Susan Boyle

by Alice Montgomery

  There were many more Susan-related blogs on the site: she had become an object of absolute fascination, with a story that would bear dissecting over and over again.

  It was certainly the case that Susan had roundly disabused the prevalent notion in modern day life that success is entirely dependent on youth and looks.

  ‘Only the pretty are expected to achieve,’ wrote Colette Douglas Home. ‘Not only do you have to be physically appealing to deserve fame; it seems you now have to be good-looking to merit everyday common respect. If, like Susan (and like millions more), you are plump, middle-aged and too poor or too unworldly to follow fashion or have a good hairdresser, you are a non-person.’ Except that she wasn’t. She was a global phenomenon.

  Although Susan herself continues to be as bemused as anyone by what has happened to her, she has not spent a great deal of time analysing it all. She, too, felt that she simply resonated with the global audience because of the world’s tendency to judge people on how they look. ‘Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances,’ she has said. ‘There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson, or set an example.’ And when she did decide to smarten up, she didn’t go over the top - Susan is still definitely Susan.

  To Lisa Schwarzbaum, writing on PopWatch, Susan was something more: a direct appeal to the spiritual in every one of us. ‘In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging - the right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts - the unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms. Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace,’ she wrote. ‘She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective from time to time.’

  And then there was the issue of self-belief. Susan had displayed that, too, encouraged by the mother she loved and missed so much, and that was also to be applauded. ‘In a world sometimes rife with bloated résumés, stage mothers, fawning friends, self-adulation, narcissism and bedroom shelves holding too many meaningless trophies from middle school, here is a woman who took an accurate measure of her worth and put it to the test in the white-hot crucible of reality TV,’ wrote Jeanne McManus in the Washington Post. Nor is it exaggerating to say that Susan’s tale is also about the redemptive power of love: in this case the love between a mother and daughter. Bridget loved Susan and therefore encouraged her to make something of herself; Susan loved Bridget and so took her life - or at least her dignity - in her hands by going out on that stage in Glasgow to audition.

  Feminists, of course, were all over the story, with all it had to say about the nature of shallow appearances as opposed to fundamental true worth. But Susan wasn’t the first not obviously beautiful singer to make an impact, a point made by R.M. Campbell, a Seattle-based music critic, for the site The Gathering Note. ‘There’s no shortage of first-class voices out there, but Boyle has a unique story: she’s unattractive, ’ she wrote, a little harshly perhaps. ‘She’s a bit like Ella Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was overweight and wore glasses - everything a woman entertainer shouldn’t be. It’s really, really hard to make a career if a woman isn’t attractive. But Fitzgerald was a great singer and a great musician, and she rose above her physical circumstances. Her career lasted sixty years.’

  It was probably a little late for Susan to clock up a comparable length music career, but even so, it was a notable comparison to one of the singing greats.

  Susan’s story was also a comforting, and rare, example of the good guys coming first. In life, and especially in showbusiness, it tends to be the ruthless, the ones prepared to play hardball, who win through. Gentle, modest and self-effacing are not qualities often attributed to the most successful people in this world. This time, however, it was different.

  ‘People like Susan Boyle are the glue of our society and it’s nice when finally something good happens to them,’ wrote the Star-Ledger of New Jersey. ‘It is an honour to watch a middle-aged, rounded woman with little or no make-up and an old dress go up on stage and beat ridicule with an amazing voice. A story even Hans Christian Andersen couldn’t make up.’

  The Daily News of New York was also keen to sum up Susan’s triumphant moment. ‘The audience was laughing at the notion that this totally undistinguished person would presume to dream that she could enter pop stardom, one of the most glamorous kingdoms in the world,’ it said. ‘Then when she soared, that all went away, and because she overcame this unspoken assumption that she was insignificant, she shone far more brightly than some polished and glamorous young performer from whom we would have expected a moment of brilliance.’ Again, it was a case of not judging a book by its cover.

  It wasn’t unusual for journalists and bloggers to tackle the big issues of the day - something Susan had certainly become. What was a little more unusual was when the academic community started to take an interest, too. Susan’s story had become so important, so universal and so personal to viewers from all over the world that Dr Robert Canfield, professor of anthropology at Washington University in St Louis, wrote a treatise about the phenomenon entitled ‘Susan Boyle and the Power of the Moral Imagination’. In it he pointed out that the lyrics of the song Susan chose to sing at her audition were actually about hopes dashed, a life wasted, the promise of youth thrown away. What song could have been more suitable for Susan to sing? Patronized, ignored and bullied as a child, what dreams had Susan dreamt that had come to ashes and ended in nought? And yet there was this late flowering hope, the realization that her life might amount to something after all.

  ‘Buried within the human psyche are feelings, yearnings, anxieties too deep for words, usually,’ he wrote. ‘Always it is something outside ourselves that touches us, somehow, where we feel most deeply. At such moments we remember that we are humans - not merely creatures, but human beings, profoundly and deeply shaped by a moral sensibility so powerful that it breaks through our inhibitors; it can burst out, explode into public view, to our own astonishment. And sometimes that objective form - a person, an event, an object, a song - embodies deeply felt sensibilities for a lot of us at once, so that we discover how much we share in our private worlds, worlds otherwise inaccessible to anyone else. It becomes a social event, so we can all rejoice, and weep, together.’

  Susan had become such a phenomenon that she was almost instantly embraced by popular culture, too. There were instances of it happening in the UK, but again it was the United States that led the way, incorporating her into the artistic output of the pop culture it produced. South Park was the first off the mark, although it adhered to its usual vulgarity when Susan got a name check. Cartman goes off to round up his fellow South Park children to run away to join the pirates in Somalia, and Kyle leaves a letter to his parents, saying, ‘Dear Mommy and Daddy - I am running away. Everyone at school is a f****** idiot and if one more person talks to me about that Susan Boyle performance of Les Miserables I was going to puke my b**** out through my mouth.’ It was a compliment - of sorts.

  After that, the references came thick and fast. Late Night With Jimmy Fallon had a comedy sketch that talked about the feel-good nature of the clip. It showed a series of office arguments, starting with a row over a lost document, continuing with one when the coffee machine breaks down and ended up with zombies breaking into the building. Every incidence pales into insignificance as each staff member is won over by the shot of Susan singing in her audition. ‘That was amazing! I love that lady,’ cried Jimmy Fallon at the end: he was not alone.

  Next up it was the turn of America’s most dysfunctional family, The Simpsons. It was the show’s twentieth anniversary, and to mark the milestone there was a show called Springfield’s Got Talent. Homer Simpson took to the stage, introducing himself: ‘My name is Homer Simpson, I’m thirty-nine years old and, well, I’ve never been kissed,’ he began. ‘My dream is to be a great
singer like Susan Boyle.’

  In May, a new video game, The Sims 3, came out, featuring a character based on Susan. Then in June, Britain finally got in on the act when a Radio 4 short story entitled I Dreamed A Dream was broadcast, drawing comparisons between Susan and the Scottish prime minister, Gordon Brown - a recurrent subject for cartoonists at the time. In November, it was back to the United States and the series 30 Rock, in which the character Kathy Geiss, played by Marceline Hugot, sang in Susan’s style while a row raged on in front of her.

  When you Google the name Susan Boyle, over 18 million hits come up (and that’s at the time of writing - it’s increasing all the time). The audition clip continues to be one of the most widely viewed on the web, not least because, as well as gaining new fans, established ones tend to watch it time and again.

  At the centre of this maelstrom, Susan carries on her life, still bewildered by the reaction she’s provoked, but accepting her glorious fate and enjoying the attention after spending so long in the shadows. She wants and loves her new life, and anyone who doubts her ability to deal with the limelight would do well to remember that.

  What, ultimately, has made Susan so universally loved is that she is everywoman. Everyone in the world has a bit of Susan Boyle in them - the frightened wee girl treated badly at school and dismissed as an adult - but Susan proved that these are handicaps that can be overcome. Everyone has dreamed a dream of some description, though few of us are able to follow it through. After all, it takes guts to leave the safety zone and expose yourself to the eyes of an unforgiving world - something Susan did and has kept on doing. Ultimately, the Susan Boyle story is about hope.

  The following comments are taken from the numerous fan sites for Susan that have sprung up on the web.

  She’s gorgeousssssssssss! I love reading articles where the writers are trying to guess why she’s become such a huge sensation. They’re always looking for an answer that sounds so complicated when it’s so easy to see. As soon as she started to sing, her voice owned the stage and everyone listening.

  It became obvious that interest in her was remaining very international. When I heard fans of other (much younger) singers bragging about how they’d come out in front, I’d think, ‘just you wait - your singer does not have the international audience Susan has won already!’

  Most singers never achieve this kind of world wide recognition, Susan did it with one brilliant performance, and has followed that up with one brilliant album. And just think - there’s more to come!

  What an amazing interview [on Australian radio] - Susan sounds so happy and grounded - she is truly accepting her remarkable gift of music and is coming to believe in herself and her abilities - what a thrill it is to watch the transformation of a human being into knowing and living ‘Who I Was Born To Be’.

  12/15/09 - Updated information on

  Susan’s YouTube Hits

  Greetings!!

  Hello to you out there in Susanland. What a ride it has been trying to collect the new videos of Susan for News, tributes, interviews and her performances across the globe! WOW!!

  Thank you all for being patient while this update information has taken me a little over a month to get, it was so well worth it! Also I have combined Susan’s Wild Horses song only (not just viewing on AGT) to “Other Songs Sung”. This does NOT cut away to having lost hits, just combining them.

  So here are the results to the best of my ability. First you will see results from last time and of course the results for this time.

  Auditions - 194,721,285-203,397,586

  Semi-finals & Results - 61,568,444-66,271,003

  Finals & Results - 19,934,616-21,354,863

  Interviews & News Headlines - 26,819,361- 44,144,917

  BGT Tour - 1,400,205-1,816,409

  Other Songs Sung - 33,137,701-42,077,564

  Tributes - 656,087-4,624,972

  Total - 340,808,132-383,687,314

  Difference of - 42,879,182

  All this from Sept. 9th to Dec. 15th!! There is just NO STOPPING our LADY is there!?

  Have a Merry Christmas!!

  Wow!!!

  She is stunningly gorgeous in this . . . so happy and so beautifully made-up with a truly becoming hair style!

  THANX for posting these SUE-PER pictures - any one know exactly when Susan performed - is it another NEW dress??? . . . a delicious plum color, a bit less dress, and a bit more skin, obvious hanging earrings, and a very soft hair do, much like that in Paris . . . any dates and what she sang??????

  Susan will soon have a house full of plaques and awards. I wonder if Pebbles will get an award as well?

  Susan Boyle is a brilliant vocalist . . . she has attained her ‘dream’ and we should all salute her talent . . . her voice brings a shiver up the spine and a tear to the eye. Thank you Susan for sharing!!!

  My brother just sent this to me today and I was blown away. She is great!!! What a way for an underdog to set the whole world on its ear. She is a true treasure. A true talent that can finally be shared with both the world and her very lucky cat. God bless her.

  i’ve run into a handful of ppl - and i do mean a handful; could count em on one hand - who are having a cow about the media ‘hype’ as they call it. It’s not the media that has got the world on its ear. First it was her talent. Her stage presence and now her FANS. To say hype is to call us hype. BGT auditioned her but the world discovered her very much on its own. That’s not hype. HYPE is britney spears doing all kinds of stupid stuff, getting in trouble with the law and doing smutty stuff deliberately just to get attention. That’s media driven hype. This is NOT Susan!!!!

  Susan is such an inspiration to people. I know, I suffer from clinical depression and when I hear her sing, she lifts my spirit. I would ask her ‘What took you so long?’ I wish her the best in everything she does. Don’t ever stop singing.

  Ever since I first saw Susan on BGT I’ve been a dedicated fan!

  Susan is unique! Her wonderful voice and naturalness have gained her millions of fans worldwide!

  Will never forget her first rendition of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’! I have listened to that over and over again and still do after all these months. Like Barb, think I must be responsible for a few hundred ‘hits’ at least! LOL!

  I just paid my daily visit to the YouTube Audition video as I promised. The dang thing always has me in tears. It’s so incredible. Each viewing is as good as the first time seeing her. It’s just so lovely.

  A mega talent with a touching and beautiful story. Never gets old. Never.

  Like Christine, I listen to this audition all the time. Even with her CD out I still watch it a lot. Somehow seeing the facial expressions and the dropped jaws make her story so potent. Her voice is heavenly and her CD gives us that but I must say that the YouTube gives us her story AND the angelic voice together. It is so sweet! I adore the CD too because I can take it with me to use in the car.

  I would be delighted to play a part in bringing her up to #9 then 8, then 7 etc. I do not grow tired of this sublime and brilliant moment in contemporary music history. I just did it now and I will visit her audition YouTube daily or more if I have time.

  Thank you Susan for all you’ve given us!

  Magic - just pure magic!

  I have listened to this first audition so many times and I never tire of it! It is incredible, and every time I watch it I am filled with the excitement and get the chills I had the very first time. The audience went mad and it was a most joyous experience.

  The power in her voice and her interpretation of the song is without precedent. No wonder she got a standing ovation!

  GO SUSAN GO!! WE LOVE YOU!

  I have a most important message for Susan. My son-in-law has Alzheimer’s and he has declared Susan as God’s Christmas gift to us this year. The CD is played for him day and night and it always goes in the car with us. What a blessing she has been for our family and Joe . . . we’ll soon have to buy a new copy . . . we’re all looking forward to her next
album. God bless you Susan.

  Ignore those silly people who use archaic words to describe a phenomenon. Nasty comments, of course, should be challenged, but Susan has risen so far above most of those writing about her that their use of language is irrelevant. Just think - 2 trips to LA, one to New York, X Factor at home, Paris, Germany, own show on TV, duet with one of UKs most admired singers - WOW WOW WHAT A FEW WEEKS FOR A LOVELY LADY. Add to that TOP of the charts for 3 weeks all over the world. Yes, I think we can accept that our Susan has made it. Many of us have worried, prayed and hoped that she would succeed and our prayers have been answered a thousandfold. Well done, Susan, and well done, fans. Between us we have beaten the sneering blighters.

  For the life of me, I can’t figure out WHY they keep referring to her as ‘mentally slow’ - if she is considered as such, then I must be waaaay off the lower end of the scale!!

  All the remarks I have ever heard Susan make during her interviews have been quick and clever! Combined with her great sense of humour, she is unique!

  From the amazing show of affection and appreciation of world audiences and the amount of records she is breaking ‘public opinion’ feels the same way.

  It doesn’t surprise me that Susan would do so well. Susan Boyle is a genuine person, not a made up Hollywood piece of cosmetic trash who can’t sing marketed by the low lifes that compose the Hollywood elite. I live in LA and Susan from England is a wonderful breath of fresh air. She represents us; the real people. She is like the tea party patriots; the real people.