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Message |
    
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.131.109.157
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 11:44 am: | |
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20091117/ten-susan-boyle-tells-of-childhood-beati-ea4 616c.html
What's sad is that Hollywood were rumouring to make a movie about her, starring fucking Robin Williams as her. That's deplorable if it's true. People are real things, Hollywood. |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 11:49 am: | |
Her success is the only positive thing to ever come out of reality TV. Everyone laughed at her...until she opened her mouth and sang so beautifully.
More power to the lady. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.131.109.157
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 11:56 am: | |
Yes. |
Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank
Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.101
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:07 pm: | |
Yes, reality TV is one of the lowest points in the medium, truly disturbing, but I'm happy for this woman. Haven't heard her sing, not going to most likely, but I hope she continues with her success. I just hope this article will be read by those despicable so called teachers.
Why is it that most of the teachers from our past were the last people on earth who should have been put in charge of children. Education is not just the process by which acquire, it's about the person.
Better get off this topic...it makes me want to smash something. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.131.109.157
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:10 pm: | |
Her voice is very good. She does this Stones song, wild Horses; just heard a bit and it's phenomenal. Not my usual thing but I like. |
Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej
Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:13 pm: | |
I'll never forget (or forgive) those talentless and shallow 'judges' laughing behind their hands at Susan when she first appeared onstage.
Aside from the cruelty, arrogance and sheer rudeness of their actions, this display informed me that the music business is still firmly set in the 1950's mindset - image is still considered to be more important than ability. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.131.109.157
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:17 pm: | |
Yes again. I hate those shows. My wife used to stop me watching them because I'd get upset and shout at the telly, stomping away in fury. |
Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank
Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.101
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:37 pm: | |
Steve/Tony - Totally agree. When I came home last summer, my brother's wife to be called me a miserable bastard for telling her why I thought this utter shite was programed to bring out the worst in people. |
Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:49 pm: | |
The audition rounds of X Factor etc are nothing more than humiliation TV. These poor self-deluded sods sign to say that the TV company can use their audition for any purpose (I've seen the contracts they sign when I first aided the auditions) so they've not got a leg to stand on legally when they're made to look like complete fools on prime-time tv. |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:56 pm: | |
Televsision that just stands people up on a stage and prods them with sticks. Millions watch it. What does that say about our cultural tastes at the beginning of this century? |
Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd
Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.151.243.114
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:59 pm: | |
The fact that whomever gets voted off next can make the headlines in the UK and BBC news website fills me with a sense of hopelessness... |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 01:02 pm: | |
Bring up Dostoevsky in a conversation at work and you get funny looks, yet everyone knows who "Jedward" are...shudder. |
Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 01:11 pm: | |
A brilliant young Wolverhampton singer called Rachel Mainstone told an audience recently that she'd been told by a male record company executive that she had a year to 'make it', because 27 was too old for a female singer to make any impact. Whether the comment was casual sexism or bitter observation I don't know. |
Des (Des)
Username: Des
Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.171.167.11
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 01:13 pm: | |
A beautiful (unintentional?) rendition of the Susan Boyle legend is in Terry Grimwood's brilliant story: "Melissa The Singer". |
Kate (Kathleen)
Username: Kathleen
Registered: 09-2009
Posted From: 93.96.181.75
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 01:38 pm: | |
Watch Susan's stunning debut and cheer up, guys. (Or cry, as I did the first time I saw it.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfQu9OBfQVI |
Kate (Kathleen)
Username: Kathleen
Registered: 09-2009
Posted From: 93.96.181.75
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 01:46 pm: | |
Oh dear, that one cuts off the judges' comments at the end. Here's the full version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnmbJzH93NU |
Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.126
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 02:29 pm: | |
This is good. In fact, all of his pieces are:
http://www.clivejames.com/point-of-view/talent |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.131.109.157
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 02:51 pm: | |
Wow. I've just filled up watching that Youtube clip. Absolutely beautiful. |
Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 05:18 pm: | |
I think hearing her sing like that says it all - this lovely lady dispels all the myths that superficial "beauty" is important. It says everything about human nature that the judges (and the audience) were expecting her to be a good "joke", but when she started singing .. oh my, that was true beauty.
I think it's human nature to believe that anything which doesn't conform to the "norm" is wrong, bad, or otherwise to be ridiculed. That's the really ugly side of human beings, and that's where bullying stems from. If it ain't like us, kick it, seems to be the order of the day.
Like Zed said: more power to the lady.
On the subject of the education system and bullying, I recently had a worrying experience. When I was training up a fellow tutor, we were looking at the work of a student with learning difficulties. That student's spelling, sentence construction and general organisation of work is poor - but uni policy is to look beyond this, of course. But, much to my dismay, the tutor I was talking to couldn't see that - they were wanting to penalise the student harshly for these "mistakes". Even in these more enlightened times, there are some in the education sector who just don't seem to be able to recognise talent and achievement by seeing past the superficial.  |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 05:22 pm: | |
Jedward... huh???  |
Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 05:29 pm: | |
You mustn't have even looked at any newspapers for the last 5 weeks. They've been persistantly on the fromnt pages of the redtops at least 5 days out of 7
They're twins (John and Edward) who are worse singers than your typical x-factor contestant who are still in the show. |
Matthew Fryer (Matthew_fryer)
Username: Matthew_fryer
Registered: 08-2009
Posted From: 90.195.182.161
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 07:00 pm: | |
Jedward indeed. It annoys me that I even know who they are.
Whatever happened to talent being a requirement for celebrity?
Kudos to Boyle for actually having some, unlike most of the bland, reality bell-ends who frequent the headlines. |
Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw
Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 07:37 pm: | |
I only read 'The Guardian' and avoid anything to do with "reality" TV or the cult of celebrity -
it can be done you know! |
Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 07:38 pm: | |
>>Jedward... huh???<<
I was like that too until I saw something about them online, Stephen. Here they are:
http://uk.tv.yahoo.com/blog/article/347846/
|
Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.212.87
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 10:14 pm: | |
Yes... Susan Boyle's singing ability is shocking in the context of vapid showbiz non-culture. It would be less so in a folk club or an operatic society. As Clive James acutely points out, what she deserves is a serious singing career, not a 'stardom' based on her novelty value. None the less, I'm grateful for the shock of those first few seconds when her voice blazed through the screen like sunlight through a stained-glass window. |
Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.89.2
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - 10:27 am: | |
I don't watch the show but saw her performance a week or so after. It was pricelss watching the reaction to her voice after the reaction to her appearance.
I bought my daughter Scott Westerfield's books earlier this year - the first is called Uglies. That satire soon put her on the right road. |
Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.228.92
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - 12:53 pm: | |
So what's new? It's always been like that. Just watch Singing in the Rain from more than half a century ago, where a relatively nondescript girl with the voice of an angel gets to sing the part of a beautiful star with an awful voice - literally from behind the stage curtain.
I feel sorry for Susan Boyle, but would you buy her cds on the strength of her voice alone? I feel guilty about admitting this, but I'm not at all sure I'd ever have bought a single Kate Bush record if Kate weren't so strikingly beautiful and sexy.
The other side of the spectrum being, as we all know, singers who can't sing out to seduce you with their looks alone. |
Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.250.11
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - 04:09 pm: | |
Again - blame the Devil inside me or something, maybe I'm just not getting enough fiber - but Susan Boyle would not have been the overnight sensation she was, if that first song out of the gate had been anything other than the one she chose. A rendition that rings to me oddly robotic - it's like someone flipped a switch in her back, and she just started singing. Was it the singer, or the song?
Hubert is spot on: music appeals to our ideals - sometimes they are airy and near ecstatic, sometimes they wallow in despair and bitterness - but they are not plain, indifferent, shabby. Kate Bush's beauty matches the beauty of her music - the "visuals" there are just apposite. Steve Nicks was as "witchy" as her songs. Many punk bands looked like scabs peeled from back alleys - their look matched their music. In this respect, perhaps Susan's first song was perfect... certainly if she had sung that "Wild Horses" out of the gate, we'd be more scratching our heads, wondering what to think.... |
Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.89.2
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - 05:59 pm: | |
Thanks for putting the link up, Kate. Just listened to it again. I was so pleased for her. All that sniggering and judgement calls before she opened her mouth.
Spot on Caroline.'I think hearing her sing like that says it all - this lovely lady dispels all the myths that superficial "beauty" is important. It says everything about human nature that the judges (and the audience) were expecting her to be a good "joke", but when she started singing .. oh my, that was true beauty.' There seemed to be a time when we were moving away from judgement by looks and now we are right back in the middle of it.
It is getting harder again to talk to young daughters about it is what they do that matters and not how they look. |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
| | Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 01:28 am: | |
It is getting harder again to talk to young daughters about it is what they do that matters and not how they look
If only that were true...in an ideal world, it would be. And it certainly is to the likes of us. Unfortunately, in our society it isn't true at all: it's all about image. |
Paul_finch (Paul_finch)
Username: Paul_finch
Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
| | Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 - 10:02 am: | |
I've just heard SB's rendition of WILD HORSES, and it's jaw-droppingly gorgeous.
It was on the radio directly after the new Cheryl Cole song, and the DJ said something to the effect of: "So, on the strength of those two songs, who would you say is the bigger star?"
No-one rang in to say anything because no-one needed to. And yet the vacuous "it's all about me and how I look" celeb culture will continue to drag its tawdry arse across our TV screens and through our glossy magazines, making colossi out of talentless pipsqueaks. The likes of Jordan deserve to be abandoned in jungles covered in insects, yet even that's been packaged and sold as a form of money-spinning entertainment (at the expense, needless to say, of some proper TV drama). Susan Boyle is a light in the black in this respect, but ironically it was one of these extravaganzas of glitzy showbiz shallowness that 'discovered' her.
I hope she's being managed well, and that she can break away from all that nonsense and, as others have said, have a serious career that isn't all about Saturday evening viewing figures. |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
| | Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 - 10:39 am: | |
making colossi out of talentless pipsqueaks
That's such a brilliant line. I agree with everything you just typed, my friend. |
Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.252.230
| | Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 - 04:23 pm: | |
I didn't like her rendition of "Wild Horses," personally. And again, a plaintive, maudlin, lachrymose melody, when done by anyone other than Mick. I'll bet she was going to do "Angie" instead except, clearly, it wouldn't come out the same coming from a woman. Mick could do that sentimental tone in both those songs - but then he could be funny in "Dear Doctor," wicked-evil in "Midnight Rambler," bitterly-despairing in "Rocks Off", and so on.... SB is stuck on: weepy-deepy. From what I've heard.
Just imagine her covering "Monkey Man." Come on, imagine it.... |
Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.167.117.66
| | Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 - 05:42 pm: | |
The way I feel about Susan Boyle is...
She has a technically fine voice...But she is a GOOD singer?
A good singer doesn't just bellow dead on key...there is so much more to it than that.
Listen to Bob Dylan singing 'If you see her, say hello' for a heartbreaking song sung beautifully.
I have nothing against Susan Boyle, if she can get some attention and cash from a bit of fame good luck to her, but I don't enjoy her stuff personally.
gcw |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
| | Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 - 08:22 pm: | |
I think she's a very good singer. Bob Dylan is a rubbish singer, but his songwriting talent is what makes him great - and his odd voice kind of suits the material.
There are a lot of good singers around, but a good singing voice doesn't make one a great performer or artist. |
Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.167.117.66
| | Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 - 08:51 pm: | |
Aye.
gcw |
Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.230.196
| | Posted on Saturday, November 21, 2009 - 02:14 am: | |
GCW, have you heard 'Call Letter Blues' and the early version of 'Idiot Wind' on Dylan's first Bootleg Series set? Just when you thought there was no more awesomeness to be reached in Blood on the Tracks, along come some outtakes to further scour your mind. Unmissable. |
Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.167.117.66
| | Posted on Saturday, November 21, 2009 - 12:30 pm: | |
I haven't Joel, I do know that Dylan originally recorded all the album very sparsely, and then decided at the last minute to re-record some of the songs with a band backing.
I will check those songs you mention on youtube....
gcw |