What's Next for Susan Boyle

Let’s reassess and revalue what just happened. First of all, let’s not mince words. She lost first prize. There’s no “she really won because we all love her in the US (or France or wherever)”. She lost because not enough people voted for her in the UK, whether out of deliberateness (because they didn’t like her singing) or out of carelessnesss (because they thought she’d win anyway so their vote didn’t matter).

She lost by a margin of four percent.

[For all my postings on Susan Boyle, click here.]

What’s going to happen immediately is that the spotlight is going to be off her. This is good. Media interest in Susan is going to die down, giving her time to regain her composure and “get her head back”, away from public scrutiny. I never believed for a moment in those two accounts of her losing her cool this past week but let that go. If Cowell makes good on his word, and it’s a sure bet he will if there’s still money to be made off her, Susan will be making a CD and public reception to that release will determine whether or not Cowell will want anything more to do with her.

As I see it, if she ever wants the kind of career she dreamed of, she has to get away from the Cowell Machine as soon as possible. Get that recording, jump through the devil’s hoops and get out of whatever contracts she’s in as soon as possible. The Cowell Machine got her to where she is now, but maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that it didn’t propel her all the way to the top of their heap.

So why am I, a mere member of the public, getting so het up about this? I’ve seen musical acts ruined by bad, greedy, tin-ear management so many times it isn’t funny. I’ve also seen too many wonderful singers die too soon—Dalida, Sigrid Wurschmidt, Nancy LaMott. Susan’s not a young woman, with luck she maybe has twenty more years of a singing career ahead of her and there is NO MORE TIME for her to waste. If she doesn’t make some workable artistic choices now she’s going to end up an old lady in Blackburn croaking out “I Dreamed a Dream” to a karaoke machine at the local pub.

I’ve heard what she can do with her voice and now I’m hooked. I want to hear what she can do with the Great American Songbook. With Gershwin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Loewe, Jule Styne. You read the list. I want to hear all that.

• NEW! Just heard that Susan’s been admitted to an expensive clinic for emotional exhaustion. Also just learned that the GBT finals people delivered her costume to her only fifteen minutes before she was to go on. You see what a deliberate sadistic mindfucker the Cowell Machine is?

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