If there is to be a reaction against Susan Boyle, let it begin here.
Of course, if you have been unconscious for the past week or two, you might be unaware of her existence. The homely 47-year-old Scottish spinster–who has never been kissed or held a job but wants to be a “professional singer”–is a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent, and a video of her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables has transformed her into a global sensation.
Are you one of the 27 million people who have seen the video on YouTube? Shy, frumpy, frizz-haired Miss Boyle ambles onstage, and a faintly impatient, condescending Simon Cowell interrogates her. She wants to be a singer, she says, and models herself on Elaine Paige, a popular English performer who specializes in Andrew Lloyd Webber anthems. Cowell appears to roll his eyes at her presumption, and the jaded audience barely suppresses its laughter.
Then Miss Boyle cues the music, takes a deep breath–and history is made. Her voice is clear, her notes are true, and she barely finishes her first line (I dreamed a dream in time gone by) before the theater erupts in thunderous cheers and applause and a standing ovation. Simon and his fellow judges are clearly abashed, and delighted: “Without a doubt,” says Piers Morgan, “that was the biggest surprise I have had in three years of this show.”
Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against Susan Boyle, and wish her the best. But please excuse me for thinking that there’s something a little too perfect about this episode: The bashful gargoyle with the voice of an angel; the hostile audience that’s transformed into mush; the dreams of the world’s ugly ducklings come true; even the theme of the godawful song (I had a dream my life would be / So different from this hell I’m living) appears scripted.
No one can argue that Simon Cowell isn’t a master showman, even willing to humiliate himself to manipulate his audience. The ratings for Britain’s Got Talent will be nearly as impressive as the sales figures for Susan Boyle’s first CD. Better yet, the old and new media are now earnestly debating whether our celebrity culture is too shallow to recognize genuine talent in plain wrapping or exclaiming how Susan Boyle’s triumph has given hope to discouraged dreamers out there.
To which I say: Gag me with a spoon.
To begin with, strictly speaking, Susan Boyle has a nice voice, and can carry a tune on live television before a huge audience–no minor skill. But it isn’t a great voice–she warbles at strategic moments, and fades out here and there–and no better than the voices of thousands of singers on school stages or in local theaters and clubs.
While it’s an effective device to emphasize the contrast between the look and sound of Susan Boyle, it isn’t quite as significant as all that. In the long history of show biz there is no clear correlation between beauty and success among singers–or among performers generally, for that matter. There are good-looking singers who aren’t taken very seriously and unprepossessing superstars of stage and screen. For decades the most popular singer in America was Kate Smith, who looked like a football lineman; and the greatest jazz singer of the age, Ella Fitzgerald, was nobody’s idea of a sexpot. Both of them came of age in the radio era, to be sure, but both thrived into the video age as well.
In point of fact, if Susan Boyle reminds me of anyone, it is Elva Miller (1907-97)–“Mrs. Miller” to her legion of fans–another unconventional song stylist who made a brief appearance in American popular culture in the late 1960s. They even bear a certain resemblance to one another.
The difference, of course, is that Susan Boyle is an incontestably better singer, and Mrs. Miller emerged in a very different time and place. A California housewife in late middle age who liked to sing for long-suffering friends and neighbors, Mrs. Miller sang badly, not unexpectedly well–and that being an infinitely crueler age than ours, she wasn’t in on the joke.
As readers might have guessed, I possess her lone bestselling LP, “Mrs. Miller’s Greatest Hits,” and settled in the other evening to reminisce. Whereas Susan Boyle can be pleasant to listen to, Mrs. Miller was excruciating: Wobbly, off-key, always a half-beat behind the orchestra, the effect was accentuated by her singing hip numbers of the day (“Downtown,” “Monday, Monday”) that she barely comprehended. As was said in those days, she was so bad she was good.
People who think that we’ve lost our innocence as Americans should compare the career of Elva Miller–she never understood her novelty, and spent the balance of her life making “serious” recordings–with our naïve embrace of the Susan Boyle story.
PHILIP TERZIAN
