Last night, Britain’s overnight singing sensation Susan Boyle appeared on America’s Got Talent, the Stateside analogue to the show that shot her to stardom a scant few months ago. She performed her cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” ably, but what was more fascinating was the pre-show package about how exactly she got to this spot, from the shots of a love-struck Simon Cowell to her loss on the show and the tabloid headlines about her checking into the Priory Clinic to now. The woman has lived an entire episode of Behind The Music over the course of one summer! Clip after the jump. More »
Given that I’m a little more interested in the weird Photoshop job that inserted the Simon Cowell-elevated singer Susan Boyle into the above tableau than her cover of “Wild Horses,” which was released yesterday via (sigh) Perez Hilton’s site, I’m going to say that this is a push. Preorder-related excitement aside, is a cover of one of the most covered Rolling Stones songs going to kick-start the record-buying impulse among a country of people who are increasingly averse to that sort of thing? I guess her appearance on tomorrow night’s America’s Got Talent finale will give us a hint. For now, a stream is after the jump. More »
“Susan Boyle tops US charts before her album even released. Whitney Houston probably less than thrilled,” screeched the UK gossip site 3am today, causing many credulous observers to fall in line. As it turns out, that “chart” is the Amazon albums chart, where the Britain’s Got Talent-bred singing star’s I Dreamed A Dream—which doesn’t come out until Nov. 24—is in fact No. 1. But overall? Said statistic is actually pretty meaningless, and certainly no indication that Whitney Houston’s just-released I Look To You isn’t selling well, as the Brits’ headline indicates. The reasons why, after the jump. More »
Fox today outlined its plans for replacing Paula Abdul at the American Idol judges’ table, and somewhat unfortunately, they involve retaining the four-judge panel that was instituted on the show last year. The show is going to bring in guest judges! “Our intention is to have guest judges be female pop stars, female performers,” Fox Entertainment chair Peter Rice said. Signed for next season so far: A & R expert Katy Perry and tabloid fixture Victoria Beckham. Even though Beckham is more known for her stick-thin figure and the clothes she hangs on it these days, she was a Spice Girl, right? Uh, sure. Any Idol watcher knows that Fox will likely make some sort of misstep in selecting other people to round out the panel; as a sort of pre-emptive strike against that, we offer up five female pop stars whose presence would make the new-look Idol judges’ table even more farcical than it already is. More »
Nathan “Wavves” Williams and Susan “Conventionally Unattractive People Can Have Good Voices Too” Boyle both stumbled along the path toward celebrity this week. Williams, whose lo-fi star has ascended almost as quickly as the backlash against him, saw his drug-fueled antics onstage in Spain last week result in music-blog chatter and a canceled European tour; Boyle–the early favorite to win the Simon Cowell vehicle Britain’s Got Talent–capped a week of British tabloids chronicling every bad word she said with a second-place finish on the show. Shortly afterward, she checked herself into a UK hospital because of “exhaustion.” Sure, Wavves (and its attendant backlash) is relatively small-potatoes compared to Boyle’s lauding by the likes of Oprah Winfrey and hounding by the British press, but yet again, one is forced to wonder why anyone wants to be famous at all. More »
An AP attempt to ride Google traffic story on how to watch big-voiced matron Susan Boyle’s performance on the Britain’s Got Talent finale has as its final suggestion that you hop a last-minute flight to London–and hey, “last minute round-trip flights from New York to London were starting upwards of $1,000 as of Thursday night”–in order to catch the show on telly. Oh c’mon, guys! YouTube searches aren’t that hard to navigate. [AP / Pic via eBay, which I guess needed something to fill the Adam Lambert merch void] More »
Susan Boyle–the British hausfrau who shocked the world by proving that people who weren’t plucked and groomed within an inch of their life could make Simon Cowell swoon just because of their pipes–made her return to the UK’s TV screens last night, with a performance of the Cats stalwart “Memory” in the semifinals of Britain’s Got Talent. While her performance started off a little wobbly, thanks to her reaching into her falsetto range, it was still enough to garner a standing ovation from Cowell, who no doubt was trying to figure out a way to delicately bump up American Idol‘s acceptable-age range in the wake of its ever-declining numbers this year, and get her a spot in the show’s finale Saturday night. [YouTube] More »
I came to the whole Susan Boyle thing a bit late–I think I arrived somewhere in between the backlash and the backlash to the backlash–but one thing got me about her performance of “I Dreamed A Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent : She made Simon Cowell’s face contort into an expression that made it seem like the grouchy mogul actually loved his job. Given that on these shores, he’s been a bastion of fairly grouchy sanity even when he’s claimed to love the performances he’s watched, is it any wonder that he’s thinking about maybe leaving the States behind and focusing full-time on his career as chief arbiter of Britain’s singing talent? More »
