Why Susan Boyle Has Captured Hearts Around the World

And Ms. Boyle can shut up and have some as well. OOOOOOOOO ! LOL !

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“…with her… eight years at the White House”… Ha

Since women are the majority, they have the ability to put however they want in the White House. Women, like everyone else, realize that Hilary is nothing more than a snake in the grass. If she had any value, she would have divorced her husband after he humiliated her in front of everyone on the planet. Instead, she tried to ride his coattail and name to the White House.

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There's no reason why she can't look beautiful as well as sing beautiful!

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Forget the idiot posters and their predictable responses - rejoice with me! Susan Boyle is a sock in the eye to the bling-and-glitz that dominates our lives, that constantly whacks us with this false belief that looks are everything. I've watched in amazement as girls with very ordinary and untrained voices shoot to the top of the charts, based primarily on how much airbrushed flesh they show in their dvds and how 'cool' they are. Susan is a sense of perspective on the sickness of our times - a glorious talent that doesn't come gift-wrapped in the shiny paper we've come to expect. Susan, they're not fit to shine your shoes - take a bow!

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that Ms. Boyle is lesbian. A credit to our gay community.

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WTF? Leave Ms. Boyle alone to be the person SHE WANTS TO BE!

The author of this article is even worse than the PR people she lambastes for maybe wanting to pluck, style and mold Ms Boyle. That and the idiot above who is making spurious claims about her sexuality.

Ms Boyle isn't the poster girl for forgotten women, she isn't the hidden lesbian gem, she doesn't need to be polished.

I know this might sound patronising but she should be given the space and support to be who she wants to be. If she wants a make over, to go back to her cottage and cats, run for 1st world leader, whatever it should be left up to her, not some bunch of self justifying idiots looking to push their desires onto her... unless of course thats what she wants but some how I doubt it.

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I don't think so.
If the writer had listened to the entire clip, Simon gives her his comment about being a "little tiger," to which a voice that sounds like a girl making a playground retort to a boy who's just told the "plain Jane" she is beautiful; Susan Boyle can be heard saying, "Oh Simon!" in a very true sounding reply.

And if you have seen any of the interviews, since her "rise to fame," you can see she is the genuine article, not some fantasy of gimmicky marketers, as was the case with Milli Vanilli who couldn't "sing" without a microphone, let alone sing on demand, without music.

As for making over her eyebrows?
If, as would most likely be a very good place for her talents, she ends up in musical theater, then she will be required to do, as all actors do, and adjust to the role they are playing.

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To all those people who think that her success was somehow "engineered" these are some of the facts as l know them:
She is a small town girl with learning difficulties, not very goodlooking and who most likely had no social life.
She entered, six years in a row in the "Fauldhouse miners welfare club talent contest" and never won that contest. The miners welfare club being a typical small town working class club.
She submitted several demo discs to record companies and was rejected each time.
She entered, the talent show "my kind of people" in the late 90s and never got onto the short list.
She was going give up singing but was persuaded to have "one last shot" at BGT by her singing coach.
She attends church regularly and well loved by her local Catholic community.
Local folk who know her have told of the way she has been bullied all her life.
Why is she a success only now? well possibly we all feel guilty of how shallow and superficial the world has become, that a atractive person not that talented, will allways have an edge over an ugly person who has great talent.

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Her particular segment was very well edited and put together. You could see Ant and Dec knew something (having probably seen her doing a warm up). It used a type of incidental music and performer & audience cut shots to set up a particular expectation in the viewers mind and then knocked that over.

If she had been introduced as good amateur singer with years of church and choir experience and a previous released recording would your reaction be different?

As always with these shows (especially the ITV/Simon Cowell ones) the focus soon turns from the 'talent' of an individual to an exploitative expedition through their past to recount their bullying/abuse/death/abandonment sob stories in front of the camera to make them, ITV, and Mr. Cowell a bit more money. Wouldn't be surprised to see it happen in this case too.

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THIS is the kind of thing that is uplifting and we need that these days. Thank you to ALTERNET for showing a bit of wisdom here.

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So the judges went from "you gotta be kidding" to "holy sh--" in less than a minute. It doesn't happen often but it's instant fame. I do wonder why that offends so many people. Is everyone out there drop dead georgeous? I doubt it. Can anyone sing that well, definitely not. Give the lady the credit she deserves. It's right out of a story book. Gotta love it! ANNA

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Stop making issues like these into a woman's club. There are intelligent men out there that support woman. Susan Boyle was a victory for all humanity, not just woman. Take a look around your office, you'll find plenty of over weight, unappreciated, ignored and ridiculed men, that don't even get in the meetings.

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Exceptional folks and those who strive for excellence--in general--still engender fascination and adoration by many amongst us who settle for mediocrity.

That said, it's just another television program, folks. Reality tee vee, at that, in which the creativity and art are largely limited to the insults and praise by three mafRIAA tycoons.

Oh well. American Idol(atry) marches onward. At least we aren't lopping the heads off journalists and stoning abuse victims as a rule.

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I agree with the recent comment about this being a victory for less-than-attractive men too. I am a short plump man who rejoices in Boyle's success. Most people aren't as pretty as the teens on the Real World, FYI. THAT is why she has hit the right note with a lot of us.

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"Scrunchy-faced?" "Eyebrown Enforested?" With compliments like that, give me some criticism any day. Well, she is no Angelina Jolie, but I'll bet Ms. Brown isn't either. And her voice is glorious. As is her soul. That's why, unlike most men, women appreciate Susan Boyle. We look beyond the face. Poor males are hard-wired to mostly look at the face...after a good long hard look at the figure. It's a pity. There are millions of us Susan Boyles out here who may not be able to sing, but we sure could make our men happy...their loss!

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The Daily Beast is just another corporate news outlet. Why is Alternet pimping for it?

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middle aged woman blew my socks off! It was such a joy and total surprise. I've been a musician (guitar) for 50 years or so. The first time I watched her sing I was in shock. I think the old adage "You can't judge a book by it's cover" most definately applies here. I wish her all the happiness and joy that she so much deserves. More power to her. Any time that you may be feeling down or like the world is against you...just watch the video again.

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I think that the reason that this affects us so profoundly is that our culture has degraded so far that we dismiss people who are not perfect or beautiful, male or female. Susan Boyle reminds us that many of the people we are in the habit of dismissing have unrevealed talents and unrecognized value. Singers are especially honored but only if they are physically beautiful too.

It is hard on celebrities of beauty but ordinary talent like Brittany Spears who are pushed and marketed to death and makes fame nearly impossible for those with talent but looks that are less than stunning.

I recall a few years ago a very talented friend of mine, Ginny Mitchell produced a beautiful CD. Great songs, wonderfully performed with some fairly famous friends of hers in the backup band. The CD won a music award in Canada but only got play on one local radio station in the US. Her CD was not a big seller, even in her hometown but it is one of my all time favorites. I have often thought that the only reason it was not a huge success is that she is attractive, but in a very ordinary way. Average looks, I guess don't sell with the big record companies. Too bad, she is a gem of a person with great talent. The last I heard she was performing for the elderly in nursing homes.

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Susan Boyle reminded me of the most moving scene in 1984 where Winston and Julia look out on an dowdy washerwoman, singing while hanging clothes up in her backyard. Winston remarks that "If there is hope, it lies in the proles. If they could become conscious of their own strength, they would have no need to conspire. History does not matter to them." Unfortunately, everything else in the book reflects Big Brother's (reality tv?) absolute control over the masses who are incapable of organizing any sustained resistance. But rebellious Party members like Winston and the heartstrings of the American middle classes constantly project and dream of a more authentic reality and hopeful outcome. The phenomenon of Susan Boyle reflects this same yearning.

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GMA already gave her a makeover. Go and google "Good Morning America" "Susan Boyle". It's slight but noticeable. She's still got that inner beauty, don't worry about that.

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Good for Susan Boyle. Kudos to her for shutting up Simon Cowell for once in his life and for showing the phonies in the audience that musical talent -- or talent of any kind -- is not tied to a person's appearance. She has yet again proven the truth of the old saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover.".

With a talent like Boyle's, it doesn't (or shouldn't) matter what she looks like. She's the real deal. The entertainment world is chock full of vacuous pretty girls with only the barest modicum of singing talent, but a talent like Boyle's is a rarity and should be valued for the treasure it is.

Indeed, the outer packaging is of supreme importance for the dime-a-dozen bimbo singers, precisely because their talent is mediocre at best, and the flashy appearance is to make audiences forget their less than stellar vocal skills.

As far as I'm concerned, the singing world needs more Susan Boyles and fewer Ashlee Simpsons.

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This is the phrase I like most in the article: "We're all getting sick of being bullied by bad values." To me it alludes to the sickness of groupthink. Sociologists can have at me if they like, but I feel it's the outsiders who have contributed most to our social well being. Common sense always seems to fly out the window where groups are involved. If there is not someone on the sidelines of the whole mess looking in, there can be no objectivity. Peer pressure is the furthest thing from intelligence. Susan, even with her so-called learning difficulties, has managed to shine a light on our morally bankrupt culture. I'm glad we managed to listen to her for a minute and stop thinking about buying our kids the latest and coolest brand of sneakers. And yes, that kind of shallow thinking still haunts us, even in this economy.

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They're the ones that started this mess!

A lot of bands from the '70s were not formed by good-looking people. You couldn't tell by listening to the records.

Then MTV came along and the emphasis went to the visuals.

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Gather round children.................a singer didn't always have to attain a kind of homogenised plastic beauty approved by the media. Once, strange as it may seem, the quality of the voice mattered. For instance, Edith Piaf was a dumpy little woman, but her voice could make your skin prickle and she sustained an extended career.

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Now can we get back to the important things that impact our lives? If I want to read about Susan Boyle there are only thousands of other websites I can go to.

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And would like to share my own as well:

Leave it to the mainstream media (MSM) to take the poignancy out of the moment. We love her, we watch her over and over, we are reduced to tears. But some media cynics just don’t get it. Kind of like how the pre Christmas Eve Scrooge was unable to see what most dogs and kids knew all along. They tell us that we are overreacting, and tritely dismiss her popularity as coming from the disparity between how she looks and how she sounds.

I say NOT SO FAST! I think this is more than just a morality lite sound bite, “can’t judge a book by its cover;” we should have known that what was in the package with the plain wrapping was better than what was in the one with the fancy ribbons. We are humbled at her magical Seraphine like voice because we are reacting to the power of our own experience. Yes, we are taught to obsess on all the wrong things: looks, fame, fortune, power and a whole list of other externals. But we don’t just judge others on those things, we judge ourselves as well. How many of us have shackled our dreams because we don’t feel adequate enough? (Insert pretty, thin, young etc here!) Everyone knows if you don’t have the right props you won’t succeed. Be a good little person and bow out until someone finds the right product you can buy to fix yourself. When someone just like us dares; well, how dare they? We cringe with resentment; deep down, we would never have the nerve. And yet, when she opened her mouth to sing (or let the angels sing through her), all that melted away. She dashed all our defenses, pierced a million pretenses. Dysfunctional cultural delusions crumbled faster than credit default swaps because they couldn’t hold up to the moment of truth. Real greatness comes only from the heart and the soul. And when one has this, all else is eclipsed.

The lesson of Susan could never be more salient than at this very moment. Our society is falling under the weight of its own lies. Corruption, cheating, dishonesty everywhere we look. What isn’t a lie anymore? From the products we buy to the politicians who are bought off, nothing is as it seems. As we walk through the fog of fraud, we stumble upon authenticity and are stunned by it. We weep because we are still able to recognize it. This isn’t like how our taste buds have been so deadened by processed food the natural doesn’t taste right to us anymore. We still respond to real beauty! We are not soul dead yet. Maybe we will be o.k. We just need to stop listening to those leading us down false paths for their own agendas and listen to our own inner wisdom. I think Susan really is an angel in disguise letting us know the only thing we can trust is the sincerity deep within ourselves. If we follow that, it is not too late to find our way home.

Susan’s performance is a modern day archetypical moment. But I hope we are careful in choosing the right fairy tale. MSM is only too happy to use the rags to riches cliché of Cinderella. But this goes way beyond Cinderella. This is the Buddha as beggar, the goddess as goat herder. This lesson is a reminder of the inextricable link between greatness, humility and simplicity. Leave the Cinderellas to the commercial sponsors. Although Sleeping Beauty may not too far off, because Susan’s true greatness can only be appreciated by the pure of heart.

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Hillary is NO Susan Boyle, god dammit. Susan's all QUALITY, thank you very much.

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Quality comes from the heart and you can recognize it in someone's eyes. One look at Susan Boyle proves it. She had me from the moment she was on camera. The voice was just icing.... of the best kind indeed.

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She strode out on stage, self-confident and sassy, and knocked one out of the park for the entire sisterhood of ignored and invisible middle-aged women.

In fact, hers was a sweet victory for anyone, regardless of gender, who was ever laughed at, bullied, ridiculed, or disparaged for being not pretty enough or thin enough, or rich enough, or stylish enough... etc...

From all of us underdogs -- Susan, you rock!

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Anyone else old enough to remember Kate Smith, the 30s and 40s radio singer? Fat, a bit frumpy, plain, wistfully in love with her married announcer for years but too Catholic to do anything about it (so we heard). She's the one who made "God Bless America" famous during WWII. I consider that song jingoist, but her VOICE--wow.

Then there's English opera star Jane Eaglen. In a day when opera stars are expected to be slinky slim, beautiful, and also vocally powerful (not easy when you're skinny), we still have wonderful Jane. Yep, overweight, plain, dumpy, maybe not too convincing as consumptive Mimi, but what a voice!!

Now we have Susan, whose vocal power resembles Kate's and Jane's. And she sings for the world. God bless Susan Boyle.

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There have been plenty of men and women around the world doing everything Boyle had only done in the recent years. Why does it have to take a monied celebrity to capture minds and hearts all over the world anyway? I also notice a lot of anti-men comments and as a man, I find it truly offensive.

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Its likely that Susan Boyle will be subjected to some grooming but, with her talent, she has no need to turn herself into a plastic Barbie.

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I went to a Folk Festival a couple of weeks ago where there were heaps of ugly people with talent -- while popular, there certainly wasn't 100 million people there (or whatever the festival equivalent to website hits is). Point is, talent is always out there when you look for it, but why does it take the focus of the MSM to make it legitimate? I know plenty of intelligent people that are suckered into this way of thinking (including, it seems, the people at Alternet). It just does not make sense to me. Write an article on that!

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The voice is the thing. The vessel--not so much. It's easier for an uninformed or uninvolved person when a young, slim woman is singing a character that's supposed to be young and beautiful, but it's not necessary. Opera is about the emotions, and the voice, the voice, the voice. Opera performers also act their asses off, and it's the only place where you can absolutely FORGET that the person singing doesn't look like the character.

I though Susan was cute, and funny, and very charming the way she said, Simon!, and You, too, Amanda?! and stood up for herself.

My wish for her is that she gets to do what she wants. If she wants to pluck and get new hair, fine. If not, fine. Just like with a wonderful, haunting mezzo soprano or a brilliant tenor, the outer trappings won't get in the way of the outpouring of love for what Susan can do, and I think her appearance, whatever you make of it, is only a small part of what draws people to her.

Susan, long may you run!

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Is that having heard, and been supposedly captivated by the voice, there is 99.9% obsession about her frumpy looks.

What's different here? Is the perception that putting her eyebrows straight is going to improve the voice? Or are we just so totally obsessed that we can't get past our eyes to feast our ears?

The woman has an altogether lovely voice, and some vocal skills to go with it.

Eat your heart out Paul Potts.

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Let's face it...

Record labels under the guidance of the WWII generation didn't have these debates or discussions. That generation gave us labels that allowed the Miles Davis, Led Zepplin, Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin's and Iggy Pop's of the world to make music, rather than be an image.

If you want to place blame on why talent like Susan Boyle is so oft ignored for the size-zero-computer-enhanced "singer", you only have to look towards the Baby Boomer executives and their lust for the short term gain. Their desire to fore-go artist developement to increase quarter over quarter profits.

I know, I've been there. I've seen it first hand.

You can go ahead and try and fill in whatever cause you want, but at the end of the day, it will always relate back to Boomer greed at the expense of artistry.

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How could a woman who attended Edinburgh Acting School and appeared in the Fringe Festival as well as a previous attempt to make it big, be THAT untouched (re: Weekend Guardian)? If you really look at her face and dress, it is easy to see that this is not an unattractive woman but the postmodern version of that old secretary look from the movies, in days gone by. The old look had her hair pulled back severely, dark rimmed glasses and a frumpy suit. In those movies our heroine hair is tumbles down and her glasses removed by a man who sees through her disguise. Susan Boyle's audience would have seen through that image, so, she has a hair cut that maximizes the squareness of her face, unplucked eyebrows, and a silly frumpy dress that is designed to make her look unshapely. She, too, at some later date will be a unmasked as an attractive woman. This is a media hype job if there ever was one....and more power to her; she's got a great voice and has managed to pull off the whole package. Yea for her.

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I don't think the Susan Boyle phenomenon is only about women. Men suffer from the same treatment based on their not-conventionally- beautiful looks. I was particularly inspired by Susan's performance, as a singer who started feeling old at the ripe age of 23, already too old to try out for this or that. Walking up to the music section of J&R Music World a few years ago, if I didn't know it was a music store, I would have thought it was a brothel, from all the pictures of scantily clad young women on the wall along the staircase. I'm in the interesting position of having been both unattractive and attractive. Experiencing life on both ends of the attractiveness scale is a mind blow - there are problems at both ends. It has been a challenge for me as a singer in the age of American Idol and rap, where so much of what I was taught about singing and songwriting, and which I respect, has gone out the pop window. Susan Boyle stands as a pillar of hope for many I'm sure. It was stunning to watch the jeers and the surprise from the audience when she opened her mouth and a beautiful sound came out. In my world that's not such a shocking thing. There are many talented artists of all shapes and sizes who are not working because the opportunities don't exist. I sing for peace and environmental health - try making a living at that! I also sing classical music. Unless you live in Europe, fat chance of making a living even if you're not the "fat lady". But we need to sing and express ourselves in a healthy way. We need to give ourselves permission to express our hearts as Susan did. I think the world would be a more sane and peaceful place if we all felt we had permission to do that. Learning how to use the voice as a musical instrument is a great thing to do, too. It's very rewarding when you can produce the sound you want to produce. You can check me out online at www.sharmuse.com, www.sharonabreu.com and www.youtube.com/sharmuse. In Peace and Harmony,

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I like her voice

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Ugh, this article made me want to barf.

The captured captain being saved and pilot able to stop a crash were great and all. But when the media chooses to put those stories on loop in between entertainment news, murdered child news and missing hottie of the month news. Then it's no longer news. It's infotainment that has been a plague since the early 90s days of The Menedez Brothers, Amy Fisher, Jon Benet Ramsey and OJ Simpson. Including stuff like that is fine, as long as you don't make it the total focus of current events. But that's all you get for the majority of your news programming on mainstream media.

But this Susan Boyle crap.....there is absolutely zero reason why this needs to be focused on. It's an entertainment story so regulate it to Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. What exactly is news worthy about this? That men are shallow and find her ugly or that people think middle aged virgins are humorous? No, really?!

Now this dumb crap has invaded Alternet. Keep infotainment away from here, please. The Octo-Mom had more relevance to society than some amateur singer with *GASP!* bushy eyebrows.

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