In last night’s finale of Britain’s Got Talent, the homely heartstring-tugging heavy favorite Susan Boyle performed an encore performance of the song that made her an internet sensation– “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables— this time in Dress Barn’s best elastic shimmery ball gown. As has become standard practice on the show, the judges permanently sewed their lips to her rather sizable ass, falling all over themselves to talk about how amazing her mediocre performance was.
Simon Cowell gushed, “Win or lose, you had the guts to come back here tonight, face your critics, and you beat them. You can walk away from this with your head held high Susan. I absolutely adore you,” while Piers Morgan called it “the greatest performance I’ve seen in Britain’s Got Talent history.”
Unfortunately, Britain didn’t agree.
In a season finale shocker, the title of most talented Brit went to a dance troupe called Diversity. Subo placed second.
Are any of you surprised? In spite of the massive BGT hype machine practically shoving Boyle down everyone’s throat as the feel-good, scrappy, spunky, kid with a lot of heart who has been shat on her entire life because of her physical appearance, the reality is that she’s just really not that good. She’s not terrible, but her singing has never been as astonishing or incredible as the judges gushed every time she set foot on stage.
The BGT team saw an opportunity to create some publicity, and capitalized on that brilliantly by blatantly exploiting Susan’s physical appearance. The whole situation has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. By pimping her out as the perpetual underdog just because of her unfortunate physical appearance, they’re basically saying that appearance is everything, and that we should all be shocked and ashamed of ourselves because we never realized that ugly people can, in fact, sing. Whether or not Susan herself was in on the act is something of which we can’t be certain.
At any rate, congrats to the winners, a dance troupe called Diversity. You can see a video of their winning performance below. Where did they pull that tiny child in the Superman outfit from? And where did he go??
No word yet on exactly who will be performing at the Royal Variety Show. The winner of BGT is supposed to perform at the show in front of the queen, but Boyle has already been invited to make an appearance. I’m guessing both of them will be there.
I feel that judging Susan Boyle purely as a singer discounts the effect of her performances. Susan is at a disadvantage, for whatever reason, yet she had the strength to ignore criticism on press on. When she performs, the audience feeds of that strength, and therefore enjoys the performance in an entirely different way than if, say, Maria Callas was singing. I get chills watching her perform because I know how badly she wants to win, and how hard she has had to work to be where she is today. She has the power to make people feel that overcoming their challenges is a real possibility, when other singers cannot.
Her talent isn’t being Britian’s best singer. It possessing a talent that so many people are envious of- being able to stand up to your critics, turn your back on them, and then continue to pursue your goals. And that is definitely worth rewarding.
Although I think it is admirable that Susan “overcame her challenges” (whatever they may be- all I have read is that she had learning problems while in school) and that she stands up to her critics, the show is called “Britain’s Got Talent” not “Britain’s Got Strength and a Sense of Purpose”.
Lots of people have lots of challenges. Diversity (the dance group that won) may have overcome all kinds of challenges that we don’t know about. The way you are describing things should be, you would never get a record deal unless you were an amputee or mentally retarded or something because “normal people” are not inspiring.
People voted for who they thought put on the best performance, not who they thought “deserved” to win due to admiration of their character or pity.
high five mate
I agree, beautifully put.
After the other kid whistles, you can see the Superman kid come running from backstage. And he “disappears” when they converge; they rip off his outfit and throw it in the back.
Diversity was definitely much more entertaining than Susan Boyle was. I’m glad they won.
I totally agree. I think it is the same phenomenon as Paul Potts. When he and when Susan came out, the judges took one look at them and had extremely low expectations. So the mediocre performances seemed incredible compared to their expectations. It’s really a weird kind of reverse discrimination, that “unattractive” people have a lowered standard. I have a friend that thinks Paul Potts is the next Pavarotti, that God put him on that show so that he could carry on where Pavarotti left off. I think the comparison is completely ridiculous.
I also think the judges were very hypocritical trying to get everyone to vote for Susan as she has a heartwarming story and a (according to them) great voice when they were ready to vote her off as soon as she walked on stage (until she opened her mouth and showed she [gasp] could actually sing).
I never thought Susan Boyle was as good as she was hyped to be, so I’m glad she didn’t win. But after watching that performance of Diversity, I have to say that it was entertaining, but there wasn’t much actual “dance” in it. It felt really gimmicky. Oh well, it was still more impressive than Susan Boyle’s performance.
Hell yeah! I am GLAD Diversity won, bc, well the shows called Britain’s Got Talent. And well, they do! And they must work amazingly hard. I don’t blame the judges, but the media and the public frankly, who gets all warm and fuzzy about an underdog story, instead of judging the performers on their merits. She was good, but not good enough to win. She didn’t make me feel like she was overcoming her challenges, and hell, Maria Callas overcame lots of challenges, I am sure, but being unattractive was not none of them (although she was quite heavy in her early career singers were not criticized for it). I really hate how people think being unattractive is some sort of disability we have to “overcome” in the same way we would root for physically disabled athletes.
sounds like britain was tired of all the susan boyle hype
This feels similar to the hyped up win of Adam Lambert on idol that never actually happened.
Haha, I love how the Paula Abdul equivalent one [idk her name] just randomly stands up at like 1:38 and they have to switch cameras ’cause her head is blocking the dancers, lol! :D
She is called Amanda Fake Holden and she is one annoying bitch.
Break dancers? The English have no taste and apparently are very easily entertained. Oh well, there were several really good singers that were better than those non dancing dancers to vote for. This sort of proves it’s a hoax show. Won’t bother with any of it again.
How can one result in one TV show bring you to a conclusion about the ENTIRETY of a country?
I guess that Lil’ Kim represents all Americans. Wow! You guys have NO taste.
For an untrained singer doing opera, she IS great. Yes, you can’t really compare her to trained opera singers with ten-to-twenty years of singing coaches and experience. So the opera fans out there can listen to her and say she’s off and not great, but honestly they should be happy someone is maybe bringing new fans to this kind of singing.
Actually, the songs she was singing are music theatre, not opera. And, as a singing coach, I’d want her to receive a lot more training before I’d have been prepared to vote for her to win. There were a lot of issues with her performance that could stand improvement.
I have to agree with Kelly on this. There was something about this whole thing that really left a bad taste in my mouth. If she had been young and stunning, she would not have got the same reaction. The response she received was due to people’s surprise that an ugly person could sound even halfway good – something embarrassing and unpleasant to admit.
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