Fan Fare

What no Subo? BRITs under fire

She wowed the world last year, was Britain’s top recording artist of 2009 and has also conquered the United States. Yet Susan Boyle was overlooked completely by the BRITs voters when the nominations were announced late on Monday.

The theme of the night was girls and young women, with Lady Gaga, Lily Allen, Florence & the Machine and Pixie Lott all picking up three nominations apiece. Only one male act won so many – boyband JLS.

The media’s interpretation of the snub is that Boyle, affectionately known as SuBo in the newspapers, is too old and too uncool to feature at the annual celebration of British and international pop.  And some commentators were clearly unimpressed.

SuBo, the Sun tabloid opined, was “outrageously” omitted. “How can SuBo … not be nominated for Best Female? She must have been considered too uncool,” the story went on.

The BBC’s website also weighed in, and quoted Ged Doherty, head of the BRIT Awards and of Boyle’s record company at the same time, laying into the voting academy for its oversight.

“I think it’s a crime,” Doherty said. “I can’t explain it. Every year there is something the academy gets wrong and this year they got that wrong.”

What do you think? Has SuBo been snubbed, or is she rightly overlooked as a middling deliverer of cover versions?

from Raw Japan:

Boyle-san’s got tarento

Struggling musicians have long made dubious claims about being "big in Japan" in a bid to compensate for weak record sales at home.

But Susan Boyle, the 48-year-old who swept to fame in Britain and the U.S. after an appearance on reality TV, looks to be genuinely on the cusp of becoming a household name in the suburbs of Nagoya, Osaka and Tokyo.

The Scot’s ascent to stardom in the land of cutesy J-pop and traditional enka was given a big boost when she played a key part in the country’s New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Boyle appeared to wow the audience with her trademark rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Miserables" on NHK's "Kouhaku Uta Gassen", a men versus women singing competition that the state broadcaster has shown on the night of Dec. 31 for 60 years.

Although Boyle looked uncomfortable and awkward amid the sea of sequined waistcoats, sculpted hair and saccharine kids that seem to be some of the main ingredients of this musical battle of the sexes, her lack of glitz and polish will probably be a big plus for her.

Indeed, as I watched the show on TV with my in-laws, a Japanese family from Tokyo, my wife’s dad said approvingly that Boyle is “not flashy” and that this is very much in her favour.

Any viewers unfamiliar with Boyle’s story were filled in by a quick montage before she took to the stage, complete with black and white photos of her childhood, clips from "Britain’s Got Talent" and images of Simon Cowell, one of the judges on that show, in a particularly pantomime villainesque pose.

Susan Boyle takes over reins of “Wild Horses”

Maybe “Salt of the Earth” would have been a more appropriate choice for a Rolling Stones song, but everyone’s favorite underdog Susan Boyle seems to have wowed the masses with her tasteful cover of the rock band’s “Wild Horses.”

The powerful ballad about love and loss is the first single from the British talent-show heroine’s upcoming debut album, and she previewed it for U.S. viewers during Wednesday’s episode of “America’s Got Talent.”

The “live” performance was actually taped the night before, according to the Los Angeles Times, which hailed it as “lovely, inspirational, free of surprises.” Then again, the paper said Boyle’s version lacked the original‘s irony, although it’s not clear that there was any irony in the original.

The single version, with Boyle accompanied by a pianist, is perhaps more faithful to the restrained, elegiac tone of the original version. On TV, she unleashed her inner opera diva and also omitted the third verse, which contains the song’s most memorable line, “Let’s do some living after we die.”

If anyone stood to be offended it was picky fans of the Rolling Stones, but a survey of responses on the fan Web site It’s Only Rock’n Roll indicated near-unanimous approval. There was no immediate word from writers Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Jagger has said that Richards came up with the melody and the phrase “Wild Horses” and that he wrote the rest. The tune is a popular inclusion in the band’s set lists.

Boyle, meanwhile, is scheduled to release her album “I Dreamed a Dream” on Nov. 24 in the United States through Columbia Records. The shy, 48-year-old spinster rose to overnight worldwide fame in April, after tens of millions of people watched her bravura appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent.” Unable to deal with the sudden attention, Boyle was admitted to a London rehab clinic the next month to deal with anxiety.

Susan Boyle – Let the blame game commence

Susan Boyle has been admitted to a private clinic in London after suffering from exhaustion, and, according to the Sun tabloid, an “emotional breakdown”. After capturing people’s imagination the world over in April with her singing performance on “Britain’s Got Talent”, the 48-year-old Scot’s travails are headline news once again, at least in her home country. Predictably, the blame game has already begun, and following is a list of the main culprits in the whole saga, if press reports, commentators and pundits are to be believed:

1. The press: Some sections of the media, which had a big part in Boyle’s meteoric rise to fame, have apparently relished the chance to knock her off her perch. Those blaming the press point to reports late last week of Boyle throwing tantrums, of her threats to quit the show ahead of Saturday’s final and more generally of her inability to cope with the pressure.

2. The public: Rather like the press, the British public has also been blamed by some for wanting to bring Boyle down a peg or two. They did this in part by failing to vote for her on the night of the final, meaning she failed to win as expected.

3. The show: Should the show’s producers have seen this coming? Family members and others have criticised Britain’s Got Talent, aired on the commercial ITV channel, for not doing enough to support Boyle. According to Piers Morgan, one of the programme’s judges, Boyle had learning difficulties at school, which may have exacerbated the problem.

4. Susan Boyle: Britain’s Got Talent is a hugely successful format and anyone who enters the competition will know that they may be watched by millions of viewers and could become overnight stars. In her defence, however, Boyle’s trajectory has probably been unprecedented in terms of the number of people tuning in to watch her on the Internet and the global reach of that following.

She lost! So what now for Susan Boyle?

So Susan Boyle DIDN’T win “Britain’s Got Talent”. After the show turned her into a household name in more countries than I could list, the 48-year-old came second in Saturday’s final, surprisingly losing out to street dancers Diversity. Now don’t get me wrong. Diversity were impressive, and the choreography was as good as the execution on the night. It’s just that the momentum behind Boyle, one of the biggest Internet stars in history, was so great that it had been widely assumed she would walk off with the cheque for 100,000 pounds and the headlines on Sunday.

It was not to be, but this is unlikely to be the end of the road for Boyle. A lucrative recording contract is surely only days away as labels, notably Simon Cowell’s very own Syco, seek to trade in on her global fame, fine voice and anti-celebrity appeal. Some might feel that losing out to Diversity could be a blessing in disguise for a woman who has struggled to cope with the demands her instant celebrity has brought. She threatened to walk out of the show, had an altercation with journalists and reports said she had to be taken to a “safe house” in the days leading to the final to escape the limelight. Perhaps coming second will give her a little space and time to recover from what judge Cowell rightly called “a weird seven weeks”.

from UK News:

Is Susan Boyle a dead cert for Saturday?

She's odds-on favourite to win Saturday's final of "Britain's Got Talent," she's become an overnight international star and now she's started out on the trail to tabloid sainthood by acquiring her own headline moniker "SuBo."

But not everyone thinks Susan Boyle is a dead cert for the title. Singer Lily Allen for one thinks she's over-rated. "I thought her timing was off, no control, and I don't think she has an amazing voice," Allen said of Boyle's rendition on Sunday of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Memory" from the Cats musical.

Maybe there's a touch of over-exposure creeping in. Could the fable of the unlikely lass dragged away from West Lothian and thrust via the Internet into the world spotlight be starting to wear a little thin?

The competition is hot too. Dance acts Diversity and Flawless, singers Shaun Smith and Shaheen Jafargholi and even the Greek father and son combo Stavros Flatley have proved mighty popular with the phone-in viewers who have the ultimate say.

Do you think Boyle is going to win?

from UK News:

Grade struggling to find time for Susan Boyle

ITV executive chairman Michael Grade said he had only seen once before Thursday the clip of Susan Boyle singing on ITV show "Britain's Got Talent", that has received more than 100 million hits on YouTube, but has not yet netted the broadcaster revenue from the video-sharing site owned by Google.

"I've been incredibly busy over the last few weeks and I have only had one opportunity to view a piece of television that's taken the world by storm," he told the Voice of the Listener & Viewer Spring Conference in London.

"I'd like to have another look at Susan Boyle," he said, before playing the video.

ITV is reported to be in discussions with YouTube about monetising traffic generated by demand for the 47-year old Scottish church volunteer.

Grade, who last week announced he would step down as executive chairman of ITV, is reported to loathe YouTube, and has called it a parasite living off content created by broadcasters.

Susan Boyle breaks past 100 million online views

Scotland’s Susan Boyle left many viewers in Britain spellbound by her singing on a television talent show, but industry watchers say it’s the Internet that has turned her into an international phenomenon. She has ”clicked” with the online public at a record-setting pace, tracking firm Visible Measures said on Monday.

The latest numbers put Boyle at 103 million total video views on more than 20 different Web sites, said Matt Fiorentino, a spokesman for Visible Measures. 

It was only on April 11 that Boyle gained public attention with her performance on TV show “Britain’s Got Talent,” and Fiorentino said that Boyle has become the fastest growing Internet sensation his firm has ever seen.

Compare her numbers to another viral video sensation, the December incident of an Iraqi journalist throwing a shoe at former U.S. President George W. Bush, which had 21.4 million online video views in a week, Fiorentino said.

Clips of Boyle’s performance on “Britain’s Got Talent” have generated 91.6 million views to date, Visible Measures said. The rest of the online views have been for other material, such as Boyle’s 1999 rendition of “Cry Me a River,” interviews and fan videos.

By comparison, comedian Tina Fey’s impersonation of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on NBC sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live” has generated 34.2 million views.

Boyle has yet to reach the Internet success of singer Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body,” a video that has been seen 164 million times since it was posted online a little more than a year ago, according to Visible Measures.