Less than a week ago, she was just another
47-year-old Scottish virgin.
Now, more than 13 million
YouTube views later, Hollywood agents and talk show bookers are
jostling
for a few minutes with Susan Boyle, a stocky, beetle-browed
woman who would not
ordinarily rate a second glance on the street.
"Do you understand
what a big deal this is?"
Harry Smith asked her Thursday morning on
CBS' "The Early Show."
It may all add up to only a momentary big deal, but the case of this
previously unknown amateur singer
is a compelling study in how viral
video can lathe subject into frothy international stardom within hours.
On Saturday's season premiere of
" Britain's Got Talent," a U.K. show in which " American Idol's"
Simon
Cowell is one of the judges, Boyle was, from the moment she stepped
onstage,
perhaps the most unlikely star since Marie Dressler, the
frumpy 1930s movie heroine.
Boyle told producers that she
was a virgin. "Never been kissed," she confided on-camera.
"Shame! But
it's not an advert." She invoked as her idol the British musical
theater star
Elaine Paige. When she stated her age and the audience
groaned,
Boyle ground her ample hips and blurted: "And that's just one
side of me!"
A close-up showed Piers Morgan, another judge familiar to U.S. viewers
from
"America's Got Talent," wincing.
The crowd seemed to be expecting
another colorful character with no discernible talent,
in the style of
former "American Idol" contestant William Hung.
Amanda Holden, the program's
third judge, e-mailed on Thursday:
"When she came onto stage the
audience immediately started booing and hissing her,
based purely on
her appearance. She looked a little odd [and]
was a bit nervous and
searching for her words."
"We were laughing at her," Morgan said in a phone interview Wednesday.
"She was someone who seemed to be completely deluded."
Until she started to sing.
Boyle, who had some limited previous vocal training
and then mostly in
church choirs, shrewdly picked "I Dreamed a Dream
heartbreaking
ballad about unfulfilled dreams from the hit musical "Les Miserables."
A few bars into the song, as her earthy, pleasing voice took command
and soared over the auditorium, the crowd could be heard letting out
a
collective gasp, then starting to cheer raucously.
"It wasn't singer Susan Boyle
who was ugly on 'Britain's Got Talent'
so much as our reaction to her"
was the title of a piece by Guardian
commentator Tanya Gold.
Press and TV analyses since then have examined the unlikely success
of
her less-than-glamorous presentation, in particular audiences' reaction
before and after her performance.
"Why are we so shocked when
'ugly' women can do things,
rather than sitting at home weeping and
wishing they were somebody else?
Men are allowed to be ugly and
talented," wrote Gold.
But the Internet has already
delivered its own verdict on her potential.
Boyle's is already the
most-watched clip this month on YouTube, more than doubling
the total
views of its runner-up. Demi Moore has written tweets praising the
singer on Twitter,
and Oprah Winfrey has reportedly extended an
invitation for Boyle to appear on her program.
Even Patti LuPone, the Broadway diva whose version of "I Dreamed a
Dream"
Boyle closely followed, is a fan. "Susan, you've got pluck,
girl," LuPone told Boyle on CBS' "Early Show."
Of the YouTube
performance, she added: "It was pretty powerful . . . I started to cry."
Boyle's story resembles that of
Paul Potts, a shy cellphone salesman turned opera tenor
who won the
first season of "Britain's Got Talent" in 2007 by belting out
a
credible rendition of Puccini's aria "Nessun Dorma."
Potts' performance was another
online sensation, with more than 43 million views to date.
Bullying at
school undermined his confidence, he said in interviews.
Boyle also
told a British newspaper that she was bullied at school
for her frizzy
hair and for having learning difficulties.
Both performers are classic underdogs, nonthreatening people who,
in
pursuing long-held dreams, managed to triumph over easily understood
disadvantages.
While many Americans normally wouldn't be fascinated by
a previously obscure contestant
on a British TV show, that story is
familiar and has particular resonance in this country.
"Americans can be very moved by
this sort of thing," Morgan said. "She is Rocky Balboa, if you will."
Indeed, a full range of emotion
-- first humor, then shock, followed by warm appreciation
and perhaps a
dollop of self-reproof for anyone who dares to judge others principally
by their
appearance -- can be extracted from Boyle's seven-minute clip.
And that is what makes her story perfect for the Internet, where short
clips rule.
Giving Boyle staying power may prove harder, but those who discovered
her
are already at work on the problem.
"Our understanding is that Simon
Cowell and BMG have already started working with her,
to try and get
her a deal" in records, said "Early Show" executive producer Zev
Shalev,
whose staff worked hard to get Boyle on the program. A
spokesman for CAA,
which represents Cowell, was unable to confirm that
information by press time.
In the meantime, Morgan vows to
beat his longtime rival Cowell in the race to give Boyle her first kiss.
"In these types of shows, the most powerful tool you can have is what
Simon calls the 'likability factor' . . .
[Boyle] is someone who is
happy in her own skin," Morgan said. "This is someone who's worked
[nearly]
48 years to get her shot and, by God, she's taking it."
