SuBo shows she’s got talent – and the X Factor
WHEN a 47-year-old cat lover with bushy eyebrows and frizzy hair first auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent, no doubt some were thinking, ‘This’ll make great no-hoper TV’.
But Susan Boyle held her audience spellbound as she sang I Dreamed A Dream, from Les Misérables, and the rest, as they say, is her story.
That was in Glasgow in 2009. On Sunday in the capital, at the opening night of this tour to mark ten years since her big break, the capacity crowd were in raptures. Even her entrance on stage earned the singer from Blackburn, West Lothian, a standing ovation before she’d even sung a note. (A word to the wise, though: don’t be tempted to skip support act, fellow Scottish BGT winner Jai McDowall, and wait for the interval. There isn’t one.)
Opening the show with A Million Dreams, from The Greatest Showman, it takes a while for her to get into her stride
At times seeming like a rabbit in the headlights, she delights fans with covers such as Wild Horses, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, and Coldplay’s Fix You, occasionally fidgeting with her earpiece, which suggests some technical problems at play. But it’s the second half where she comes into her own, ending the night as she started with a standing ovation after staple classics such as Over The Rainbow (‘about a wee lassie who went a journey’) and Abba’s The Winner Takes It All. A rousing Proud Mary even had some granny dancing that produced a Mexican wave.
So what’s her secret? As a singer she’s good but not great. Yet she connects with audiences in ways very few stars do. It may simply be that in her we see one of us who went on to become one of life’s lottery winners, and whose Cinderella story, and aspiration, remains an inspiration.
Maybe she won the wrong talent show – SuBo has the X Factor.