Thursday, November 05, 2009

Whatever Happened To...

...Susan Boyle?

Back in April after I saw (and was the last to find out, from what I gathered) her audition on Britain's Got Talent, I wondered if we would accept her as a true talent despite her "non-Kardasian" looks:
This Scottish singer who has bowled over the entire world with her voice is an interesting test for us as a culture. Oh, right now we're all so proud of ourselves - women self-righteously scolding us men for only ever having rewarded beauty over talent; men pretending they can see past ugly. But one month from now, one year from now, are people gonna buy this woman's albums? Are they gonna be watching her videos, or in movies? Hey, there's a reason Christopher Cross' career ended the day MTV went on the air.

This woman can sing. And she's genuinely moved more people in her 2 minutes of singing than any 300 pop stars we have will ever do in their lifetimes. We are lucky to have someone like her fight through and force us to hear her - ironically, like a beautiful woman to look at, she is a gift.

But how long til women go back to giving all their attention to the photoshopped beauties of the magazines, how long til men go back to stroking it to any 16 year-old girl who can't sing that they put on tv, shoving out her ass for us all to sniff? Is this the moment we collectively decide to discard phoniness for real talent, once and for all?

I'm "guessing" no.

Here we are over half a year later, and I personally have not heard her name come up once. I'm still getting the daily flood of Madonna/Jonas Bros/Kanye/Taylor Swift/Beyonce and countless other "singers," but nothing about her. Interesting.

Turns out she has an album coming out in 3 weeks. Curious to see how many people buy it. Or will they save their money for when the inevitable Spencer/Heidi single drops?

1 comment:

Kiko Jones said...

"...there's a reason Christopher Cross' career ended the day MTV went on the air."

Truer words...