to Cowell as some demonic, evil manipulator of world opinion, and giving too little credit to the desire of many for a fairy tale coming true? Isn't this more about the power of the internet and the nature of popular sentiment that has developed into what can feel like a rather excessive over reaction of emotion, compounded and increased by media reporting and higlighting of that response? Isn't the TV show in question really partly reflecting that phenomenon rather than controlling it? I think you make interesting points, often quite brilliantly, but perhaps over state the case. Often the way things really are is not actually the way we might like to think they are. Don't think BGT is so bad and evil.
Not sure about this
My (possibly naive) impression is that the judges and many others are genuinely surprised that someone can have been around so long, undiscovered, who can sing like that. I think they know there is a difference between looks needed for pop and the relative tolerance of less good looking people in other musical fields - especially classical, so wouldn't assume she couldn't make it. The market is not the same. No doubt there will be a drastic makeover for when the CD comes out, in any case. The line about Mark Ellen in 'crimplene frock' is very good though.
To these judges (and probably the majority of public too) it is amazing singing because they do not really know much classical music and don't appreciate the difference between Paul Potts and Pavarotti. What's different about the modern world is that these moments are distributed everywhere, instantly, via internet (Youtube). Yes, there is some manipulation - as is required to make it 'good TV' and provide some narrative. Not so sure it is all so sinister and calculated as our cynical minds like to believe though. Cowell is brilliant in a very narrow sense but, like his fellow judges, I don't really think he's that bright.
"surprised that someone (is) undiscovered"
In what context are they undiscovered? Unknown to the mainstream channel goggle box audience, or unknown outside the local Opera Society?
A friend of ours, a leading soprano in a local Opera Society, kindly agreed to sing a piece at our wedding. She sang beautifully. From three feet away, I watched a tear slowly track down her cheek half way though the song, and struggled not to well up myself. It was astonishingly good. A dropped pin could have been heard from one end of the church to the other. She's never been on a TV show, she's never been subjected to Cowellisation, and she wouldn't want either experience.
If the judges are genuinely surprised by the talent that's out here in Cruelworld, they are the naive ones. But no, they're not surprised, they want the viewers to be surprised, and it's because they know what the viewers are expecting.
I'm not out to belittle Susan Boyle, by the way. Good luck to her and all power to her elbow (and larynx). But she's not in any way unique, is all I needed to say.
The public wants what the public gets.
By discovered
I mean had some recognition, at least to the level where they made a living from singing - I am talking about from the judges point of view rather than mine though, I am not surprised they have not been discovered. I just think the response from the judges seems genuine. If they thought about it rationally, yes they would realise that there are many out there who can sing that well. But in that context and from their perspective it appears amazing.
Going back to Archie's original posting
Can we expect to to see Mark doing his next preview of Word magazine while wearing a crimplene frock, just for comparison purposes? I sincerely hope not. Kate in a robust pair of plus fours however, is an animal of a very different stripe.
Here's the clip...
I don't understand the very technical appraisals of her voice, given some of the vocalists the Word massive (me included) love, who are not exactly what you might describe as pitch perfect.
I never really got the Paul Potts phenomenon myself, believing there are probably a lot of people out there who can sing just as well, but I understand that the whole story genuinely got to some people, the way Susan Boyle has.
I don't really see what is wrong with someone whose life maybe hasn't gone the way they wanted it too until now suddenly getting their moment in the sun, particularly when they have a genuine talent.
Perhaps that's what moved people...
Trail of Broken Hearts
Point taken. But, in the main, those singers are wise enough not to take on tour de force show tunes. She's technically not bad by any means, although she was better ten years ago, to judge from the recording that the Daily Record "unearthed" yesterday (where cynics may suspect "unearthed" to mean "found in an anonymously sent jiffy bag that had been franked at Cowell Towers"). She really is technically just-about-okay-I-suppose. And there's nowt wrong with that. But there’s nowt extraordinary about it either.
See, you fell for it too! Please define "genuine talent". If you mean talent shared by tens of thousands of other Brits, then I agree with you. Have you ever heard a choir singer, working-men's-club singer, wedding-band singer or a local light-opera soloist sing a Les Mis tune? They're all pretty competent at that sort of thing as a rule. Now give them the big build-down, insert them into a Nellie Pledge frock, preclude them from taking advantage of any of the wizardry of the Hair & Makeup Dept. before going onstage, and then strike up the orchestra. I bet you'd be just as impressed.
These "wow, whodathunk!" overturnings of our expectations are neither new nor particularly remarkable. Slim and fat, svelte and dumpy, smooth and hairy people are usually good at things in fairly equal measure. For many years, the warm, sexy female voice of choice for voiceovers was Miriam Margolyes, who happened to look like a hippy Hobbit. And the hand model in that nail varnish commercial? Zoom out and she's a Peggy Mount lookalike. Most people have at least one thoroughly decent bit. Susan Boyle's happens to be her larynx.
Twenty-odd years ago I saw a bunch of young Canadians in a small club in London on a wet Tuesday night. The audience was in double figures - as long as nobody went to the toilet. The singer evidently belonged to the more militant end of the lesbian sociocultural spectrum, clad in a gaudy skirt, men's boots and a bolero jacket and sporting a Stray Cats quiff. She was tiny, a bit gawky and only cute if you like your girls with thinner, meaner lips than Jack Palance downing a whiskey sour. Then she opened her mouth and this came out:
So why didn’t the emergence of k.d. lang – whose talent really is so extraordinary that it's a once-in-a-generation occurrence - trigger whatever the equivalent of 20 million YouTube hits was back then? Why weren't CNN and The New York Times on her case straight away? Why wasn't she invited onto Oprah to tell her "amazing, moving tale of overcoming heartbreak, rejection and loss in a world of cruel, stifling bigotry?" Because she was discovered by Dave Edmunds, not Simon Cowell; that's why.
It's not just the UK
Ms Boyle seems to have attracted 15 minutes of worldwide fame if CNN are to be believed:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/16/susan.boyle.simon.cowell/in...
I've never seen such a complete..
..set up in all my life.
The whole thing screams "staged"
E.T. 2009
Can't you just hear the production assistant telling her, "And best leave those eyebrows unplucked, darling, brush them up nice and bushy, 'cause it gives your face such a lot of character, you see. And Simon loves real characters." The whole clip is Spielberg-league stuff - brilliantly storyboarded viewer manipulation. And I agree with Mr H in that the focus is definitely on manipulating the viewer, not the listener. (Although there is some of that too – her vocal is strikingly low in the mix, compared with the backing track and audience cheering, presumably to paper over any cracks and keep the illusion alive.)
Don’t understand the point of moaning
Don’t understand the point of moaning about all these TV talent shows. People who enjoy them enjoy them. People who think they’re a bit ghastly and not much to do with any kind of music they might be interested in can just ignore them. I do. It’s easy peasy. I don’t really see where there’s a problem to get worked up about. It’s perfectly possible to live in a world where Simon Cowell and his works simply don’t show up on the radar.
Britain's talking about Britain's Got Talent
Simon Cowell's work is done.
Nah
it's just better than working.
Reality bites
These narrative curveballs are an essential component of the modern day talent show, which rely on superimposed soap opera storylines to maintain viewing figures over the course of a series:
There’s the ugly duckling with the voice of Chris De Burgh; the toilet cleaner who defeats the collective intellect of the 2009 Oxford boat race team and single-handedly wins Mastermind; the incessant parade of teenagers all doing this for mum/dad/nana, who are of course looking down on them from heaven as they win Fame Academy, and later when their C-list offspring engages in a three-in-a-bed romp with Premiership footballers, as gleefully reported in OK! Magazine.
It’s all supposed to be part of an amazing journey, although, more often than not, once the cameras are switched off and the phone polls close for the last time, the end destination is a purgatorial string of cash-in-hand appearances at provincial nightclubs the length and breadth of the UK.
Million-seller Cinderellas
You're quite right, of course. And I was suggesting that it's even worse than that: the fairy stories we're presented with are packaged in such a way that we're not supposed to notice that the prince's ball is actually a bingo hall and the glass slipper is in fact made of cracked perspex.
The Sound and The (Billy) Fury?
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
However brief their tenure, however lamentable or limited their talent, however unconscious of the ways of the Machiavel they remain, however tawdry their unseen years...
they've,like, 'ad a go, yeah?
Surely we've already got an ugly duckling
with the voice of Chris De Burgh? He's called Chris De Burgh.
Is it me...
...or does Chris de Burgh look like another ugly duckling, namely Orville?
But you're missing the point
It doesn't have all those Youtube hits directly because of the quality of her voice. Its success isn't down to the singing.
It's popular because it is a big 'f**k you' to all the people in that audience (the judges included) who automatically assumed that she was going to be a bad singer because of the way she looks and acts. The enjoyment comes from seeing the shift in reactions from the audience, and teaches the whole 'don't judge a book by the cover' lesson.
Sure, she's not the best singer in the country, but the way the whole scene unfolded was what turned it into a great TV moment.
Also
Songs from shows are not as familiar as pop songs. They tend to have very anthemic lyrics as they drive the narrative of the show on. I guess we'll see the Les Miserables soundtrack in the higher reaches of the chart next week as well + all of Cowell's charges will now be looking to cover it plus other "show tunes"
The Pet Shop Boys are touring Finland?
//rushes off to Google
Current wikipedia entry on a Google search reads
"Paul Robert Potts (born 13 October 1970) is a Cambodian dictator who in 2007 became the winner of the first series of ITV's Britain's Got Talent, ...".
Next week, Susan Boyle revealed as Nazi war criminal.
From the Daily Mash: -
"Freak-wrangler"
Brilliant. "Inflatable judge" too.
It's a real shame the Mash was beaten to the gun by the Onion, because it's often just as good.
If only satire worked
If it did, Peter Kay's "Britain’s Got the Pop Factor and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice" would have done away with all this.
Woody Allen was right. "A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point of it".
Please note, I'm not encouraging anyone to use bricks and baseball bats on anyone else. Not even Cowell. Damn my bleeding heart liberal aversion to physical violence.
I Can't Believe You People
What rank snobbery. So Paul Potts is not as good as Pavarotti? Well there's a shock. Why should he be, and why should the dessicated hulk that was Pavarotti's manager have the final word on his potential? Paul Potts is very, very good. Just like Boyle. For all your expertise you have no heart, and a tin ear to boot, which considering your profession must be a bit of a problem.
I'd like all you people to lend your eyes to what some in America (at Salon.com) are writing. You would do well to attend to them.
"Cameron Mackintosh, who produced Les Misérables, said of her performance: 'Vocally it is one of the best versions of the song I've ever heard. Touching, thrilling and uplifting. I do hope she gets to sing it for the Queen.'"
Oh but what the hell does HE know, right? *rolls eyes*
"This woman - a woman my age - is not just a pleasant voice! I attended the live broadway touring company Les Mis up in Cleveland last year. Ms. Boyle was as good as and in my opinion BETTER than the professional singer who sang that song. The song choice was exquisite."
Ah but what the hell does someone know who has actually heard a live performance, and in Cleveland! Har, har, har.
"I do want to comment on her appearance, but to say this: she *is* beautiful. She is not a leggy plastic bottle blonde. Instead, she is the embodiment of the sturdy, strong, reliable, unflappable, women of the United Kingdom who lived and persevered through years of war, food rationing, air raids, loss of husbands, loss of sons, knitting balaclavas for soldiers in the Ardennes, growing cabbages in their backyards and raising hens for the fresh eggs to do their part for their country. She is everything you want in a companion, and she shouldn't change a thing."
This last should shame all of you who are Brits. You should know better.
...Member for 6 hours at this time...
...Post something about Prog, Mr Cowell.
Er, I think you'll find
whoever said the last quote was taking the piss out of the other gushing letter writers.
a) check the other posts by the same author
b) just read it!
Hell...Have I lost my irony gland since...
...moving to the US?
Cross porpoises...
I meant the person who wrote, "I do want to comment on her appearance, but to say this: she *is* beautiful. She is not a leggy plastic bottle blonde. Instead, she is the embodiment of the sturdy, strong, reliable, unflappable, women of the United Kingdom who lived and persevered through years of war, food rationing, air raids, loss of husbands, loss of sons, knitting balaclavas for soldiers in the Ardennes, growing cabbages in their backyards and raising hens for the fresh eggs to do their part for their country. She is everything you want in a companion, and she shouldn't change a thing."
That person is obviously taking the piss out of the gushing.
Snob!?... Snob?!..
..ignorant prole, this is what happens when you let the hoi polloi in.
Seriously..
..I don't think anyone has a problem with her voice as such, more the process that has exploded around the subject of her looks, which should be irrelevant.
It's only a few years since all pop singers looked like Cilla..a few years before that they all looked like Gracie Fields.
If she looked like Amanda Holden no-one would have turned an eye.
It's not snobberry, it's cynicism, and with good reason an'all.
..and sorry, she's not THAT great, looks or no looks.
packaging
perhaps less than perfect. can sing a bit though...
Show us yer hits luv
At the last count the YouTube thingy from last weeks Opportunity X Shocker had over 20,000,000 hits. That's only in a bloody week. OK it may be next week's electronic equivalent of chip wrapping paper but in this so-called modern world it's what counts (baby).
When has talent ever had anything to do with being popular? Lady GaGa, Vanilla Ice, The Singing Postman? I even own a single by bleeding Esther Rantzen's bleeding singing sausages dog. I blame TV.
Give it a couple of years and whoever is leading the government up a blind alley will be nominating Dame Susan Boyle for a Nobel Peace Prize for services to the perpetually confused.
Dontcha hate it ...
... when someone posts an intelligent, pithy little opinion piece that nicely captures just what you're thinking yourself; but from which subsequent correspondence drifts further and further away until the point is lost completely?
Cue imminent posting accusing Archie of advocating compulsory euthanasia for the prominently-eyebrowed.
You taking the pith?
Just checked the dictionary
1. Precisely meaningful; forceful and brief: a pithy comment.
2. Consisting of or resembling pith.
Thanks, I prefer the former.
Is it me or has Simon Cowell been gargling with Daz? His gnashers are getting more whiter than the average white. Danny Baker will be a-knocking any time now.
Mean-minded twaddle
Sorry but it just is.
And the pseuds corner-esque "her vibrato is full on, she has no power outside the middle register and her timbre tends towards a rather unpleasant reediness up at the top end." is the sort of pish I'd expect from someone trying to explain that ELP were so much better than the Sex Pistols etc. "because they could really play their instruments". This is pop music we're talking (OK writing) about here.
I'm not a fan of TV talent shows; they are unlikely to feature music that appeals to me and I don't watch them. However I seem to recollect that a frequent criticism in the past has been their tendency to favour indentikit fresh-faced young performers. Now, apparently, they are to be criticised for favouring someone who doesn't conform to that model. While no fan of Simon Cowell (aside from his Shrek 2 appreance) it seems to me that he just can't win here. It all smacks of the "All right then, I AM the Messiah!" scene from 'Life of Brian.
Bottom line: a TV show that I don't watch has, apparently, made someone's life a bit better. Move along people, nothing to see here...
Button pushing
I agree that as far as it goes, this is pretty unimportant. If a middle aged woman gets a load of money and attention - probable - to make her life better - more debateable - good for her.
But Archie's basic point is spot on. If you'd heard her singing in your local pub or village hall, you'd go home singing, "She hadn't got a bad voice had she?" So why her?
For me, the most interesting thing about it all is just what a great example it is of how to engender mass hysteria just by pushing the right buttons. It's perfect Peter Mandelson stuff when he was in his late 90s prime. When it's a talent show that's doing this, sure, who cares? But it's a good reminder of just how media manipulation can be successful in much more important fields.
Yes embraman!
I think it's called the 'off' switch.
As for Susan Boyle and the comparative merits of her voice, music is littered with acts and artists who have found supposedly undeserving favour and most heinously of all have become successful when having the audacity of not being as technically proficient as someone else according to the dictat of some critic or 'professional'.
There is an argument for Cowell and his shows reducing music to a fast-food visual spectacle for transitory mass consumption but actually criticising the talent of somebody in terms of their technical ability seems equally damaging to the cause of music as an expression of the human soul. And Susan Boyle expresses her soul quite beautifully in my mind.
No..
..I'm staying. I'm fascinated by car crashes of any description.
(And ELP WERE better than the Sex Pistols, but then wasn't everybody?)
Wrongity Wrong
To quote you, Archie:
"So why didn’t the emergence of k.d. lang – whose talent really is so extraordinary that it's a once-in-a-generation occurrence - trigger whatever the equivalent of 20 million YouTube hits was back then? Why weren't CNN and The New York Times on her case straight away? Why wasn't she invited onto Oprah to tell her "amazing, moving tale of overcoming heartbreak, rejection and loss in a world of cruel, stifling bigotry?" Because she was discovered by Dave Edmunds, not Simon Cowell; that's why."
Do you not think that if there had been a new fangled mass communication device like YouTube about at the time, that kd and Dave would have used it to their best advantage?
I love Dave Edmunds, and kd lang, and I have no time for Cowell and his "talent" circus, or the Oprah, Jerry Springer, Jeremy Kyle scene, but I find the pitch and timbre of your posting strangely ungracious. Hats off to anybody who can generate this sort of excitement about an act. Luck has a lot to do with it, but if we simply begrudge this luck, we only demean ourselves.
Please stop, and enjoy the moment for another human being.
By the way, I haven't seen the Susan Boyle clip. Is it any good?
Is it any good?
Well, apart from her top-end timbre and unsubtle vibrato control, it's...
[hooked off]
:) :) :)
:) :) :)
Laughs
I'm just gutted that those two masters of mirth, French & Saunders, have decided to stop being professionally funny. Imagine the side-splitting sketch that they'd have conjured up from Susan Boyle's BGT appearance.